Fanboys, what's there to say about them?  We have all encountered at least one in our lifetimes, being mostly gamers.  They dwell mostly on the internet, hiding behind the soft, comforting glow of a computer monitor, where they endlessly add big bold text to odd images of animals in hopes of creating the next fad on 4chan.

Of course, there are those who show their faces to the public, and you'll encounter them in obvious locations such as your local GameStop or conventions.  That's not to say they can't be found anywhere else though.

Most recently, Neoseeker saw a gathering of fanboys in response to a weekend blog post Gutting the PS3, in which Sean briefly expressed his opinions regarding each console.  Countless self-righteous PlayStation 3 fanboys pounced upon seeing a chance to right several wrongs they saw in the post, then followed by the Xbox 360 fanboys who were indignant about all this PS3-praising.  Honestly, most of the comments were badly written and painful to read. 

Under normal circumstances, encountering a well-written and or thought-out comment is refreshing, but when touched by that condescending tone of supposedly learned fanboy, it makes you slap yourself about as much as the horribly garbled ones.  The fact that there's even different types of fanboys is mind-numbing, and if they must be neatly categorized, I can see a total of three general parties.

Allow me to elaborate.

The perfect fictional example.  Beware: appearances may vary.

The Intellectual fancies himself an educated individual whose mission is to bring enlightenment to the masses.  This doesn't mean he's actually received a college degree or any sort; on the contrary, he could range from a college graduate to a little twit still trudging through the 7th grade.  He is superior, and makes that quite clear in his (usually) intelligible posts on forums and comments for articles.  He might even write his own from time to time, adopting a voice quite similar to Tycho's, the "better half" of Penny Arcade.  In most cases, attempting to argue with this person will prove futile, as with most arguments initiated over the internet. 

Your best chances of putting this fanboy in his place is a real-life encounter where they won't have the luxury of spending hours composing and editing long-winded rebuttals.  My personal experiences have shown me the best solution is indifference, with a casual, "I don't care."  Then again, this may be on account of the fact that I'm a girl, and being cut off to be subsequently shot down by the opposite sex is as effective against these fanboys as a 20-hit combo to the nuts by Robert Downey Jr.  Console fight thinly masked as a Vader versus Yoda argument?  I'm buying Soul Calibur IV for the actual core characters that kept me interested during the entire franchise, not Star Wars cameos.

Likes posters and calendars of bikini models, beer, and apparently Irish Spring soap.

The Mentally Impaired is another specimen, often used as the satirical representative for the whole concept of fandom.  Unlike his counterpart, the Intellectual, this person doesn't care so much for conherent speech and doesn't realize other human beings can't always follow his thought process.  Instead, his posting method consists of rolling his face across the keyboard, sometimes with CAPS LOCK on cruise control.  Uninterested in the exchange of ideas or converting nonbelievers, his only purpose is to spread the myth that spelling no longer matters on the internet.  Oblivious to a fault, arguing with this individual may prove annoying to infuriating for most of us; witty retorts will be lost upon him, and he'll continue his massacre of the English language none the wiser. 

His favorites usually consist of (but are not limited to) Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4.  In real life, this fanboy is more difficult to isolate because you see, no actually talks like he types.  He could be the 10-year-old shirking his mother's hand, or that tool wearing his sports visor sideways with his shirt collar flipped up.

The faceless one; I could very well put my own image here.

The Peace Lover might be considered the rarest breed of fanboy only because he hardly speaks.  His voice is easily drowned out by those of the previous two examples because no one ever listens to people who straddle the fence.   He isn't interested in which side wins an argument and considers such squabbles to be wastes of time.  As such, more often than not he'll try to resolve such situations by presenting two sides of the argument as a single evaluation, hoping against hope that the conflict will be resolved.  As far as consoles go, he's likely had ample experience with all three currently on the market and understands that they all bring something a little different to the video gaming table. 

Honestly, there's no specific way to deal with him in real life because he isn't the sort of person to instigate a heated and asinine bout of fanboy headbutting.  This is not to say the Peace Lover is passive and diminutive; if provoked and all other attempts to diffuse the situation fail, he can snap back with teeth bared, targetting the other party directly and (sometimes) personally. 

When such console fanboys fight over the superiority of their respective machines, they seem to forget logic.  Now if someone bought a Nintendo Wii, then they obviously chose not to get a 360 or PS3.  The same can go for any console owner.  So what's the point of saying such-and-such isn't a Blu-ray player or so-and-so has better third-party games?  We each made our own decision, and we don't need someone foaming at the mouth questioning our personal tastes.

So did you just buy a PS3 and wanna brag about it?  As a proud Xbox 360 owner, I still encourage your sense of console pride, and I would certainly love to talk about the latest title both our platforms happen to share.  But should you inadvertently stumble into the realm of unwarranted 360 or Wii bashing, just pray I don't see through your console purchase as material compensation for your own lack.