Amiga guilt and time distortion.

[amiga92570]

I'd like to discuss a phenomenom that I've observed in the past year or so.

Amiga guilt, and by relation, time distortion.


The subject is plagued by feelings of guilt about having used an amiga. This may come from insecurities of having made a "wrong choice" and a burning need to correct others misconceptions.


Various symptoms may manifest themselves, such as feeling a need to post in as many conversations as possible with any of the following:

How much commodore sucked

How much PPC sucked

How terrible the amiga was compared to the PC

How much every amiga model past the 500/1000/2000 was awful and terrible

How much better Turrican 2 was on the C64

That x86 solves everything

How terrible AGA was

That the X1000 is super expensive, in case you hadn't heard

In doing so, they hope they can somehow dispel the illusion other users had of having an interesting discussion about amiga's, by reminding them of things every person on the planet is already aware of.



This is often accompanied by Time Distortion. In this particular illness, the subject mentally transposes the PC market of today to the 80's and early 90's, imagining a world where PC's are reasonably priced and can run for hours without crashing, compared to an unexpanded 512 kb amiga 500.
All thoughts of 2000 dollar PC's running windows 3.1 while vomiting out PC speaker bleeps are banished, and the world is made of microsoft flowers and intel bunnies dancing in the meadows.



The cure for both illnesses is to go have a wank, and is thus easily accomplished. If you still suffer from either afterwards, you obviously didn't wank it enough.

I do not know your age, but much of this distortion is do to users posting about things they know little about like the 90's technology, much less the 80's technology do to their age. Many users I see here posting comments about 80's were not even born at the time. I know there are some interesting tidbits on Wikipedia and such, but many are factually wrong. That being said I enjoy using my amiga and have since 1985, but putting down PC's is another waste of time since - What is standard computing platform now and has been for the last 30 years? Oh, the PC.

[amiga92570]

It's not just age that causes distortion, it's location. Amiga's were an also-ran platform in the U.S by the late '80's. U.S users see the Amiga as a minnow, EU users see it as a fallen giant.

Maybe PC's were cheaper there, perhaps consoles were released cheaper/before europe got them. I don't know. I know the U.S has higher disposible income, and still does, might have something to do with it.

You make a good point, I know amiga died down in US and in the EU they were hugely popular for years after.

[amiga92570]

My signature states Im a linux fan boy. What makes you think I am putting down PCs.

I wasn't implying that, I was just stating and observation that may have been a little off. The Amiga was played out differently in different parts of the world also making perceptions appear quite different.

[amiga92570]

Speaking only for myself:

People who like the x86 do not bug me.
People who act like the x86 is the Only And Inevitable Future and anybody who would like a new 68k or PPC-based system are backwards idiots do bug me. Very much.

Simple as that.

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