Inspired by the Fanboys thread.
When I was in college in the late 90s, I was a big Godzilla fan (explains the username, yeah?). I made a GeoCities-type homepage, collected toys off eBay and online dealers, had bootlegged fansubs, etc. The real fun began when I joined online communities.
Granted, there are some things fans disagree upon, but fairly harmless debate areas.
[ul]
[li]Was the 1998 TriStar movie a “Godzilla” movie?[/li][li]Classic (1954-1975) vs Heisei (1984-1995) Godzilla, which is better?[/li][li]MechaGodzilla vs Ghidorah, who would win?[/li][li]Toho prohibits bootlegs, should we deal/purchase/watch them anyway, since Japanese subtitled is superior to the US dubbed versions?[/ul][/li]
But things took a turn for the surreal when I got on alt.movies.monster. There was a huge split in Godzilla fandom, which resulted in two competing Godzilla fan conventions! Basically, it was a personality split among the two self-styled leaders, and each one had camps of fans. It got really strange when I was reading editorials in the two competing fanzines about how evil the other party was.
The funny thing? I have no idea why they split and what made it so venomous.
Nowadays, I’m surprised to see the rivalry between Canon and Nikon users. I’m at the sidelines, other photographers walk up and say “Nikon, oh, I’m sorry”. Or “I see you’ve gone to the dark side”.
Dude I used to visit your page all the time!
This reminds me of a rift in an organization of professional Santas: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1276
The Star Wars/Star Trek fandom rivalry. Outright mutual hate in a lot of cases.
Not exactly a rivalry per se, but the other day I searched on Youtube for videos about the most efficient way to chop an onion, and I was pretty surprised to realize what a hotbed of debate, insults, and flaming culinary how-to videos can be.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Stephen Sondheim theatre fan rivalry runs very deep. Anyone seen holding a double birthday party on March 22nd (Andrew having been born on Stephen’s 18th Birthday) is damn near lynched.
I understand the two men respect each other professionally and laugh it off.
There’s a lot of snarking in Atari 2600 circles whenever the question “which is the better tank game, Battlezone or Robot Tank” comes up. There are also rivalries between several classic gaming boards, complete with flame wars and board raids. And, to this day, there remain (mostly friendly) rivalries between Commodore 64 enthusiasts and Apple II, Atari 8-bit, and Spectrum enthusiasts, and between Amiga and Atari ST users that occasionally turn vicious.
In comic books, there was a years-long feud between Peter David (Marvel comics and Star Trek novels) and Todd McFarlane (Spawn), bubbling over into editorial content, comics convention panels, etc. I don’t even remember what started it, just that neither side would let up.
I remember reading somewhere (perhaps a long lost Wikipedia article) about the Star Destroyer vs Enterprise. In the heat of the debate, a Star Wars Cross-Sections book came out that made the Star Destroyer incredibly strong, including shields that could “deflect transporters”.
It turned out that one of the contributors to the Star Wars book was a key figure in the debate!
Oh, in guitar circles:
- Fender vs. Gibson / Stratocaster vs. Les Paul
- Fender AND Gibson vs. all the other, less-popular makes and models
- Electric vs. Acoustic
- Tube amplifier users vs. Digital
People get pissy over small stuff - guitars that come with “relic’ing” to make them look aged (some actually play better as a result) vs. no aging. Lots of flame wars over whether it is okay to even consider buying a relic’d guitar…