What a case of deja-vu: I feel like I wrote an article virtually identical to this one back in January. Oh, wait, that’s because I did.
That’s right, the PlayStation fan base is already on the absurdity of somehow using social media reaction to judge something being better, or otherwise more liked on a whole than something else, making the same stupid leap in logic that they did back in January.
The catalyst for this post is this wonderful piece of twitter vapidity from someone calling themselves “Twin Blaze” comparing the number of Twitter likes on the PlayStation 5 price announcement after one hour to the total number of likes on the Xbox Series price announcement made last week.
It’s the exact same digital masturbation that we saw back in January with the logo reveal for the PlayStation 5 — these people really will use any metric they possibly can to justify their love for a random plastic box with some electronic components thrown in.
He wants to compare the 241,000 likes of the PlayStation post to the 229,000 likes of the Xbox tweet. Okay, sure, 241K is a larger number than 229K. So fucking what? What’s your point, that more people tapped a stupid heart button on their cell phones? Big whoop.
How about we use a metric that actually matters – a ratio to the number of followers the account may have actually clicked “like” on the tweet. 19.3 million for the PlayStation and 14.4 million for the Xbox. Logically the ratio should be higher on the PlayStation side, right?
For the PlayStation it’s just about 1.25% and for the Xbox this works out to be 1.59%. Oh, huh, it seems a larger percentage of the follower count of the Xbox brand likes that tweet as opposed to percentage of the follower count of the PlayStation brand.
Now, for those who can’t understand the point this is not a situation to try to counter the original point, because there is no original point: my entire numbers game of percentages is to show how the numbers don’t matter in any capacity! The fact that these people can’t figure this out amazes me, and it seems like nothing more than a pathetic attempt to defend a product they have built their identities around.
I only counter this because it’s piss poor logic, and I can’t stand that at all – no matter who is the one making poor claims. Using social media, something people opt in to, as a judgement of anything outside of that platform is an absolute joke and no one would take any of those metrics seriously beyond the platform itself. You can try to spin numbers any way you want, but the raw statistics only matter where they have value, and they have none here. It’s a pissing contest at best – a pointless exercise that only helps to prove many of the opinions I’ve formed over the years I’ve grow distant from the gaming community.
Thankfully, I’m not alone in this, while people are, I have to presume seriously, quote-tweeting the above post saying “Xbox is dead” and other idiotic shit, there are plenty like this person who make the point very succinctly:
I’ll leave it at that. If you can’t, after reading this, understand why this is absurd, then perhaps you need to go back to school… or, maybe try to finish school first and then try to talk about what actually matters in a product.
I also must note, like in the January article about the same flawed logic being used on Instagram, that it’s entirely possible and, from my experience, more likely that the Xbox fan base at this stage is more mature and less social media focused than the PlayStation fan base, and thus aren’t likely to engage with such posts one way or the other.
Not everyone uses Twitter, ya know. Just something to consider…
