{"id":1040,"date":"2007-04-03T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2007-04-03T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1040"},"modified":"2007-04-03T08:10:36","modified_gmt":"2007-04-03T13:10:36","slug":"i-hate-macs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1040","title":{"rendered":"“I hate Macs”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the brilliant troll from a while ago<\/a>? That was clever. This is not clever<\/a>. And it isn’t a comment, it’s an article.<\/p>\n

If I was the editor I would have this idiot packing. The guy is entitled to his opinion (“Macs suck” – not exactly iconoclasm) but I can’t believe he could express it with such a profound lack of grace. It isn’t articulate, cutting, funny, subversive, surprising, eloquent, or clever. It’s just a bunch of spittle. You can find better stuff in your average Mac vs. PC forum. <\/p>\n

I don’t have any particular animus towards the platform, but I could come up with a more cutting critique of the Macintosh by surfing around, citing some common grievances, and seasoning it with a few clever analogies. It’s called writing. If you’re going to take an article and put it into something as far-reaching as The Guardian, then I don’t think I’m being unreasonable to expect that some effort be made to inform. Barring that, being entertaining<\/em> is always welcome. <\/p>\n

I suppose picking on Macs is a safe way to get a good reaction out of the masses. If you don’t have anything clever to say, you can still always get a round of applause out of Boston fans by taking a shot at the Yankees. If you’re in San Fransisco, you can’t go wrong with a few slams against Republicans. Still, this is the sort of thing stand-up comics do to warm up<\/i>. Once you get them smiling, then you start with the jokes. The author of this article is like a guy who struts out onto stage in front of some NASCAR fans, tosses out a couple of half-jokes about Formula One racing, and then yells, “Thank you! Good night!” to the momentarily smiling crowd. <\/p>\n

But I’m giving the article too much credit. It isn’t even funny in a momentary sense. About halfway into this morass of alleged prose he stops picking on the machines and starts in on the people who use them.<\/p>\n

Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul – that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn’t really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.<\/div>\n

Mac users are paranoid “semi-people”? <\/p>\n

Like I said: Hate Macs all you want, nobody is forcing you to buy them. Hate Mac users all you want, since we are all free to choose our irrational hatreds and prejudices. But why is this guy getting paid to write<\/em>? More to the point: Why is he getting paid and not me? <\/p>\n

Note to the Guardian: I have this great article for you to consider for publication. I liken Linux users to pedophiles, PC users to cannibals, and suggest that people who don’t use computers are secretly Nazis. My fees are reasonable. Give me a call. <\/p>\n

LATER:<\/strong> Someone from the comments explains:<\/p>\n

His expression of “hatred” is fairly typical of a strain of Faulty-esque comedic hyperbole currently prevalent in the UK, a la Marcus Brigstock. It should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt and sifted through for genuine editorial<\/div>\n

I get it now! This is his schtick. I’d never heard of the guy before. I saw this one article and assumed it was in earnest<\/em>. Now I see it is over-the-top on purpose. It still doesn’t stike me as very funny, but that’s subjective. Several people in the comments find him funny, which means his style works for some people. Maybe I would have detected it as comedy if I lived in the UK. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember the brilliant troll from a while ago? That was clever. This is not clever. And it isn’t a comment, it’s an article. If I was the editor I would have this idiot packing. The guy is entitled to his opinion (“Macs suck” – not exactly iconoclasm) but I can’t believe he could express it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}