LogFAQs > #925475926

Unbridled9 posted...

There is no reason why someone couldn't have both a Nintendo or Sega console and there was absolutely no reason for it to end up being divisive.

There actually IS logic behind that.

Consoles were/are expensive. Most kids can't afford every console in a given generation, and will only own whichever one their parents buy for them. Suddenly, you own one and not the other, and you feel like you need to justify your choice (even if you're not the one who made that choice). So psychologically, you're more inclined to overpraise the console you own, and from there it's only a short jump to bashing the other console (especially if some of your friends own one and some own the other).

The irrationality of it can be seen in precisely WHICH console is seen as being better, which in any given subset tends to correlate to which one is more popular. Jumping back to the SNES/Genesis era, in regions where the Genesis sold better than the SNES, people tended to see the Genesis as being the better console because it was more "mature" or had slightly better graphics (and blood in Mortal Kombat), and shitting on anyone with the "kiddy" console. Conversely, in places where more people bought the SNES, the SNES was seen as the inherently better console because it had a much wider selection of games (including some all-time classics), and people who owned the Genesis were seen as being "lame".

Where I grew up, almost everyone owned a SNES, and the one kid whose parents bought him a Genesis used to be defensive about it ("I didn't pick it!"). He also got picked on for being "poor" (as if his parents only bought it because it was the cheaper console), in spite of the fact that I don't think the price of the two was appreciably different at the time (but again, it's not like insults have to be logical or rational). I was actually surprised once I grew up and heard other people's opinions on the Internet, and learned there were actually places where people grew up thinking the Genesis was better.

Humans tend to define their sense of identity by external things - what we own, what our jobs are, what music we listen to, what TV shows we like, what video games we play, what sports teams we root for or what countries we're from. Listen to how people introduce and describe themselves (and how they introduce and describe other people), and it tells you a great deal about how we prioritize value and form our self-perception. And once other people start to define themselves differently than we do, we're suddenly forced to question our entire perception of reality - and we don't like doing that.

What's that? You don't like this thing that I like? That's almost a personal attack on me, dismissing my self-worth! Now I hate you, and will go out of my way to shit on your opinions in future, to help re-validate my own.
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