The Nerdery: s02e21: On Zealots
It's time I sat down and explained to the general public why, despite the contradictory evidence, they shouldn't take anything on the internet seriously. "Zealots". Zealots are everywhere, and they propagate their thoughts throughout the internet like a sex joke propagates though a middle school. Slow at first, but by the end of the week everyone knows the tale of the 3 (three) sticks that get shoved into a dark hole and made to puke.
While the more commonly found zealots should be obvious to those who've been to more than one (1) forum, such as the gaming console zealots (nerds who still think their god-given console is better than a computer) or the Mac/PC/Linux zealots (nerds who still haven't heard of interoperability), I figured I'd better start informing everyone about the lesser-known types...
The fads-never-die zealots. As much as it pains me to lump them all into this category, I really can't be bothered explaining how forums about every single frame of Tool Time is analyzed and personalized, or those still stuck arguing wether or not the earth is flat. These are the more specialized type of zealots, and are either very hard or not hard enough to find with a few keywords typed into a search engine.
The 'simple concept' zealots. "Imagine a 747 is sitting on a conveyor belt, as wide and long as a runway. The conveyor belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction. Can the plane take off?" Simple eh? It's too bad that, provided you have a group of 3 people, everyone will come up with a different answer. Thankfully, these arguments are mostly confined to 4chan boards, and the occasional Bongo sushi session.
The n00bs. Not so much zealots as-per-se, but still as annoying as, or even more so in some cases. These are the people who refuse to learn before diving head in, and once their in, still refuse to learn. It's like someone who refuses to learn how to tell time using an analog clock, so instead of learning just complains whenever a digital one isn't avaiable.
And finally, there's the mindless attention-seeking zealots. The worst kind, they'll infect the "off-topic" boards of any forum with crap, and will advocate for whatever dumb-fuck idea pops into their head. These people will fight on the internet for the sake of boredom [1], and seek out new places to drain the life of.
[1] And I don't mean that in the good, Uncyclopedia Flame Warriors way.