You take your pick, I'll take mine, and we'll fight it out on the autocross track.

That's where this doesn't really make sense to me. The brand loyalty I understand. It's the hostility to rivals of companies you choose to patronize that I find baffling. People who like Coke better and people who like Pepsi better are both right in their choice.

I can be right about say, a Windows machine being better suited to my purposes , needs, and tastes. For me, a Windows PC is better. At the same time, for a Mac fan, a Mac is better. We're both right.

See and the sports thing I see as the ultimate in brand loyalty, because in the end, the brand is all there really is. I mean, if you are a long time Yankees fan but hate the Red Socks, what are you really a fan of? Are the players or the coaches the same as they were 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago? To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, all you're really rooting for is the uniform.

It's not like arguing about the relative merits of competing products isn't fun. It helps to hone critical thinking skills. I have a blast arguing comic book "who would beat whom" in a fight scenarios, but I'm constantly amazed at how often people get so wrapped up in these things that they end up getting pissy, insult other's intelligence, and get suspended or banned over which fictional character would beat which. But the hostility towards products/brands that you don't happen to patronize will never make sense to me.

I understand the thing about tribalism. But saying that I like X, and I identify and connect to others who like X, and even extolling the virtues of X does not mean that I must criticize rival Y.

As far as brand loyalty goes, I think it makes sense the more expensive (in time/effort/money) the item in question is. Take automobiles. I have a grandfather that worked in a Ford plant for 30 years, and will never drive anything that's not Ford/Lincoln/Mercury for that reason. He thinks GMC automobiles are shoddy due not only to the corporate menality of Ford, his own time in their plants putting his time and effort into those automobiles, or the fact that he's had good experiences with them for a lifetime. It comes down to the fact that from the 60s to the 90s while he was working in that plant, Chevy would have gladly put Ford out of business, costing him a job. Add to that the fact that Ford hired him after he left the Army, providing him a chance to raise a family of eight on one income until the youngest moved out, as well as a pension to live the rest of his life off of.

I only go into that level of detail to show that the higher the involvement with the item in question, the larger the amount of money/time/pride/effort involved, the more rabidly defensive a person will be concerning said item. When it comes to cars and sports, many of the people involved in these discussions may lack the actual knowledge necessary to make any tangible discernment between the two, so rather than analyzing specifics, they go with the general "_________ sucks, ________ rules."

i'm talkin about the Australian Ford not the American Ford.

and really, i'm only talking about Commodores & Falcons...

so maybe my comment was to broad.

sorry for any confusion i caused.