Thursday, October 7, 2010

Rant: Fanboys- what's the big deal?

Whether you preferred Hicks' M41A rifle or Drake's M56A, its hard to not think "Nerf should make one of those.."
How many of you can say you woke up one morning and just thought "wow, playing with toy blasters would be really cool" with absolutely NO inspiration whatsoever from any tv show, movie or video game?

Liar:)

The term 'Fanboy' is a derogatory term used to describe people who are absolutely fanatical about something, to the point they will happily disregard any flaws or issues with that thing. When it comes to the world of make believe shooting stuff, fanboys are normally the ones who love playing video games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, or Bad Company, or Medal of Honor, or Sonic the Hedgehog (ok maybe not Sonic) and in turn fantasise about having replicas of the weapons used IN those games.

For all intended purposes, toy blasters excite us because we've been exposed to, and in turn inspired by a multitude of visually cool stuff in the media. And.. what's wrong with that? How many of us watched Aliens and thought "oh I want one of those" (those being..pretty much ANYTHING in that movie). I play Army of Two:40th Day and decide it'll now be a great idea to run around wearing a painted iron man mask and carry around a storage tub lid as a shield to accompany my Nerf blasters. Am I am idiot? Probably, but doesn't it makes it kinda fun? Whatever it is that inspires us to get into it in the first place.. better someone gets into shooting foam darts than actually wanting to get a REAL gun and live out kill fantasies?!

At the end of the day, we're ALL playing with toys here- so trying to elevate yourself to thinking you're "better" than someone else because you're a "serious" nerfer is a bit of a joke. You can laugh and some weedy kid's delusions of being some hard core special ops grunt because he plays a certain video game (he'd probably need to be able to do a push up or two first) but it's pretty harmless, and really, people should be allowed to have their fun, regardless of what motivates them to pick up a Nerf blaster in the first place.

About that M56A..

4 comments:

  1. Yeah they're all over the forums, people talking about "serious nerfers" and stuff (You're 13 btw... how are you serious anything?). Tbh who wants to play against you if you have a Titan that can fire 200feet and smash your teeth out if you're within 15 feet? They're toys... not weapons. My brother doesn't even want to play against my AT with a simple spring replacement...

    ReplyDelete
  2. i totaly agree. nerf basicly gives me the excuse to rumage around in my grandfathers old trunk and run around with ny friends in his old vietnam gear. Do i actually want to kill someone, no, i just realy love history and like to incorperate nerf into it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Point taken, and I agree. However, there's a long way between being inspired by movies, military history and video games, and treating Nerf (or paintball, or airsoft) as some way of 'playing it for reals'.

    ReplyDelete
  4. http://www.instructables.com/id/Nerf-M41A-Pulse-Rifle-based-off-the-the-movie-Ali/

    That is all.

    ReplyDelete