I’m getting fairly tired of platform hijacks. You know what I mean. A Mac owner says “I’m curious about this feature of my computer” and, in the middle of a discussion, a sad geek without a life will pop in and say one sentence to the effect of “If you had a real computer with Windows, you’d have a lot more software!”. Or, here and here are examples of Mac types doing the exact same thing. Either one is annoying and bespeaks a desperate lack of a life.[sup]1[/sup]
Imagine going up to a vegetarian and saying “Mmmm. Hamburgers are SO yummy”. Imagine a vegetarian doing the reverse (“You’ve got 7 pounds of undigested meat in you colon”). It’s rude, and, in the context of this board, more importantly, it’s boring.[sup]2[/sup]
Y’know what? Both platforms have advantages and disadvantages (so does Linux, but I’ve yet to see a Linux type do this, although I’ve seen Linux threads hijacked this way) and neither is perfect. There is no objective “better” or “worse”; there’s only “better for me” or “worse for this purpose”.[sup]3[/sup]
What’s wrong with the self-image of people who are so devoid of lives that they feel that the platform choice they’ve made so defines them that they have to hijack threads in a pathetic attempt to validate their choice? I’ll give you folks a clue: No one, even the people who’ve bought the same platform cares. No one. Even your fellow platform owners are embarrassed by you.
I don’t think this’ll happen, but I’d love, love for the admins (Lynn, Tuba?) to define doing this as “jerkish” behavior and put it in the FAQ. It’s obviously not an attempt at an attempt at a discussion. It’s clearly an attempt to get people to react and it often disrupts the discussion. I know that all examples of “jerkish” behavior can’t be included, but this, to me would be a textbook case.
I know this rant won’t stop this kind of hijack from happening. Losers like these need the validation (even “Get lost, troll” is validation for people as empty as this). But, what the hell, it’s worth a try.
And a suggestion to these people: There’s a whole raft of things that you can use to define your life: politics, religion, philosophy, music. The software and computer you own should be the least of them.
Fenris
[sup]1[/sup]The only examples I have go one direction (Mac loser hijacking Windows discussion). I have seen plenty that go the other way, but I haven’t been able to find them. Suffice it to say that I know that both Mac and Windows users do this.
[sup]2[/sup]I specifically do NOT mean to discourage discussions about plusses and minuses of various platform, just the dull hit-n-run hijack by a loser trying to vaidate an otherwise empty life.
[sup]3[/sup]The odds are 45 to 1 that this thread will descend into a discussion of this paragraph. And the odds are 75 to 1 that within the next 5 posts, someone’ll jokingly post something like “You’re just saying that because you have a PC”.
