Why Macs are for Idiots
Hello,
reader. I see that you have decided to subject yourself to my 1,000-word rant
on a subject that is rather trivial and pointless, yet you find so intriguing.
By this, I think I can assume that you have experienced one of two sets of
events leading up to your reading this very sentence.
A.)
You are sitting, with your mac in front of you,
innocently browsing the internet. Suddenly, your eyes alight on a title: “Why
Macs are for Idiots” Your hands shake as they move across your metallic,
overpriced touchpad. You tap on the link, ready to skim over my post and write
a comment something along the lines of: “This was an interesting post, but I
think I disagree. Macs look really nice and get less viruses and they have
better software than windows.”
B.)
You are sitting with your pc in front of you,
innocently browsing the internet. Suddenly, your eyes alight on a title: “Why
Macs are for Idiots.” “OH MY GOD, YES!” You internally exclaim. You have
already made hundreds of lists of ways PC’s are superior, but you just feel
like reading a blog post in which someone repeatedly says things you already
believe will make you that much more right. You get ready to skim the post, and
write a comment in all-caps rehearsing every single point I have just made in
the post.
If you are one of these people,
feel free to scroll down to the comments section right now and do your thing. I
will think no less of you. Alternatively, you could be someone who finds joy
and entertainment from watching angry people shout things that you don’t care
that much about. Or you could be one of the very rare individuals who just read
things for the sake of reading, not to listen to a rant, and then rant
yourself. If you are one of these people, please, stick around. You will not be
disappointed.
Now, if you’re not a salty mac or
windows fan, you’re probably glazing over about now. Good. Because the larger
point of this post actually has nothing to do with macs or pcs. In fact, the
larger point of this post is directly opposed to what the beginning was about.
I would like to talk a little bit about internet culture, and just culture in
general these days. Maybe I’m just young and naïve enough that this feels new
to me, but it seems like, anymore, people’s value as human beings are being
reduced to what they agree or disagree with. If you have ever looked at the comment section
under a YouTube video, you will have seen this phenomenon. IAs soon as someone
says any view contrary to what someone else thinks, everyone goes nuts. Basically,
If you disagree with my point, I think you are a terrible person, and I will
insult you in every conceivable way and hate you deeply because of your opinion
on something trivial and unimportant. There are a lot of criteria that could be
used to judge people by, but their view on whether or not Ricegum is better
than iDubbz or mac is better than pc is one of the less accurate ones. This is
an attitude that I feel has only continued to grow on the internet over these
past years. Couldn’t we refrain from hating on random people because they don’t
share our exact views?
Most people would rather
listen to someone rant about something stupid (like what I did for the first
part of this post) or offer their opinion about political events than do or
read something useful. There are better uses for your time than listening to
what some random person who doesn’t know you and you will probably never meet
thinks about Donald Trump or burger king or macs or monopoly (heh heh) or
whatever. Likewise, there are better things to do with your time than writing a
blog post or making a YouTube video stating your opinion on something (then
again, maybe not because those videos are a great way to make money if you’re
famous.)
Anyway, the last thing I have to
say is this: it seems like people don’t even listen to each other’s points. We
either skim them completely, or digest them, but only for the purposes of
refuting them. We are set in our ways that PC beats Mac, and there is nothing
that anyone could say that could convince us otherwise. So why are we reading
it then? Just to refute them? And why do we want to do that? Because they
disagree with us and are therefore a terrible human being? It’s kind of sad,
when you think about it.
And it’s not like I’m free of this
either. I have spent the blog post ranting about something myself. I have
clicked on countless dumb videos, and thus supported their creation. And while
I have never actually gotten into a comment war with someone, I have certainly
felt compelled to do so many times. Does that make me a bad person? No. Does
that make people who do this bad people? No. However, I sometimes wish that
people could just chill out sometimes.
"This was an interesting post, but I think I disagree. Macs look really nice and get less viruses and they have better software than windows." (i did read the rest of your post but i need to defend my mac). First, as you noted, macs look really nice. Like REALLY nice (so nice that many PCs are trying to copy the look). Macs also tend to be way more user friendly – I'm good with computers but using some PCs makes me want to scream. I won't go into other things like stability because the mac pc debate is stupid and I took the bait and started commenting about it
ReplyDeleteI also see this type of thing a lot. People get incredibly angry when they are contradicted online. For the most part, I think that the internet is a portrayal of the things we would like to say in real life but don't because it would be rude or obnoxious. When you are at school and someone tells you about how great their new mac is and how bad your pc is in comparison, a part of you wants to yell at them and say that theirs is overpriced, but instead you say "k" (or something along those lines). Online, it would be a different story.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this post despite the CLICK BAIT. It was interesting to read your thoughts on such a widespread issue. I generally try to stay out of any discussion on the internet I try to form my own views from the fact that I know. I definitely have never gotten into a comment fight on Youtube. But it think that debate different ideas is very useful to broaden your horizons, but most of the time it just turns into trading insults which is useless, like you mentioned. Anyway Great Post.
ReplyDeleteI thought that your clickbaity title was a great way to get your point across, because as an avid PC user, I will admit I was ready to come down the comment sections and ROAST macs along with you. I think you are right about the whole subculture about arguing - arguments like this on the internet don't have any positive outcome, and only result in upset people and divisions.
ReplyDeleteWhile I scroll the comments section for some Youtube video, it's not a rare occurrence for me to find two or more people having conflicting viewpoints on a topic addressed in the video. It starts out pretty calm, but sooner or later, it'll turn into a flame war where everyone is cussing at each other. No one tries to even reason with the others I find it really amusing, but as you said, it kind of is pretty sad.
ReplyDeleteI see this kind of thing all the time and always have to shake my head in disappointment. If we could all just respect each-other's view points and hold meaningful discussions instead of just roasting each-other, the world would be a better place.
ReplyDeleteI've really been enjoying your clickbait titles. They are actually a pretty good way to reel people in and get them to read your posts. On a more serious note, I think I say this a lot on people's blog posts, but opinion posts or comments on trivial things like which sport is best or why Wendy's is better than McDonald's are kinda ridiculous. The world would be much simpler if we didn't get too entrenched in our own opinions and learned to respect that everyone is different and all of these things are totally subjective. However, I think we have to draw the line at things like Trumpian politics. If your viewpoint is in some way hurting another person, then I think it's everyone's duty to speak up and not sit idly by.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I see what you mean here. I personally wouldn't say that standing up against racist comments online counts as trivial. My initial comment was more directed the other way. Like if you like Trump, just keep that to yourself, you don't have to yell about it in the comments of a random video.
DeleteYour clickbait caught me. I used to be a what I would call a Mac fanboy. My mom always used (and still does) a Mac and so when I yearned for a laptop I asked for a Mac. I was very lucky that she bought it for me, and I really did love it. Something I still to this day appreciate about Apple is their cohesive design. Everything works together, at times it seems perfectly so. My friends and I would have arguments in the playground (in Norway we still had recess in 6th grade) about which was better, Macs or PCs. Our arguments never got anywhere, with us all being steadfast in our proclamation of the superior platform. My argument hinged on the design of the user interface; Mac OSX just looked a lot better than Windows did.
ReplyDeleteI used that Mac for a long time. At one point I used an ASUS that ran windows, but it was clunky and slow. Quite possibly due to all the malware I accrued while perusing the Pirate Bay. Eventually, in 2014, I decided I needed a more powerful machine in order to play more demanding videogames. I had just gotten into Garry's Mod, and it crashed and ran quite horribly on my Mac. Originally I wanted to make a 'Hackintosh': a typical desktop PC, but running the Mac OSX operating system. But this seemed much too difficult for a first time PC-builder, so I caved and went with Windows. I've never looked back.
Nowadays I'm a Linux-idealist. After warming up to Windows and appreciating the compatibility and advanced functionality it brought over Mac OSX, I've become disillusioned by Microsoft's crummy spyware-esqe tactics embedded in Windows 10. I want to switch to Linux. It seems to be the best option as it gives the advanced features of Windows, some of the design principles of Mac, and none of the corporate corruption that come with them. But my enjoyment relies so much on videogames; videogames that would run poorly, if at all, on ill-supported Linux. So for now I live in a sort of purgatory, longing to move to Linux but unwilling to sacrifice my deep-seated ties to Windows and still dreaming about the smooth experience of macOS.
(Sorry for expanding so much on this topic tangential to your post; I agree with your points about how vitriolic internet arguments can get, but I'm afraid including commentary on that would make this comment far too long.)