Apple vs. Windows, Wikipedia and "cage match"

When you write, sometimes a word or phrase comes to mind and even though you have a strong sense of the meaning of the word or phrase, looking it up in a reference book helps inform the usage. Lately, I've found myself turning to Wikipedia as that reference book more often than anything else -- print or otherwise. Tonight, the phrase "cage match" popped into my head for reasons I will describe below.

I was reading the letters about a recent Salon story about the Mac ("Hallelujah, the Mac is back") and one reader wrote this nugget:

I'd sooner lower my [editor's note: body parts redacted for family IT publication] into a vat of boiling acid than even use a Windows computer again -- let alone own one.

My first thought on reading this harsh stance -- drawing on a childhood of watching (fake) fight-to-the-almost-death pro wrestling every Saturday night with my dad at a time when now-forgotten 'rasslers like Bugsy McGraw were getting bludgeoned on a weekly basis -- was "Apple vs. Windows cage match"!

That's when I thought, "how would one describe a cage match?" Of course, I went straight to Wikipedia, and while a search for "cage match" didn't turn up an exact match for my search, I got something even better when I ran the suggested Google search: a lovingly-annotated page of professional wrestling match types. A steel cage match was defined as such (among *84* other types of matches):

Possibly one of the most famous stipulation matches, this match takes place inside a steel cage, usually about fifteen feet high with an open top. There are two types of cage matches. The traditional cage match, known as a shark cage match, is won by being the first wrestler to escape the cage and have both feet touch the floor. The other variation is basically a one fall match inside a cage. Sometimes a cage match incorporates both escape and pinfalls or submission, permitting either to end the match. There are no disqualifications.

My original intention to use the cage match metaphor to point to the base entertainment offered by the claustrophobic fight-to-the-death quality of the Mac vs. Windows argument had led me down a path that was more interesting (to me at least) than the metaphor I was originally chasing. The Wikipedia is vibrant in areas of knowledge that one might least expect, going beyond even the decidely intriguing scholarship of the heavy metal umlaut.

The Mac vs. Windows story and the letters in Salon inspired me to think about a very narrow tussle in the world of computing, but after reading through the descriptions of professional wrestling match types at Wikipedia to try to put that tussle into a more personal context, I feel like (for better or worse), I have a better understanding of the kind of base human impulses that lead to angry letters about computing platforms, vicious posts to Usenet, and snarky missives to mailing lists. Perhaps the Apple vs. Windows discussion (and the computing industry in general) is just a higher-stakes version of the Elimination Chamber Match? As the various flame wars in computing flare up on a fairly predictable schedule, I know now that I have nearly 100 wrestling metaphors at my disposal just because I thought of one in passing tonight. Posted by Chad Dickerson at January 31, 2005 11:03 PM