One of the things that continually surprises me is quite how toxic the retro gaming community, particularly in the UK, can really be. I’m fortunate that I have only ever really encountered people who are thoroughly nice and lovely — and, even better, have been able to draw inspiration from them to make my own creative work better.
In this regard, I’d particularly like to throw some love (and some links to their YouTube channels) at, in no particular order and off the top of my head, RoseTintedSpectrum, WhatHoSnorkers, Timberwolf, Gouldfish on Games, Dudley of Yesterzine, Kim Justice, Slopes Game Room, Digitiser, More Fun Making It, Beyond the Scanlines, Gears of Games, Yawning Angel and doubtless myriad others that I’m forgetting. All of these folks are thoroughly lovely, supportive people that I am happy to have had direct contact with to varying degrees at various points over the course of the last few years. Click those links and subscribe to all of them. They do amazing work.
Sadly, there’s a really unpleasant underbelly to the retro gaming community in the UK, and a lot of it centres around an individual known variously as “George Bum”, “George Cropper” (not his real name), “Funky Spectrum” and any number of other aliases. “George” is a serial harasser who has been thrown off YouTube for his behaviour, and now festers in his own filth on his own little website (which, no, I’m not linking to), surrounded by chirruping sycophants who hang on his every shit-encrusted word — many of whom are very much old enough to know better.
I’m not pulling any punches here: “George” is an absolutely vile human being, and the way he has picked on several members of the retro gaming community for years at this point without any sort of punishment is utterly repugnant. He has particularly targeted the YouTuber Octavius with stalker-like obsessiveness, and is almost as bad with his fixation on Peter “Nostalgia Nerd” Leigh and his Norwich-based vegan bar-cum-arcade Barcadia. Most recently, he’s had Kim Justice in his sights, because he thinks her well-researched book is not as good as his AI-generated drivel that he listed on Amazon for £250.
And yet no-one does anything about him. Because there’s not really anything that can be done about this festering waste of space any more.
He’s in his element on the Twitter of 2024, which is a disgusting sinkhole full of the absolute worst people on the entire Internet — many of whom are openly spouting their garbage under their real names — although I take some small comfort from the fact that anyone with any sense has abandoned the platform long ago.
He’s been banned from YouTube for his harassment videos. (Of course, he maintains he did “nothing wrong”.) Now, at least, he’s confined to his stupid website. Sadly, as it’s self-hosted I suspect there’s not much anyone can really do about him short of actually raising a legal objection to some of the things he posts on there. And I doubt anyone wants to go through the time, energy and expense involved in doing that.
Which sucks, really, because it means this festering boil on the arse of UK retrogaming will never truly get lanced. All I can really do is encourage anyone reading this to never go anywhere near him. He is Bad News.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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