1502: The Only Shortcut That Matters

Looking for something to watch over breakfast the other day, I decided I’d check out Ricky Gervais’ latest work Derek. I was expecting Gervais’ usual brand of “cringe comedy” exemplified by The Office and Extras — perhaps with additional cringe factor thanks to the character he was portraying — and not anything special. Over the course of the show’s few episodes, though, I was very pleasantly surprised to find what is, without a doubt, Gervais’ finest work to date — and not just from a comedic perspective.

Derek, lest you’re unfamiliar, centres around Gervais’ titular character, a middle-aged guy who may or may not be autistic and who works in a nursing home. Joining him in the main cast are his friends Dougie the caretaker (Karl Pilkington essentially playing himself) and Kevin the unemployed, along with Hannah — the manager of the nursing home — and the various old folks who they take care of together.

It’s one of those shows in which not a whole lot happens, yet what does happen always feels meaningful. In keeping with Gervais’ previous shows, it’s presented in “docudrama” format, with candid footage interspersed with talking head shots from Derek and the gang reflecting on what’s been happening. Over the course of the series, we get to know Derek and his friends extremely well, seeing them through both happy times and sad ones.

Derek is unsurprisingly the highlight of the show, initially appearing to be a bumbling, gurning simpleton but occasionally showing flickers of sharp wit — such as the sequence where he makes Kevin explain a dirty joke to him until it’s not funny any more, then explains to the camera afterwards that he did get it really, he just pretends not to because he knows it annoys Kevin.

More than wit, though, Derek is in possession of an incredibly compassionate soul — and he’s not the only one. Hannah is described by several characters as only caring about the happiness of others, even at the expense of her own, and she constantly wrestles with the path her life has taken, wondering if she might have done things differently if she hadn’t dropped out of school early. There’s a particularly awkward scene where one of her former peers at school shows up to bring her mother in to the home, but Hannah comes off best out of the whole exchange by the simple virtue of not having alienated everyone around her.

It’s an incredibly touching, moving show throughout — and not just at the times when one of the elderly residents of the nursing home passes on. There’s at least one moment in every episode where something very simple but utterly profound happens, and it moved me to tears on more than one occasion. The last episode in particular, in which a long-term resident of the home finally passes on and causes all of the cast to reflect on their respective life situations, is both heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time — particularly when we see the normally gruff, “laddish” Kevin break down in tears as he comes to the realisation that Derek “took the only shortcut that matters: kindness.”

Critics of the show have called it transparently emotionally manipulative, and perhaps it is — the liberal use of Coldplay on the soundtrack is testament to that — but personally I’m not sure there’s anything all that wrong with that. In Derek, Gervais has written an unusual but admirable character whom we could all do to observe the positive traits of; he’s also crafted a show that is enjoyable, eye-opening and which encapsulates the philosophy of “don’t judge a book by its cover” very neatly. It’s well worth a watch — just have the tissues handy.

1501: A Hind D

I’ve finally acquired all of the mainline Metal Gear Solid games and have decided to play them through. To date, I’ve only ever played the first two (the first two Metal Gear Solids, not the first two Metal Gears), though I have had a copy of Snake Eater on my shelf for years now that I am yet to boot up. (Despite this, I picked up a copy of the HD collection for PS3. Why not, eh?)

Despite the fact that I’ve only ever played the first two, I have always thought of the series very fondly. I recall playing the original PS1 game to absolute death when it first came out since it was far and away one of the most gobsmackingly impressive console games around at the time.

Today, it’s not looking quite so impressive thanks to its 320×200 resolution, limited colour palette (so much dithering!) and complete lack of facial animations, but Hideo Kojima’s artistic intentions still clearly shine through thanks to excellent, movie-like direction of the cutscenes and high production values for music and voice work. In terms of sound, at least, the original game is very much on a par with modern games, with spectacular voice acting and a stirring, memorable score accompanying the action.

I think one of the reasons I enjoy the Metal Gear Solid games I have as much as I do is because they quickly subvert expectations. Obviously I don’t have the same expectations of them as I did back when I first played them, but I still remember how enjoyable it was to see the game’s setting and narrative evolve from gritty, manly super-soldier preventing nuclear war to comic-book style character-driven tale with a series of ridiculously overexaggerated villains. The gritty, manly super-soldier preventing nuclear war story is still there, of course, but with all the other stuff going on atop it, it becomes far more interesting than your average Call of Duty or whatever.

This is, in part, Kojima’s craft. He can blend things together remarkably well. He can blend the realistic and the fantastic; the mundane and the ridiculous. The first game is relatively tame compared to what happens in some of the later installments — even the second one — but it’s still not afraid to let its hair down every so often with villains like Psycho Mantis, who requires you to plug your controller into the other slot so he can’t read your mind, and Vulcan Raven, who manages to come off worse in a fight against Snake even when attacking him with a tank.

Divisive though it may be, I’m also a fan of how Kojima tells his stories. My friend Mark described the Metal Gear Solid games as one part tactical stealth action game, one part movie and one part radio drama, and it absolutely is true. The stealth action stuff is solid, enjoyable and challenging; the movie is well directed and as enjoyable as anything I’ve seen on the big screen, despite only starring computer-generated characters; and the radio drama that unfolds any time you whip out your Codec to chew the fat with any of Snake’s colourful cast of allies is well acted and always worth sitting through. I feel a bit sorry for those who feel the need to skip cutscenes and dialogue; they’re missing out on a significant part of the Metal Gear Solid experience.

Anyway. This time around I’m hoping to make it all the way through to the end of 4. I’ve renewed my interest in the series somewhat since looking a little into the new games Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain, you see, and it would be nice to be up to date with what’s going on before I play those. Plus everyone always says Metal Gear Solid 3 is amazing, so I should probably see what they’re all banging on about at some point, huh?

1500: Make a Run

[Aside: Gosh. 1,500 daily posts. Good job, me. I’d celebrate, but I already had something in mind to write about today, sooo…]

Spent a pleasant hour or two teaching and playing Netrunner this evening. This is the third time I’ve had the opportunity to give this interesting game a go now, and each time I play, I like it a little more.

I think the best thing about it is the psychology aspect of it. Like a good game of poker, success in Netrunner relies as least partly upon reading your opponent, figuring out how they’re likely to act and taking advantage of it. When playing as the Corporation, for example, choosing which of your Remote Servers you’re going to install Ice in front of is extremely important: do you think your opponent will assume your most valuable cards — the ones they’re trying to steal in order to win the game — are heavily protected behind Ice, or will he see through the common bluff of leaving valuable cards unprotected as if they’re no big deal?

There’s a wonderful sense of tension in the game, on both sides, and the game is seemingly balanced in such a way as to encourage this feeling as often as possible.

In the last game I played today, for example, I was playing as the Corporation, and a victory on points was looking likely. My last Agenda card — the cards I needed to spend credits on to “advance” in order to score — was heavily protected behind three pieces of Ice, and I had enough credits to rez all of them without any difficulty. Moreover, I could see that my opponent James didn’t have the Icebreakers he’d need to defeat my pieces of Ice, so I was feeling pretty confident. I advanced my last Agenda until it was one token away from final victory for me, and then it was the end of my turn.

Naturally, James used this opportunity to make a final Run on my Remote Server, obviously hoping to pick up my Agenda and bring himself closer to victory, while denying me the win. He began with the Tinkering card, which made one of my already-revealed pieces of Ice into a type that his Icebreakers could deal with. Uh-oh. He also had enough money to power up his Icebreaker enough to crack through it and deactivate its subroutines. Uh-oh. James broke through the first piece of Ice without any difficulty, so I rezzed the next one — an infuriating little card called a “portal” whose main effect was to send James back to confront the first piece of Ice again. This would fuck him over nicely, since he didn’t have enough credits left to confront it again, but unfortunately his Icebreaker was of the correct type to bypass the portal without any difficulty.

This left the final piece of Ice for him to confront. My confidence had evaporated by this point, but I rezzed it anyway. It was pretty weak, but its subroutine would end his Run immediately — and best of all, it transpired that it was of a type his Icebreaker couldn’t crack.

My heart leapt. I had done it. I had fended off an attack that had got a whole lot further than I thought it was going to — and now I was going to win for sure. And win I did — and great it felt, too.

I’m starting to get my head around this game now, and I’m really interested to play it some more. It’s a big challenge — one false move, or an unfortunate draw of the cards, can leave you in serious shit or even with an instant loss if you’re not careful. But knowing the things to watch out for allows you to prepare for most eventualities — and if you’re playing against an evenly-matched opponent, it can lead to some genuinely thrilling faceoffs.

I’m not quite brave enough to approach the clearly experienced Netrunner players in the Monday night board game group as yet, but I’m definitely keen to play more. Hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to do so soon.

1499: Per. So. Na

So, Atlus confirmed today that the four new Persona games — Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth for 3DS, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for PS3 and 360, Persona 4: Dancing All Night for PlayStation Vita and Persona 5 for PlayStation 3 — are coming to English-speaking territories. And there was, as they say, much rejoicing.

My love of the Persona series is well-documented on these very pages, but I’m particularly pleased the three spinoff titles are all making it West. I’m especially excited about Dancing All Night — as evidenced by yesterday’s post, music games are very much my jam, and Dancing All Night is looking very lovely indeed. I can take or leave Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for now — I’m still yet to beat the first one, though I will get to it eventually — and Persona Q intimidates me a little as someone who is still yet to play an Etrian Odyssey game. But all of them are appealing in one way or another; all of them are games I will play and love.

And then there’s Persona 5, which we know next to nothing about so far. I’m really looking forward to this. The Persona team’s previous game on consoles was Catherine, which turned out to be seriously great — not to mention a hefty challenge — and set a certain level of expectation for what a Persona 5 might look like. I’m thinking cel-shaded visuals interspersed with anime cutscenes, and that same sense of exquisite stylishness that has permeated the series since at least its third installment.

As for the others, I would worry that they’re milking Persona 4 dry were it not for the fact that all the spinoff games featuring the Investigation Team and pals are very different beasts. Of the upcoming titles, only Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is remotely similar to a Persona 4 game we’ve already had — and given that game’s surprisingly visual novel-ish nature, I don’t mind all that much, since it’s the story that’s the important thing, rather than the fighting. (Although competitive players might disagree.)

As for Persona Q and Dancing All Night, though? I can’t wait to give them a try — particularly, as I say, the latter. Rise was adorable in Persona 4, and the opportunity to spend another game in her company as she does what she does best — singing and dancing in an indefatigably cheerful manner — is not something to be passed up, particularly with the prospect of other Persona 4 stars putting in an appearance, too. Yu, Persona 4’s original protagonist, looks particularly fetching strutting his stuff — I very much like how he’s taken on a lot more of his own personality since the original game thanks to spinoff titles and the official anime adaptation.

But sadly we have a fair while to wait before we can get our hands on them. Persona Q and Ultimax aren’t showing up until autumn of this year, and Dancing All Night and Persona 5 are next year. Still, the fact they’re not just around the corner is probably a good thing — gives me time to clear my backlog a bit, not to mention review the several games I’ve got on my plate at the moment!

1498: Diva

I’ve been playing a bit of Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F on PS3 recently. Every time I play it, I’m reminded that I really love rhythm games, regardless of whether or not they have “famous” music in them. (More hardcore Miku fans than I would probably be able to do a better job of explaining how each and every one of the tracks in Project Diva F is famous, but I’m happy just knowing “the one from Nyancat”, “the one from Leekspin” and “the one from Black Rock Shooter” for the moment.)

It helps, of course, that Project Diva F is an excellent rhythm game. It doesn’t do anything too complicated with its gameplay — it’s just tapping or occasionally holding buttons to the beat, sometimes breaking for some analogue stick-flicking rather than button-pressing — but has a good scoring system that rewards you in a number of different ways: overall accuracy, successfully completing high-pressure “technical zone” sequences and unlocking the “true” end to a track by completing another special bonus zone. You can then bump up the challenge factor through a nifty risk/reward mechanic whereby it becomes easier to fail a track, but in exchange you get considerably more “Diva Points” to spend on goodies if you successfully make it all the way through.

I tend to judge music games based on how “in the zone” they make me feel. A good music game makes you feel at one with the rhythms in its tracks, and you feel like the buttons you’re tapping have a real connection to the song. This doesn’t necessarily mean just tapping out the beat — I recall vividly explaining to my friend Woody way back when that the various button-presses in Vib Ribbon didn’t necessarily follow the vocal lines or the drum beat, but were in fact more like what you’d do if you were drumming your fingers to the song, and the note patterns in Project Diva F are much the same way. Sometimes you’re tapping out the rhythm that Miku and friends are singing; others, you’re following the guitar line, or the drums, or something else that is prominent in the soundtrack. Learning each track is a matter of familiarising yourself with what you’re “playing” at any given moment, and how it fits in with the song as a whole.

In short, Project Diva F gets me feeling very much “in the zone” while I’m playing. It’s one of those music games that’s hypnotic to play, though the fact that notes come from all directions means that you’re not left with that strange “the whole room is scrolling!” feeling that I always got from lengthy Guitar Hero or Rock Band sessions. The background videos are a lot of fun, too, featuring Miku and her friends getting up to various misadventures just like real pop stars in real music videos.

And the customisation. Man. I have a thing for playing dress-up in video games, and Project Diva F does not disappoint in this regard at all. Each of the game’s characters has a hefty number of different costumes to unlock, with various accessories on top of that. Then you can decorate each of their rooms, and unlock amusing, silly cutscenes when they interact with the items. Some of the items even have a practical function — setting Miku’s alarm clock puts her to sleep, for example, and she’ll wake herself (and you) up when the timer expires. Arguably not all that useful on a TV-attached console such as the PS3, but a nice touch — and I can see it being cool on the Vita version we’re supposedly getting in the West relatively soon.

I haven’t even touched the frankly terrifying Edit Mode yet, in which you can cut your own music videos and set up your own playable note patterns to your own music. If I jump down that particular rabbit-hole, I can see myself getting thoroughly lost, so I’ve held off for now. But I’m sure I’ll investigate at some point in the near future.

If you’re a fan of music games as I am, be sure to check it out; don’t worry that you might not know many of the songs — you’ll pick them up by the umpteenth time you play them to perfect your score!

1497: Lab Work

Andie and I had another go at Pandemic: In the Lab this evening. I really like it; it completely changes the dynamic of the base game and, although it offers the potential to slow all players down considerably — for those unfamiliar, it makes the process of curing a disease considerably more complicated than just collecting enough cards — it encourages much more cooperative play, which is good.

The reason for this is that the new “Lab” mechanics allow more than one player to collaborate on putting together a cure for one of the four diseases. No longer is it a case of trying to get five cards of the same colour into the hands of one player (four if they’re the Scientist) — instead, one player can “sequence” the disease by playing an appropriately coloured card; another can test the cure by playing another appropriately coloured card; other players still can collect samples of the diseases required to build the necessary molecular structure for the cure itself. Finally, one player only now needs to collect three cards rather than five — because two have already been played to sequence and test the cure — in order to finally cure it. Despite the curing process taking more steps, then, this actually frees up players to stomp off around the world doing a bit of curing while collecting additional samples.

It’s still bloody hard, though. Andie and I played on the Introductory difficulty with just four out of the seven Epidemic cards, and we still lost — once without discovering any cures at all, and a second time after discovering two, with the third and fourth on the way. This is pretty much in keeping with the base game of Pandemic, which has a relatively low victory rate — particularly when playing on the more difficult settings with additional Epidemic cards — but has a pleasingly different feel to it all.

So far it seems to be a great expansion. In fact, I’ve been really impressed with both of Pandemic’s expansions to date — On the Brink added a wide variety of new ways to play (which, to my shame, I’m actually still to try any of) plus a bunch of new character roles, while In the Lab’s main contribution is this new “Lab Challenge” mode. I’m not sure if I’d want to play the game this way every time, but that’s the beauty of it, in a way; you don’t have to. The expansions have both been build in such a way that it’s easy to pick and choose the bits you bolt onto the base rules. If you want to play vanilla Pandemic with nothing more than the new roles, no problem. If, conversely, you want to play the Lab Challenge with a Bio-Terrorist player and a Virulent Strain, you can. It’s your choice, and that’s pretty great.

Anyway. Looking forward to playing it more. Now we have a better handle on the way the new mechanics work, I have faith that we can save the world from the terrible plight of Itchy Scrot and Brown Rot once more. Maybe.

1496: Triple-Gritty

I’ve been playing an upcoming triple-A release today (it’s still under embargo, I think, so I probably shouldn’t name it directly) and although I’ve been enjoying it enough to play it for most of the day, it’s caused me to finally pin down the reason why I’m less and less interested in triple-A games in my own free time — i.e. when I don’t have to play them for a review or feature or whatever.

It’s the aesthetic and mood. They’re all going for the same thing — that gritty, moody, self-consciously “mature” vibe that, if not handled correctly, can come off feeling a little adolescent. There are numerous tell-tale signs:

Someone says “fuck” quite early in the game, then people won’t stop saying it. Even in situations where saying “fuck” quite so liberally would (arguably) be something of an anachronism, once a game opens the fuckgates, there’s no stopping the stream of profanities belching forth from its characters lips like a never-ending tide of effluvium. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with swearing, but swearing for swearing’s sake — especially in a setting it doesn’t quite feel “right” with — isn’t the shortcut to “maturity” that some writers think it is.
There’s at least one gratuitous sex scene, optionally during a mission that takes place in a brothel or similar house of ill repute. Look! Our game has tits in it! Incidental characters are fucking! Please like me!
The main character has a gravelly voice and an optional habit of describing things using tortured metaphors. And people complain about JRPG heroes being angsty. Seriously.
The main character will occasionally spout one-liners that Arnie would be embarrassed to say. These will often come up in situations where laughing just doesn’t quite feel appropriate. And we all know the secret of comedy is ti—
It’s never fantasy, always “dark fantasy”. I blame Dragon Age and The Witcher for this. Both great games, but they started the whole “dark fantasy” thing rolling in earnest and now it won’t stop.
You’ll spend at least half an hour not knowing who anyone’s name is. The intro sequence of the game I was playing today suggests the protagonist is supposed to know who his companion is, but I had no idea what her name was until after… events unfolded. I don’t necessarily need Yakuza-style captions introducing every character’s first appearance, but just a simple piece of dialogue where the characters call each other by name will do.
You’ll realise halfway through an awesome setpiece that you have no idea how you got there. This may be a personal thing, but in dark, gritty triple-A stories I tend to have a much harder time following the story and remembering what was going on. By the time I got into the second main mission of the game I was playing today, I’d forgotten why I was there and how it tied in with the previous mission.

There are probably more, but I’ll leave that there for now. I realise similar accusations can probably be levelled at the types of games I like, but I’d actually argue there’s more diversity in anime-style RPGs than there is in the self-consciously mature triple-A space. Compare something like Atelier Rorona (hand-drawn look; low-key, slice-of-life mood; strong emphasis on moe) to even its stablemate Ar Tonelico (more traditional anime-style look; more epic storyline; humour interspersed with in-depth explorations of real issues) or something like Final Fantasy XIII (CG look rather than anime; angsty characters; ridiculously over-the-top story and effects) — all very different subsets of the same basic thing, while Western triple-A tends to go for the “realistic or bust” approach for the most part.

Note I’m not saying this is inherently bad; just that I find it a bit tiresome after a while. And playing [REDACTED] today has kind of driven that home a bit. I think I need to spend some time with Atelier Rorona to wash all the grit off tomorrow.

1495: Epidemic!

I really enjoy the board game Pandemic, as has been fairly well established on these very pages, but I was a little skeptical about trying the iOS version. After all, I have a perfectly good copy of the board game on my shelf — plus its expansions — so what use is a digital version?

Well, it’s easier to simply start playing, for one thing; for another, it has a somewhat different “feel” to it than gathering around a board with friends to play. The board game can be played solo too, of course — particularly with the solo rules introduced in the In the Lab expansion — but the iOS version is particularly friendly to either solo or pass-and-play formats. I’d argue that it feels more “right” to play it as a single-player, multi-character strategy game on the iPad, actually; it’s much easier to collaborate on cooperative multiplayer moves when the board is right there in front of you, whereas passing an iPad around isn’t nearly so practical from that perspective.

I think the thing I like the most about the iOS version, though, is the presentation. Drawing most of its futuristic aesthetic from the newer edition of the board game that came out recently, its visual style is simple but effective, and the background music is excellent. Building in intensity as the Infection Rate increases over the course of a game, it keeps things feeling exciting and dramatic — and the special, super-intense music that plays when an Epidemic card is drawn really drives home the whole “Uh-oh, we might be fucked now” nature of the experience.

The other thing worth considering about the iOS version is that it’s a good way for people to try the game out without having to invest in the considerably more expensive board game version. It has a good interactive tutorial that explains the rules to you as you play, and a comprehensive in-game reference manual that goes into full detail about the game rules and all the available cards for special events, player roles and the like. It is, in short, like many iOS adaptations of board games, an excellent way of learning the game before jumping into a session with live tabletop players, or to refresh your memory on how it all works before teaching it to a group of newcomers.

Plus, you know, Pandemic is just a great game, too. It is, for many people, their introduction to truly cooperative gaming — a team of players against the board — and at less than an hour for a game to unfold (considerably less for the digital adaptation) it’s friendly to groups who tend to play on “school nights”, too.

Give it a shot. And don’t worry if you doom the world to oblivion at the hands of Radical-6 (or whatever you call the Blue disease this time around) — it happens to the best of us.

1494: Another Pledge for Positivity

Earlier today, my friend (and former copy editor) Keri posted this Pledge for Positivity. And it’s something I applaud; there is too much negativity around right now, for a variety of reasons. Things being taken out of context and branded as offensive; groups of fans berating each other for the most ridiculous of reasons; those who enjoy niche interest entertainment branded with less than complimentary names; those who enjoy mainstream entertainment branded with less than complimentary names.

I’m not going to say “this has to stop” because that causes people with a stick up their arse to start bleating about “tone policing”. Instead, I’m going to try and follow Keri’s example and remain focused on the positive things in life: the things I enjoy, the things I feel passionately about, the things I want to share with people. Things I don’t like? Fuck ’em; I’ve got better things to do with my time than waste on discussing things I have no interest in or attempting to have rational debates with people who have no interest whatsoever in being rational. Such is the way of the Internet.

As it happens, making such a pledge for positivity isn’t all that far removed from what I generally try and do day in, day out on the Internet anyway. I steer well clear of whatever issue-du-jour people are angry about on Twitter today, and instead focus on talking with the people who share similar interests, but not necessarily identical tastes. Enjoyable discussions inevitably result; just the other day I had a lengthy discussion with someone who didn’t like Final Fantasy XIII as much as I did, in which we remained rational, civil and articulate throughout. Neither of us changed the other’s mind, but that’s not what it was about — we both came away from the interaction feeling like we’d learned a little about the other’s position. And that is a far more valuable result of communication than coming away understanding that, say, someone is angry but not really knowing what they want you to do about it.

As such, you can expect the things I talk about to continue much in the same mould as they have been previously — positively. On here, I’ll continue to talk about things I am enjoying and having fun with, or things that I am excited about. In my professional capacity, I tend to concentrate on things that are interesting or noteworthy rather than deliberately controversial — the most controversial thing I wrote recently was a positive piece noting that Final Fantasy XIII perhaps wasn’t all that bad and people should maybe give it another chance (note: NOT “anyone who doesn’t like Final Fantasy XIII is a douchebag who should probably be killed” or something similar) — and I’d much rather write something praising the interesting things that have been done well than tearing something a new arsehole for one reason or another.

Of course, the latter part sometimes comes with the territory — some stuff is genuinely simply unmitigated crap, though it’s significantly less likely to come across something with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever today than it once way — but even then I tend to try and look for the positive where I can. Take my review of Time and Eternity, a game that was reviled by most of the games press, but which I had a good time with despite its flaws. Rather than focusing on its flawed aspects, I chose instead to concentrate on what I did like about it, and as a result produced a review that I’m still pretty pleased with today.

Why am I talking about this? Well, aside from Keri’s post, I was also pointed in the direction of this excellent article about the upcoming Senran Kagura Burst for 3DS — a game branded “damaging to the industry” by people who haven’t played it. The Tiny Cartridge post was something I found particularly admirable and all too rare in the modern business — it was someone returning to an issue and proving willing to educate themselves, and being pleasantly surprised in the process. In this case, it was taking another look at Senran Kagura Burst and discovering that no, it’s not just about boobs and fanservice; it’s actually about some well-defined characters with realistic, human flaws — something which I’ve argued in the past in relation to similarly misunderstood games, too — titles such as Ar Tonelico that people are all too willing to dismiss for nothing more than their art style.

Looking for the positive is a much more pleasant way to approach life. I can’t imagine how utterly miserable the lives of these people who seem to spend all their time being angry must be. In some cases, they may well have valid reasons for their ire, and that’s fine; others are angry for the sake of bandwagon-jumping. Both groups would benefit from a step back and some time alone with the things or people they genuinely do love. Works for me. Chill the fuck out and enjoy yourself for a change.

1493: Making the Tools Work for You, Not the Other Way Around

As an experiment, I’ve un-suspended my Facebook account. This blog post is the first I’ve mentioned of doing so, and I haven’t really got back into “using” the site as such just yet, because there are a few things I wanted to do first.

Specifically, I wanted to take a bit more control of my experience there. The reason I shut down my account in the first place was because the amount of nonsense being posted was reaching intolerable levels — social media experts call this a poor signal-to-noise ration. In other words, little in the way of actual communication was going on, and instead it was becoming little more than Upworthy reshares (and, thankfully, Upworthy seems to have been all but forgotten now) and “OMG! I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS THING!” posts that people haven’t fact-checked before posting. It was becoming infuriating and, as I believe I said around the time I closed my account, it was stopping Facebook from being actually useful — its original stated purpose was to be a “social tool that connects you with the people around you”, after all, and for a while it did an admirable job of that.

Anyway. In order to take control of my experience, I’m doing a few things that can largely be classified as “cleaning up my profile”. I’ve “unliked” as many pages as it’s possible to “unlike” — aside from ones that I actually do either want to show support for or get information from — and I’ve had a ruthless cutback on my friends list. There are still nearly 200 people on there, but when I compare it to some of the people I removed — many of whom had over a thousand “friends” — it seems a little more manageable. I’ve cut people whom I haven’t spoken to for a while, or whom I didn’t feel I’d had worthwhile interactions with online, or whom I simply didn’t really actually like all that much. (Harsh but fair!) I’ve also cut a lot of people whom I mainly speak to on Twitter, and anyone that I wouldn’t classify as a particularly close friend. (In other words, if I’ve removed you on Facebook, it doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t like you; it just means that I don’t count you in my closest circle of friends, since the way Facebook is built has always felt like something that you should share with people you actually know, rather than people who are just Internet acquaintances at best.)

I am attempting to make Facebook work for me, then, and hopefully it will provide a better experience for me. I’m still no fan of the site itself — the interface for unliking pages and removing friends was one of the most cumbersome, badly-designed pieces of UI I’ve seen for a long time, the current layout seems designed to make certain pieces of information as difficult to find as possible, and I’m really not a fan of how the company does business — but I am keen to use it to stay in touch with those people for whom Facebook is the best (or indeed, in some cases, only) means of reaching them.

We’ll see how long it lasts this time around. I’d like to keep an open mind, but we’ll see. And if you dare post any shit from Upworthy at me, you’re on my list. And not my friends list.