With the internets aflutter these days with E3 and the launch of the iPhone 3G, it has been difficult to escape the idea of fanboyism. Definitions of a fanboi (the ‘i’ being a rather lame attempt at gender neutrality) vary somewhat, but the general consensus seems to be that the term denotes someone with a slavish obsession to a given object or brand. For whatever reason, fanboyism has particularly become a mainstay in ‘geek culture’, most often in the world of technology; there are few places you can see the veneration of brands like you can on a video game forum or a blog post discussing Apple’s latest product.

On message boards and in comment boxes across the ‘net, ‘fanboy’ has come to be a derisive shorthand for zealotry. “You’re just saying that ’cause you’re a fanboy” is to insinuate that there is irrational emotion rather than reason behind one’s point of view, a stance totally at odds with the logic at the core of ‘commenter culture’. Yet at the same time, there is somehow a tacit acknowledgement of the inevitability of fanboyism. Take this panel discussion on Gametrailers that gathers three quite well-respected games journalists: when host Geoff Keighly prods two of the panellists about being fanboys, there is a sheepish non-denial rather than vehement disagreement. Apparently, even a man with an M.A. in journalism or the lead editor for technology at Newsweek can fall prey to the scourge.

Much to my surprise and chagrin, I have also found myself acting in a fanboyish manner. Perhaps most unexpected and disturbing is watching myself get annoyed when a given company whose products I own are insulted or dismissed. For someone who is ostensibly ‘left-wing’ in that classic grad-school sense – anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist and other such naive nonsense – this initiates a serious case of cognitive dissonance. Why on earth should I even care? What possible difference could the brands I have chosen to align myself with make to me, my sense of self or my identity ?

Upon further reflection, however, my reactions and those of countless others are less surprising than they initially appear. I am, at least in some ways, a regular person: I have specific requirements from the technology I buy and, perhaps more importantly, a limited budget. Any time I make a choice as to which brand or ecosystem I buy into, I also implicitly reject other brands. One way I do so is by valuing certain characteristics and approaches more highly than others, thereby expressing my ‘choice as a consumer’. But more to the point, the inevitability of some kind of financial constraint – that if one cannot buy both a Dell and a Macbook, or an Xbox 360 and a Playstation 3 – forces one to justify to oneself and others the choice that is made. I have to defend and rationalize it, prove to myself and those who assail my choice that yes, in fact, it was the right one. In an odd sense, brand choices become at least akin or analagous to things like race and nationality: once the decision is made, I am stuck and cannot change it; when it comes under attack, I defend it as if I were defending myself.

But in order to feel anything, I have to associate my sense of self with the products I’ve purchased. That first, possibly unconscious step is the necessary precursor – or why get outraged? And it’s not just any products mind you; after all, nobody takes pains to tell anyone what brand of toilet cleaner they use (“Ugh. I bet you she uses that blue tablet…”?) One mus associate identities with products in the first place, and this often happens through the association of brands with certain characteristics. There is a great scene in AMC’s Mad Men where Don and his co-workers sit around feeling very puzzled by an ad for the VW Beetle that simply has one word under a picture of the car: Lemon. The car’s benefits are not being sold or even being promoted. Instead, the cheekiness of the spot, its reversal of convention sells the brand rather than the item, the values contained in the ad instead of the product. Purchase the car and you attach yourself to and express the ideals of the brand. What the thing actually does and how it does it is no longer a consumer’s only concern.

This is now rather common sense, as it has been a part of North American culture for decades. So it is hardly surprising that the linking of brands and identity started out primarily as markers of class: working Jills and Joes drove Fords and drank Bud and their bosses drove Cadillacs and sipped Chardonnay – and not that unoaked plonk either. Want to display your masculinity? Buy a Camaro. Want to tell the world you’re fashionable and wealthy? Buy a Louis Vutton purse. These ideas are now commonplace, so much so that they are essentially inescapable.

But is the tech world and ‘the fanboi as the irrational zealot’ changing this? What kind of identity is being staked out when one purchases one piece of technology over the other, or enters one tech ecosystem rather than another? Apple is perhaps the most logical place to go here. When one purchases an iPhone or a Macbook Pro, one buys into a minimalist aesthetic and displays a willingness to pay a bit extra to get one what one wants. While we often buy Apple products because ‘they just work’, there is also a case to be made that they are latent signs of class distinction – after all, if you’re strapped for cash, you buy a PC. You can even argue that Apple are part of a sort of ‘white hipster’ ethnic expression. So there is little difference here. If anything Apple represents a concentration of the link between brands and identity.

What about video games though? Or operating systems? Or MP3 players? Or stereos and TVs? Why have countless millions of teenaged ‘man-hours’ been wasted arguing the relative merits of one games console over another? Well first comes the investment, in the literal economic sense. Then comes the emotional one, the defense of the choice that one didn’t really have full control over. But if I purchase an Xbox 360, am I making a statement about myself? How about a Windows PC? Or a pair of Grado heaphones over some Sennheisers? No, there’s not much there in the way of identification, is there?

But that doesn’t stop the zealotry. The problem in all this is that what a brand stands for is entirely nebulous and shifting, but that the economic constraints of the individual force an identification anyway. There is a reversal at work where, rather than characteristics being expressed through brands, brands become blank signifiers with constantly shifting meanings that suit the companies peddling products rather than the individual buying them. All one expresses is one’s capacity to perform what it means to be ‘with it’ in a social system in which buying is seen as a legitimate form of expression. Fanboyism, far from being irrational, is the logical outcome of capitalism: to be a bit trite, I buy therefore I am. And that “I” is simply whichever ad campaign happens to be selling the right vibe at the right time. If one reads Fanboyism as a symptom, one sees the widespread acceptance of the idea that brands and products are markers of identity. But when these markers shift chameleon-like to suit the whims of their makers, signifying nothing but one’s capacity to buy, then it is hardly surprising that we mere consumers spend our time defending our identities online, yelling into the gust of a storm that was not of our making.