Monday Tip-Off: Fanboys & Recency Bias; Look, I Get It
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some reflections on why I understand where fanboys are coming from, as well as the appeal of recency bias.
Recency bias is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to online discourse these days. New isn’t always better, because neither humans nor the world in general are perfect. There are peaks and valleys, missteps and corrections, good and bad ideas alike. In a similar vein, I don’t hold the opinions of fanboys in high esteem, either. “Stan culture” is way out of control, muddying discussions with ridiculous takes and performative debate, not to mention attacks on people who dare to disagree or dislike what you like. That isn’t a recent thing of course, but social media has made it worse.
However…I get it. As someone who has made a few more trips around the sun than some folks who insist that the latest NBA 2K is always the best, or that today’s NBA players are bigger, faster, stronger, and more talented than the “plumbers” of the past, I understand the feelings and the thought process. I disagree and may grumble about the youth of today with curmudgeonly sentiment that I’m still way too young for, but I honestly do get it. After all, I was your age once! I’ve been a fanboy too, and a victim of recency bias. It’s something that I’m pushing back on now, but it’s not just an issue with the younger generation today. It’s something that we all have to grow out of.
Look, I understand how condescending that sounds. “You’ll get it when you’re older” sounded smug to me when I was a kid, and I still hear that tinge of uncool adult in it now that I am one! I also see the truth in that statement, though. There are things we just can’t get until we have the benefit of hindsight and more life experience under our belts. To that end, trust me when I say that I have more disdain for people who are my age that push some laughable narratives about basketball and basketball video games! They’re the ones who should know better from firsthand experience. Moreover, they should be too grown up to care about peer pressure to conform and hold recency bias.
As I’ve said before, that is the irony of people my age and older who scold others for not sharing recency bias, and accuse them of living in the past. I could just as easily say that they’re desperate to remain youthful and look cool in the eyes of the younger crowd, because they’re terrified of aging into irrelevance. We can all play armchair psychologist, though it doesn’t exactly lead to a productive conversation! In any case, for someone my age or older to fallaciously cling to recency bias is to forget what life has taught us. I don’t believe that new isn’t always better because everything old was superior, but because I’ve seen plenty of new products and ideas that were total busts!
When it comes to the younger generation though, I get it. New things are exciting, we certainly want them to be awesome, and some of them definitely are. We don’t like to think that we’re worse off than people in the past; that we missed out on a golden age of something, whether it’s basketball, music, television, movies, or whatever. As far as products such as video games are concerned, we don’t want the thing that we’ve been craving and looking forward to – and just spent money on – to be disappointing. When it’s a long-running series of annually-released games – like NBA 2K and NBA Live back in the day – we don’t want to see regression from the previous year’s title.
And so, we become fanboys full of recency bias. This is new and current, so it has to be better! Anyone who thinks otherwise must be a hater who’s stuck in the past, even if it is the very recent past. Besides, if you’re a fan of something, you already think that it’s great and have a predisposition to defend it against any criticism. Few of us are as unbiased as we like to believe we are. Our passions become part of our identity, so negative remarks about them become an attack on us. This can be very unhealthy, with social media allowing – and for that matter, encouraging – us to form parasocial relationships with our favourite celebrities, athletes, content creators, and even brands.
Even when we know that criticism has merit, we don’t want to hear it, least of all from people we don’t think should be expressing it. We’ll search for any bias that allows us to invalidate a well-reasoned opinion that’s critical of what we like. Your favourite team, the band or recording artist you like, the games you play and how you prefer to play them, your age…we’ll scramble for whatever ad hominem can make us feel better and win a performative argument! I say “we”, because I can’t claim innocence here. I may endeavour to avoid the mindset and criticise it now, but when I was younger, I absolutely did “Stan” my favourite things, and sometimes bought into recency bias.
Take the famous Nintendo vs. Sega console war of the 90s. Now, the companies were certainly trading barbs in their advertisements, but fanboys on both sides joined in the trash talk. As I’ve fondly recalled before, as a Nintendo fanboy during that era, I was always amused to see the fan art trashing Sonic and Sega that was often published in Nintendo Magazine System, the Australian version of Nintendo Power. I scoffed at some of the ads for the original PlayStation, even though they were no sillier than the commercials for Nintendo 64. Nintendo was my brand though, so like so many other fanboys, I championed it as superior while delighting in snarking at the competition.
I’d like to say that it was all in fun, and certainly I had no burning hatred of Sega or Sony. I didn’t want to see them go away or fail; I just wanted to feel that my brand was superior and thus the correct choice! I wasn’t alone, either. Once again, it was as much a battle of fanboys as it was a race between industry competitors. Nevertheless, while there’s nostalgia around that console war, I also look back and recognise just how childish it was, particularly for gamers a bit older than me. It’s why I criticise such tribalism now and see it as a mindset to grow out of, though not everyone does. At the same time, I also understand the appeal of getting involved in fandom warfare.
Likewise, I understand the desire to see the current generation of NBA players and the contemporary style of play as the best. I do still maintain that when I was first getting into basketball, there was more respect for previous eras and the history of the sport. If anyone suggested that Wilt Chamberlain would struggle to make the league in the 90s, they’d lose credibility in debates with fellow hoop heads. However, I’ll admit that when I heard some of Wilt’s bragging, or Oscar Robertson claiming that he’d clamp down Michael Jordan but MJ wouldn’t be able to stop him, I did roll my eyes. With that in mind, I do get it when younger fans balk at the opinions of “old heads” now.
Of course, I now understand where Wilt and The Big O were coming from. They were superstars who faced fellow legends, and other capable players who were still genuinely skilled and athletic, even if they weren’t all-time greats. Now that I’ve seen more than a couple of generations of players come and go, I’ve realised how quickly the really good players and even perennial All-Stars are forgotten, making it seem as though the past greats played in watered-down leagues. It’ll happen to this generation too, and a lot of talented players will be disrespected as a result. It’s impossible for me to blame any older players for advocating for their era after witnessing this cycle.
Once again though, we all want to feel like we’re in a golden age, and that new is always better. As I alluded to, recency bias can actually make us dismissive of the very recent past as well. To that point, when people don’t want to hear that the latest NBA 2K may not be the best game in the series, I get it because I’ve been there. Many years ago, we had a “get to know you” topic in our Forum. One of the prompts was to name our favourite NBA Live game; we were originally an NBA Live fansite, after all. NBA Live 2003 was the latest game when we posted that survey, so it was my answer to that question. Even back then though, it wasn’t an entirely honest response!
It felt like the right answer, though. NBA Live 2003 was the newest game with a big innovation in the form of Freestyle Control. Furthermore, I was running one of the oldest and most prominent NBA Live fansites. How could I say that I preferred an older game, and still be taken seriously? As I came to realise of course, that line of thinking ironically undermines one’s credibility! I had and still somewhat have a love-hate relationship with NBA Live 2003, so it wasn’t a complete lie to say that I liked it. Nevertheless, it was the answer I thought I should have – indeed, what I really wanted to be true – rather than a choice that’d be potentially be divisive, but far more honest.
Now, I’m not saying that everyone who likes the new game every single year is being dishonest. I will respectfully suggest that there may be rose-coloured glasses at times, because I’ve been that long-time fan hoping for the best, and then trying to make the most out of flawed releases. In fact, even long after I outgrew being an NBA Live fanboy, part of me still wanted to fly the flag for the series. As it struggled to make a comeback after NBA Elite 11, every preview season I hoped that we’d finally see the jump the series needed to make. I wanted to see everyone who made snarky remarks after every preview have to eat their words, and admit that the series was finally back!
Part of that was realising the importance of competition and choices, and seeing the potential downsides of an NBA 2K monopoly, but I was also definitely motivated by lingering affection for the NBA Live series. So yeah, I completely get being a fanboy! I totally understand how we come to have a recency bias, as well as biases that come from being a long-time fan of something. That is ultimately why I’m critical of both fanboys and recency bias, whether it’s real basketball or the virtual hardwood. I know what it’s like to get caught up in that way of thinking. With hindsight, I’m able to see how myopic it is, as well as recognise the immaturity that leads to that point of view.
Again, it’s impossible not to sound a tad condescending when I say that. “You’ll get it one day,” complete with a mock-pitying smirk and patronising pat on the head. Also, it’s not as though stubborn, myopic, and ignorant views are exclusively held by young people; though, when it comes to recency bias, it’s an effective way of avoiding being written off with the rest of the “old heads”. However, for those of us who aren’t being paid to be contrarian talking heads, and don’t care about burning bridges in the age of access journalism, acting like fanboys and misrepresenting the past to appeal to recency bias comes across as childish, not to mention completely lacking credibility.
I’ll reiterate that broadly speaking, it’s not a “kids these days” thing. I’d suggest that every generation is like this in some way. Indeed, just as every generation seems fated to grumble about the ones that come afterwards, younger generations will inevitably underestimate the ones that came before, and dismiss knowledge that is only gained through life experience. We can “OK Boomer” all we like, but older generations do know a thing or two. People achieved great things without modern technology. Our parents were wiser to our tricks than we thought! Some of the specifics will change, but the biblical idiom of there being “nothing new under the sun” remains evergreen.
So, I get it. It’s fun to be a fan of things, and to feel so passionate about them that you want to plant the flag and declare them the best. We don’t want to be told that what we like is subpar, falling short of an unsurpassable standard that was set long ago. There’s enthusiasm there that shouldn’t be dampened, and while we’re still young, we can’t be expected to have a mature, nuanced view on everything. However, it’s because I’ve been that fanboy falling under the spell of recency bias and making my passions too much of my identity that I know how it happens, and how it clouds our opinions. You can call it being stuck in the past, but to learn from yesterday, you need to look back.
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