Why is there such fanboy-ism in tech?

by Volker Weber

The reason why fanboys exist with such blind devotion is because of something called Choice Supportive Bias. This occurs when we make a decision to invest a significant amount of time, energy, money or a combination thereof into a product. In order to justify to ourselves that such a purchase was worth it, we make up reasons why it was a good idea.

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2012-12-10 :: email :: twitter :: facebook :: google+

Comments

He lost me on the line "...if the product is unnecessary, like an iPad"

Maybe call me a fanboy but I don't call my iPad "unnecessary" (and give the right to do so to any other tablet or whatever device user on any OS).

Necessarity depends on your personal needs!

Harald Gaerttner, 2012-12-10 14:12

That was a quote from a book, not a line from the page vowe links to.

Jan Van Puyvelde, 2012-12-10 14:24

This can apply to purchasing "gadgets" only to a very limited extent:

The explanation for the phenomenon's existence involves "To combat post-decisional dissonance, the feeling you have committed to one option when the other option may have been better".

With those gadgets it only takes a couple of weeks to a few months and almost certainly there will be some other option which will be better. So while at the time I bought mine, it might have been the best one (at least I can talk myself into believing that), but certainly the question remains whether it was the right time or not.

:-)

Ragnar Schierholz, 2012-12-10 15:12

Then there are some of us who buy one of everything cool so we can know what the "other" is talking about. Most people have good rationale for their toys, or the technology they choose to make a living with. It's easy to sell or give as gifts the toys you don't like.

Susan Bulloch, 2012-12-10 15:59

The worst examples of this phenomena are not the gadget consumers, but those who invest 5, 10, 15 years in a career focused on a single product or technology and persist with it long after the rest of the world has moved on.

Jeff Gilfelt, 2012-12-10 17:03

Seealso: String theory.

Frank Quednau, 2012-12-10 18:36

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