PC users are eeeevil!
March 3, 2002 10:40 AM   Subscribe

PC users are eeeevil! Kind of amusing story from Wired about how an observant viewer of 24 noticed that the bad guys use PCs, while the good guys use Macs.
posted by apollonia6 (40 comments total)
 
Heh. Makes sense. Bad guys also use italics - what the hell has happened to the front page? Was this you, apollonia6? ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:47 AM on March 3, 2002


it looks fine on a Mac, Miguel, you evil bastard...
posted by machaus at 10:53 AM on March 3, 2002


Miguel, what have you done?
posted by bjgeiger at 10:54 AM on March 3, 2002




Well, the close italics tag is there in the source. Interesting.

And let's not forget that Jeff Goldblum brought down an entire evil alien civilization with a Powerbook.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:54 AM on March 3, 2002


But if you watch Buffy, you would notice that the opposite could be said to be true. Obviously, Mac users are the true evil!
posted by jzed at 10:57 AM on March 3, 2002


Hey, I have a PC, and it looks fine. You're obviously hallucinating, Miguel. But don't listen to me - I'm eeevil.
posted by apollonia6 at 11:12 AM on March 3, 2002


The opening quotation marks on the link are missingm which is blanking out a chunk of the text including the close italics tag.
posted by skwm at 11:15 AM on March 3, 2002


Well someone look at my source - it wasn't me! This sort of think never happens on MetaTalk. Harrumph. Hmm, I wonder if the bad guys and good guys had to be defined, apart from PCs and Macs, by using MeFi or MeTa...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:16 AM on March 3, 2002


Thanks for finding that, skwm. Dang! I checked before I posted, but I guess I scrood up - and on my first one, too. Bugger. There's no way to edit a post after you've done it, is there?
posted by apollonia6 at 11:19 AM on March 3, 2002


Hey, it's still a great post, appolonia6, never mind a first one. Considering the subject matter the italics thing livened it up.

I wonder what nationality villains will be in future films? Who's left? I think the French are up for it, personally.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:23 AM on March 3, 2002



posted by machaus at 11:23 AM on March 3, 2002


Criminals use PC's because they are far cheaper and crime doesn't pay!
posted by srboisvert at 11:50 AM on March 3, 2002


jzed, Willow uses an iBook (the white one), and before that she used a Powerbook. On the other hand Mr. Trick, the only tech-saavy villain, seemed to exclusively use PC's, as I recall.

And is anyone including the Dell kid in their good vs. evil calculations?
posted by kittyloop at 11:50 AM on March 3, 2002


they are just trying to be realistic, people who use PCs *are* evil down to their very core, which pumps not blood, like your's or mine...
posted by rhyax at 12:03 PM on March 3, 2002


What if you use both? Are you just somewhat naughty?
posted by NsJen at 12:24 PM on March 3, 2002


What the hell is this? How much did Apple pay the producers of 24 Hours? The same thing happened in Independence Day, when Jeff Goldblum used a Mac to send the mothership a virus. Tom Cruise used a Mac in Mission Impossible. I've seen the 'good guys' using Macs in other movies, I just can't recall them all. Ridiculous. I don't think there is a single government agency that doesn't use PCs.

This just sounds like an Apple marketing ploy.
posted by insomnyuk at 12:37 PM on March 3, 2002


Today's "Stating the Obvious" award goes to insomnyuk!
posted by rodii at 12:52 PM on March 3, 2002


Haha.. This is fascinating to think about. I guarantee there's more coincidence to it than anything else, but even if it were a deliberate (and opinionated) depiction of good/evil, it's hard to think of it as having much of an effect on the market beyond mere exposure of the apple product line. I mean, was there a run on white hats in the age of tv westerns?
posted by Hildago at 12:56 PM on March 3, 2002


The best example for me is the movie You've Got Mail, in which Tom Hanks' big bookstore CEO character uses a PC and Meg Ryan's local bookstore owner character uses a PowerBook, but then Tom Hanks puts Meg Ryan out of business, and also falls in love with her.
posted by donkeymon at 2:36 PM on March 3, 2002


Sure, but according to Hollywood, aliens eat Reese's Pieces. Now, anybody with half a brain knows that in real life aliens eat m & ms so can we really infer anything from that Hollywood tells us?
posted by willnot at 2:47 PM on March 3, 2002


"What if you use both? Are you just somewhat naughty?"

Schizophrenic, or experiencing an existential dilemma. Perhaps you are not really in a Hollywood movie but would secretly like to be?

Macs are prettier, face it. Goodies are prettier than baddies, at least in the movies, and they use prettier things. They have a better sense of aesthetics. Otherwise, in an ambiguous universe how could audiences tell them apart from the baddies and know who to throw popcorn at? Audiences aren't that good at making moral choices themselves ;) And they hate wasting popcorn.

Of course, that's a value judgement.

So which better (in a moral sense, naturally) according to the movies, coke or Pepsi? Inquiring minds need to know.
posted by lucien at 2:48 PM on March 3, 2002


Hildago: I mean, was there a run on white hats in the age of tv westerns?

Maybe not white hats, but there was a run on at least one type of hat.
posted by Grum at 3:54 PM on March 3, 2002


This is crazy. Everyone knows that Good Guys Use Linux.
posted by hadashi at 4:35 PM on March 3, 2002


The good guys on 24 also use a GPS-enabled Handspring. I'm not sure what this means, unless the bad guys start using HP Jornada Pocket PCs.
posted by jasonshellen at 4:48 PM on March 3, 2002


It's not just the Agency that uses Macs in '24'; the first ep just aired in the UK(*) and I spotted Kiefer's daughter with an i-Book and his wife with one of those titanium hype-boxes.

On the other hand Robocop 2 showed the other night, and I was amused to see that the evil druglord-brained drug-powered eponymous megabot is clearly running some kind of MacOS.


(*)over here, without commercials, the much-touted "real time" one-hour episodes last just over 40 minutes.
posted by Hogshead at 4:56 PM on March 3, 2002


I was under the impression that government security agencies (well, mainly the FBI) used Macs because of security concerns. This was a big deal to Mac users several years ago. Around the same time, the X Files began using Macs exclusively. So, I figured the (whatever the hell agency it is that's in 24) used them for the same reasons.
posted by akmonday at 5:24 PM on March 3, 2002


If you run Linux on a homebuilt machine, are you merely amoral?
posted by alumshubby at 5:30 PM on March 3, 2002


Random notes:

Viruses are almost always made on PCs to attack PCs. I can't recall a virus that affected the Mac OS. This infers that PCs are more prone to be used for evil behavior, in terms of their ability to assist virus creation. The infection rate of PCs, however, can't really be used to prove their evilness, unless one uses this kind of logic to demonstrate that infection is a result of inherent moral defect. But one would be an idiot to do so.

BUT!

There are other things:

Most PC desktops/laptops are, as machaus pointed out, Darth Vader colored.

PCs tend to adhere to rigid, severe Cartesian geometry, while Macs have subtle, smooth, curvilinear shapes.

Macs startup with a smiling little Mac icon. PCs startup with the WINDOWS logo (if one is running Windows).

Mac OSX is Unix-based which makes it a friend and relative of Linux, which makes it automatically good.

iPod.

Mac and Apple do not directly involve Bill Gates.

There is a Ma G4 on the counter in Edina Monsoon's kitchen on Absolutely Fabulous.

During the best years of Seinfeld, Jerry had a classic Mac in the background of his apartment. Later, it was replaced by a PC, and the show went downhill.

Every school I ever attended, from grade school to grauate school, was an Apple/Mac environment, hence, Apples and learning are synonymous. And learning is good.

The only good reason many of my friends have for using PCs is that 'all the games are for PCs'. Much of the software for Mac is geared toward creativity and/or artistic endeavors. Therefore: Macs are for people who want to do things ('Think Different') and PCs are for people who want to sit on their butt and grovel in escapist fare ('Where do you want to go today?')

That XP background image of the green hills and blue sky looks creepily like either an issue of Awake magazine, or an ad for Zoloft, both of which are, of course, evil.

These are just some observations which I think further the case that Macs are for the Force and PCs are for the Dark Side.

Come to think of it, the Dark Side always looked like more fun...hmmm. Well, either way, Macs are da bomb.
posted by evanizer at 5:45 PM on March 3, 2002


akmonday: for what it's worth, some branches of the DoD use Macs, not because they are more secure, per se, but because they are unhackable because they are effectively not controllable without a screen. Hack into a Windows box, and you can remotely control the box from a DOS prompt. Hack into a linux/unix box, and you can control the box from a shell. Hack into a (pre-OS/X) mac box and... yeah, you can't really do much, without writing lots of assembler. Hence the DoD uses it in some places.
posted by louie at 6:05 PM on March 3, 2002


I tried putting this theory into place on The West Wing, but got confused. Sam Seaborn and Toby Ziegler use Macs, but the rest of the staff seems to use Dell and Compaq (*shudder*) hardware. Of course, now that CJ has revealed that she has some nascent right-wing tendencies, maybe this theory does carry some weight. Hmm...
posted by likorish at 6:07 PM on March 3, 2002


The DOJ, which includes the FBI, is very heavily populated with PC's. Macs are extremely rare in that environment.

Yes, the people that demonstrated in court that Microsoft abused it's monopoly used PC's to do it.

As far as DoD, there are no ruggedized Macs.
posted by NortonDC at 6:19 PM on March 3, 2002


I'm confused. Bill Clinton used a Mac, and so does George W. Bush. They can't both be good....
posted by geneablogy at 7:34 PM on March 3, 2002


And Bill Gates laughed.
posted by kindall at 7:41 PM on March 3, 2002


That XP background image of the green hills and blue sky looks creepily like either an issue of Awake magazine, or an ad for Zoloft, both of which are, of course, evil.

Or Teletubbies! Man, I'm glad THAT show wasn't around during my experimenting days.
posted by HTuttle at 8:35 PM on March 3, 2002


Yes, Teletubbies! I can't believe I missed that resemblance. All the landscape needs is a bunch of frightened rabbits and that hideous drooling baby sun above.

Come to think of it, are the Teletubbies the end result of Steve Job's Digital Hub®? We'll all have those flat screen monitors implanted in our abdomens, powerless when an incoming broadcast seizes us like a demon and makes us be a vessel for a scratchy film of British children playing with a hose.

And all we'll be able to do is scream "Again! Again!"

Now that's evil.
posted by evanizer at 8:44 PM on March 3, 2002


Well, crap, in Unbreakable, a movie about superheroes and villians, the hero doesn't touch boxen the whole movie, but the villian's got two Macs. Damn, if I wasn't so stressed about glaucoma testing this week, I'd pull a psycho research project on computers in movies, totally fogetting to metion that H- movie.
posted by Samizdata at 10:02 PM on March 3, 2002


George HW bush used Macs, Clinton used macs, and GW bush uses PCs.
posted by delmoi at 10:28 PM on March 3, 2002


I'm pretty sure I've seen Shrub using a g3 PowerBook.
posted by machaus at 10:32 PM on March 3, 2002


Just to note: In buufyy the evil technosupervillains from the latest (sixth) series all use Macs and Cinema displays fopr their evil techno evilness.
posted by nedrichards at 5:01 AM on March 4, 2002


'dis, macs are purty! i personally love all the ads for online banking all over NYC that feature Powerbook G3s and now G4s with the logos photoshopped out and a windows destop photoshopped in. That's really something.
posted by n9 at 8:08 AM on March 4, 2002


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