By Nelson Schneider - 03/17/13 at 04:31 PM CT

For everything that exists, there are fanboys. Thanks in large part to the Internet and its ability to bring people together based on common interests, fanboys (and fangirls) have been able to unite and form pocket communities where they can feel safe in knowing that everyone around them loves their favorite thing as much as they do.

The problem with fanboys is when they try to interact with the rest of the Internet or with people in the real world. In these situations, fanboys come off as abrasive, annoying, and, quite frankly, a little bit insane. Here is my list of the 7 worst types of fanboys I’ve encountered. Hopefully the knowledge provided here will help others identify these fanboys early on, and thus avoid being sucked into the quagmire of a fanboy argument.

7. Pedo-Taku
Who They Are:
While regular Otaku have been around for decades, and are known for their adoration of all things J-pop, Pedo-Taku are a relatively new phenomenon spawned out of Japan’s increasingly weird obsession with ‘lolis’ – pre-pubescent girls who wear provocative costumes.

Why They Suck:
Pedo-Taku are almost single-handedly (see what I did there?) responsible for the fall of Japanese game development in the 7th Generation. While they are thankfully rare in the West, Japan is saturated with these fanboys, and must cater to their twisted desires in order to sell any games domestically. The result is a bunch of pervy games that go way outside the norm of what we used to call ‘fanservice’ around the turn of the millennium, and are nearly impossible to sell to anyone but the target audience. Do you want someone to blame for weird stuff like “Catherine” or the fact that every new RPG out of Japan features little girls and panty shots? Look no further than the Pedo-Taku, as they take ‘niche’ to the extreme, forming a niche within a niche within a niche.

6. N64 Fans
Who They Are:
N64 Fans are like modern-day Confederates in the Southern United States. They proudly wave the videogame equivalent of Old Dixie, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were on the wrong/losing side of the 5th Generation console wars.

Why They Suck:
The N64 was a 5th Generation console. We’re now in the 8th Generation. Shouldn’t these guys be extinct? Sadly, no, their persistence is the main trait that makes N64 Fans suck to this very day. In their delusions, they somehow have managed to convince themselves that those crude, experimental first-steps into the world of 3D game design still totally hold up when compared to more recent games, or even when compared to their obviously-superior sequels that followed a single generation later on the Gamecube.

5. “Final Fantasy 7” Fans
Who They Are:
The only conceivable way someone could love “Final Fantasy 7” more than any other RPG is if that game was their FIRST RPG. My theory is that “Final Fantasy 7” Fans were largely younger siblings to more experienced gamers who gushed about the greatness of “Final Fantasy 3” (actually “Final Fantasy 6”) and “Final Fantasy 2” (actually “Final Fantasy 4”) back in the 1990s, and proclaimed that each game in the franchise got progressively better. Due to their lack of experience and idolization of their older siblings, “Final Fantasy 7” Fans immediately jumped on that game as the ‘Best. FF. EVAR’… but have since failed to move onto successive entries in that franchise. The other broad aspect of “Final Fantasy 7” Fans is that many of them never would have considered playing any kind of RPG, and only bought into “Final Fantasy 7” due to the aggressive TV advertising by Squaresoft that focused entirely on the prerendered cutscenes.

Why They Suck:
“Final Fantasy 7” is a hideous, nonsensical, convoluted mess with a cast of unlikable characters, a generic/dumbed-down battle system, and too many mini-games. Yet these fans love it more than anything, even going as far as to write atrocious CloudXSephiroth fanfiction. No more explanation is necessary. This is like being a fanboy for syphilis.

4. Dudebros
Who They Are:
These guys are always guys. Indeed, “Bros Before Hos” is something of a motto for them. They generally fall into the coveted Nielsen Ratings bracket of ‘males aged 18-24’ (though within the Dudebro culture, indoctrination can start as early as age 10). Videogames are not something a Dudebro would traditionally participate in, but thanks to increased marketing pressure upon the Dudebro demographic in the West, there are lots and LOTS of games available that appeal specifically to them… it would be a crime not to participate, right?

Why They Suck:
Dudebros suck because their influence and purchasing power are the driving force behind the mainstreamification of videogames. Where once this was a niche, nerd hobby, now videogames are as accepted as TV and movies… thus there are a lot of stupid, boring action games targeting the Dudebros’ wallets, just like there are a lot of stupid, boring action movies that have been doing the same for decades. If you wonder why every new game features ‘realistic’ shades of brown and gray, a main character who is a giant slab of manly muscle-meat with a tiny coconut head on top, and a constant stream of explosions and cursing with no real story exposition, the blame can be placed directly upon the Dudebros and their hypermasculine ideals. Oh, and let’s not forget sports: Dudebros are the single thing keeping annual releases in the “Madden” franchise alive.

3. Tourney Whores
Who They Are:
To a Tourney Whore, videogames are ‘Serious Business.’ And when a Tourney Whore says, ‘videogames,’ he means, ‘The one game I play competitively.’

Why They Suck:
Tourney Whores suck all of the fun out of playing (note, it’s called ‘playing,’ not ‘working,’ or ‘practicing’) videogames because of their need for competition. Perhaps their lives are empty and meaningless, and the only way they can dull the wailing roar of the Void closing in upon their souls is to master every maneuver and exploit every glitch in a game. For Tourney Whores, ‘single-player’ is a dirty word, and such games may as well not even exist. Single-player modes are only tolerated as initial baby-steps into learning the mechanics of a game before proceeding to break those mechanics in every way possible in order to defeat other human opponents in multi-player.

2. Masochists
Who They Are:
Much like sexual masochists, gaming Masochists can’t enjoy a game unless it is causing them pain. A game that doesn’t destroy their character with no warning or feature harsh penalties for death isn’t worthy of their attention. While Masochists were happy during the early hardware generations when the arcade model made every game impossibly difficult, starting in Generation 4, they didn’t have much to sustain them outside of obscure PC Roguelikes. With the release of the 7th Generation titles, “Demons Souls” and “Dark Souls,” these fanboys have come out of the woodwork to force their assessment of these games as the ‘best of the generation’ upon anyone who will listen.

Why They Suck:
Like the previously-mentioned Tourney Whores, Masochists can’t seem to understand the concept that playing videogames is supposed to be fun. They complain when any concessions are included in game design to make the experience more friendly to the player and dismiss such things as the ‘casualization’ of the hobby. Masochists suck because sometimes developers, specifically Indie developers – and I’m speaking less generally here about Trendy Entertainment – will listen to the highly vocal Masochists’ feedback and add features to their games that make them worse instead of better. Were it not for Masochists, “Dungeon Defenders” wouldn’t have a broken Nightmare Mode and each newly-released DLC map wouldn’t have included frustrating new additions and a continually escalating sense of helplessness and the need for outrageous amounts of grinding (and Masochists DO love their grinding too, preferably if it can all be taken away from them with a single, cheap death). Speaking more generally, the entire state of the RPG on PC would probably be very different (and a lot better) if the dominant forms of PCRPG weren’t Hack ‘n Slashes or Rogulikes, both subgenres that put emphasis on grinding, randomness, and frequently perma-death.

1. The “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race
Who They Are:
While the term “Glorious PC Gaming Master Race” was first coined by Yahtzee, his use of it is unclear. Is he being facetious? Serious? Is he a member? To clarify my position on the term, I’ve added quotes around the word “Glorious” to denote that the PC Gaming Master Race is anything but. This group of fanboys can be easily identified by their utter disdain for any gaming hardware less powerful than the bleeding edge and not only their refusal to play multi-platform games on any console when there is a PC version (which is at least an understandable position to take), but their refusal to even acknowledge that any console has ever had a good exclusive that is worth playing. They hate controllers with a passion, insisting stubbornly on using their keyboard and mouse to play everything from FPSes (where the mouse at least makes a little bit of sense) to 2D Platformers (where the resulting gameplay ergonomics feel like finger cancer).

Why They Suck:
The “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race sucks because they don’t really seem to care all that much about playing games. Instead, they’d rather spend all their time and energy waggling their e-peens at each other, and especially at console gamers, by comparing hardware technical specifications. They are also an incredibly insular group, taking delight in providing trollish responses to simple questions asked by outsiders. Instead of playing games or having useful conversations about games and gaming, the “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race worries about tweaking performance, installing upgrades, coding mods, and other work-like activities that have nothing to do with actually PLAYING games. Because of this behavior, I think a large portion of the “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race are programmers whose OCD and other mental disorders, while granting them incredible, enviable skills with code, also prevent them from being able to ‘turn-off’ and do something besides code during their free time. Outside of a few vagueries like ‘blast processing,’ console gamers have never traditionally worried about tech specs… but now that consoles and PCs are one-and-the-same, the blending of cultures is seeing more and more console gamers butting heads with the “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race. A member of the “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race is likely to scoff at anyone asking for advice on what parts to use in building a budget gaming PC, instead recommending a variety of overclockable components and a ‘very reliable’ liquid cooling system that will allow the resulting $4,000, hand-soldered PC to squeeze an extra 3-5 frames per second out of the latest popular online shooter with all graphical settings set to high and a variety of high-resolution texture mods installed (for as long as the overclocked components last before self-destructing). Members of the “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race also love to bitch and moan about the few console ports they deign to play: “Oh, this game has such terrible aiming controls, it was obviously designed with analog sticks in mind!” or “Oh, this game has such a terrible interface! It was obviously designed for a controller instead of a keyboard, as there are only 8 mappable hotkey slots in the option menu! I’ll need to fire-up AutoHotKey and write a script that lets me map my character’s individual pubic hairs to the Function keys!” Instead of embracing the massive boost to the library of available PC games via console ports, the “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race are more likely to withdraw into their insular little community and only play obscure PC exclusives that, while they may be horrible, are at least still exclusive (in this way, they share something in common with the Masochists).