I was AIMing with a friend of mine this evening, and somehow politics came up. I vented a little bit about partisanship, and my friend told me that she thought partisans were like fanboys, in a way. I thought she was kidding, until she pointed out some similarities between partisans and what she considers fanboys (for the record, she's a die-hard DC fangirl).
She went off on a tangent comparing liberal-conservative debates to DC vs. Marvel debates, or Hal Jordan vs. Kyle Rayner debates, or people who love the new Star Wars trilogy vs. people who hate it with a passion, and other such debates, all of which we have both seen get pretty ugly. She also compared people who slam writers with people who slam policy decisions, and debates about presidential candidates to "Kirk vs. Picard" fights.
She also said that what made her see the similarities is the way people argue. People who track down every article they can find supporting their cause or slamming someone else's are the same as people who go through their comic collections showing every instance why there's no way Hal Jordan could ever become Parallax, or every reason why Batman isn't some stone-cold psycho but a true hero, and other such examples.
And of course, there's the time spent on the message board devoted to these clashes, proclaiming one's solemn alliegence to their camp, hatred of the other, and a refusal to consider anyone's points of view but one's own.
I didn't think too much of it at first, because in some cases, she just sounded a little too out there, and this doesn't represent all fanboys or partisans accurately. But I've thought about it, and to a degree, I can see her point. I have seen fandom become insanely divisive at times. Some of the people on this Daredevil board I used to go to remind me of some hardcore political partisans I've encountered - some even more hardcore than the ones here (the movie is a nasty bone of contention amongst Daredevil fans, and the people on this board can be really mean). And of course, there were my days as a member of the notorious Green Lantern Message Board on the DCMBs back in the good ol' days.
What do the rest of you think? Do any of you see any similarities between fanboys and partisans? Or is she just off her rocker?
