Today's culture of perpetual mistrust is exhausting.

The other day, I received an SMS text message. This in itself was fairly unusual, as the only texts I tend to get these days are automated confirmations of deliveries and suchlike, but there was another layer of unusual to it.

"Hi mum," the text said. "My phone's not working, so please contact me on WhatsApp at [number] xxx".

Initially, I thought this might be an honest-to-goodness wrong number, which is a phenomenon that used to be widespread, but today, where we tend to do everything via pre-populated contact lists, doesn't tend to happen much. Something about it made me feel a bit suspicious, though, so I decided to Google the text of the message.

Sure enough, it was a scam. I was both disappointed and unsurprised to discover this, but it got me thinking: I used to be someone who really, honestly wanted to believe the best about my fellow man, but these days, it feels nigh-impossible to trust almost anything you see.

That "wrong number" is actually a scammer trying to get you to send them money, or to steal your personal information. That heartwarming post you saw on social media is actually a viral marketing campaign. That "look at me I'm so empowered" sex worker doing hot tub streams on Twitch is actually being forced into exploitation by darker forces working behind the scenes rather than because she wants to.

It's exhausting to think that, more often than not, these days what you see is most definitely not what you get. The world feels like a darker place that is full of mistrust, and aside from the necessity for constant vigilance being very tiring, it also makes it difficult for those of us who do want to go about our business in a genuinely honest sort of way.

You see it everywhere. Creative types being forced to churn out "content" with clickbait titles just to get eyes on their work. Workplaces and brands jumping on silly trends like TikTok for no discernible reason other than "it's popular, so we should be seen to be doing it". The growth in various forms of AI-generated text, images and sounds making misinformation and lies easier to spread than ever before.

On top of all that, the services we've come to increasingly rely on over the years actively make themselves worse over time, and we just sit back and take it. For example, it used to be that I could click "Publish" on this post and it would automatically share it to my friends on Facebook and Twitter, but that's not possible any more because of supposed "improvements" that both of those services have made.

This happens outside the online sphere, too. My last car I bought was worse than my previous one in terms of the features it had, but cost more. This despite me telling the car salesman to their face that I wanted to spend "about the same" on the new vehicle and have the same features.

And no-one seems particularly bothered by all this. I mean, sure, people comment on it occasionally, but no-one actually does anything about it. They keep posting their wacky MidJourney images, increasingly believing that "they" created the image through stringing words together. Scam text messages are a way of life, with people just shrugging at them rather than attempting to report them.

And those supposed to be "in charge" don't do anything anyway, so why bother? There's a house down the road from us whose front garden is constantly filled with obviously stolen motorcycles, which local kids can frequently be seen riding around making a nuisance of themselves on, without wearing any sort of safety gear or having any concern for the people around them.

It increasingly feels like we are a people blighted by absolute apathy and laziness, and despite countless warnings from dystopian popular media and the arts over the years, no-one really cares. So long as you have your content to consume and your vacuous "approval" of your fake life on social media from other fake people living fake existences, nothing seems to matter to anyone.

I'm really fed up of it. And it doesn't feel like there's a way to escape from it all. Because this isn't just "an Internet thing" any more. It's a "this is the world we live in now" thing.

I let out a gigantic, unmistakable, uncontrollable fart at the self-checkout in Marks & Spencers.

This is the stock image I got for searching "fart", so this is what you get. Photo by Julissa Helmuth on Pexels.com

It really wasn't a subtle one, either. It was the kind of sphincter-rippling, slack-anused report where you know that every inch, every ounce of buttock fat was involved in producing that triumphant fanfare, and where the moment after it has occurred, you know that there is absolutely no way you're going to be able to pass it off as you knocking something over or scraping something along a floor.

There are two practical ways you can really handle a situation like this: either take ownership of the situation and have a good giggle about it with everyone around you, or simply pretend that it didn't happen, implying that anyone who did happen to hear your eruption was somehow hallucinating. I chose the latter option; I don't have nearly enough social confidence, particularly around strangers, to pull off some sort of "Good LORD! Did you hear that?!" routine around strangers, though I'm more than happy to parp thunderously in front of close friends and family.

Both responses place anyone near you in something of an awkward position, of course. If you take the former approach, then there's the unspoken expectation that those nearby will participate in your routine, congratulating you on your impersonation of a baritone brass instrument and generally agreeing that having a good old guff is the peak of humorous funtimes. This, of course, does not take into account those who find bodily functions objectionable, particularly in public, and is likely to make those people feel uncomfortable.

If you take the latter approach, meanwhile, you place the responsibility on the people around you to either comment on the situation or remain quiet. And if you heard the noise that I emitted while swinging my carrier bag full of groceries around from the self-checkout into the trolley, I suspect some people would find it quite difficult not to comment.

Thankfully, the situation resolved itself with probably the optimal outcome. The only person nearby when the incident occurred was someone else who was packing their shopping, and they either chose to remain quiet or simply didn't notice. There certainly wasn't any sort of reaction, so if it's the former I applaud them for their self-control; by the time I was out in the car park I was already in fits of giggles. I hope that when they meet up with their friends later, they enjoy telling the story about the fat man next to them in Marks & Spencer who let rip with a humdinger of a bottom burp without shame while finishing their shopping trip.

I mean it when I say it was uncontrollable, though; it was the sort of guff that doesn't so much sneak up on you as it is suddenly present, without warning. There was no noticeable brewing time, no bubbling in the gut, no time to prepare — it was simply a case of me apparently moving in the wrong direction and releasing the explosion that had clearly been biding its time in my arse, trapped in a sweaty, fleshy prison, for quite a while.

I am pleased to report, however, that I did not "follow through", as the vernacular has it. It was simply an extremely loud, explosive trump that was gone almost as soon as it arrived. And now I am home I can have a good laugh about it without worrying about funny looks from strangers. Except for all the strangers I've told about it on the Internet with this post.

Oh well. I can't see your faces.

There's no real practical reason that the beginning of a new year should be a "fresh start", but it's as good a time as any. And so...

It has been a strange few years, to say the least. Ever since the world went to pieces in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, things have not felt at all "normal" — even though for the most part, things these days seem to primarily be operating as they once were.

I still maintain that this isn't necessarily a good thing, as the threat of COVID most certainly isn't over, even if its impact is considerably lessened from what it once was. And I feel like society being forced "back to normal" too early likely made the whole recovery process more lengthy and difficult than it perhaps could have been. But, of course, there were plenty of additional considerations.

I feel like a lot of people have been feeling like 2023 will be a "better" year for one reason or another. There's no tangible evidence to suggest this will actually be the case — I'm pretty sure we've all been thinking "surely next year can't be as bad as this one" for as long as I can remember, even before killer viruses entered the equation — but I suppose it's an attempt to bring oneself comfort. After all, proceeding forward thinking that things are miserable and awful and only likely to get worse is not really going to help matters.

A new year doesn't really mean anything. Nothing magical happens at midnight as December 31st ticks over to January 1st. And yet it's as good a time as any to decide that you want to have a fresh start, make some changes, improve some things about yourself and perhaps escape from things that have been holding you back for one reason or another.

In contrast to some of the previous years on this blog, I'm in a relatively "all right" position life-wise right now, and so I'm not in a position where I feel like I need to make any particularly radical changes in my life in order to be something approaching "happy". I don't feel like I need to change jobs — I love my current job — and I don't want or need to change anything about my living situation, as my wife Andie and I are both in a good place; the excruciating rise in cost of living in the last year occasionally puts a bit of strain on our collective finances, but other than that we can't complain too much.

All this means that we — well, I, as far as this post is concerned — can focus on the relatively "smaller" things to try and sort out. Chief among these for me is my overall health and wellbeing; I want to do something about my weight, and do something that hopefully lasts, because I'm fucking sick of having this hernia and not being able to have anything done about it because I'm too fat.

Slimming World worked for me a few years back, as past entries will show, but when Andie and I went back after various personal circumstances caused us both to have a fairly drastic "rebound", we found that it didn't really work for us. Calorie-counting didn't really work for us either, and nor did self-directed Weight Watchers (or "WW", as they now prefer to call themselves). Last time I saw my doctor, though, they did say that they could refer me to a "health coach" to help sort me out, but this was dependent on getting a blood test to ensure that there was nothing major wrong with me.

I'd never had a blood test before, so I was kind of perturbed by the whole experience. I don't like hospitals at the best of times — my mind has them permanently associated as "the place where people die", even though the rational part of my brain knows that this is a vastly unfair assessment to our hard-working healthcare workers — and the prospect of having mildly invasive procedures carried out on me was not helping matters.

This only got worse when they had a bit of trouble finding a vein on the inside of my elbow and had to draw from my hand instead, and as the whole process went on a bit longer that was comfortable I found myself having a cold sweat and feeling nauseated. Thankfully I didn't throw up over the nurse who was working on me, but my condition did cause enough concern for her to get me a glass of water and give me a moment to recover after she was all finished. Thankfully, the results of the blood test showed nothing of concern, so hopefully I won't have to deal with that again for a while.

Anyway, getting advice and/or referral from my doctor on what to do next was dependent on those blood test results, so now the holiday period is over I need to go back to them and figure out what to do next. I'm certain it will be a difficult process, but it's something that needs to be done, as not only is my hernia continually bugging me, but I'm having a lot of joint pains and suchlike also, and I suspect losing some weight will help all those problems.

Aside from this, I feel like I might need to shake things up with regard to friendships and personal relationships also. Over the course of… probably the last decade or so, really, I've been dismayed at how far a lot of people with whom I used to be very close have drifted away for one reason or another. In some cases this was down to lives going in different directions, in others it was down to misunderstandings and in others still it can be attributed to some seemingly being more willing to make a bit of an effort to maintain a relationship than others.

I can't pretend that I'm not at fault in some of these situations, but there are also plenty of cases where I have been the one who has been making an effort, only to get things either thrown back in my face or met with silent indifference. I won't go into specifics right now as this isn't about naming and shaming or anything like that, but when discussing a couple of instances privately with some more recent acquaintances, I felt somewhat vindicated when these relatively neutral "outsiders" (to the situation in question, anyway) confirmed my suspicions that yes, indeed, the things that I had previously felt were a bit out of order were indeed out of order.

It's hard to know what to do in cases like this, though. Do you just cut and run? That's probably the sensible thing to do; if you're the only one willing to make an effort, that's not a friendship, and it's really not worth trying to maintain something that isn't there. But at the same time you have to ask if you're having unreasonable expectations of people whose circumstances have changed, as your own have. In that instance, is it appropriate to "punish" them for just the natural process of your lives going down different roads?

There isn't really a right answer, but I do feel like in this new year I want to have another go at rekindling some of these friendships where possible. There are, I'm sure, multiple instances where I can still do more to try and fix things, but equally there are also plenty of cases where I'm sure the situation is beyond "help", for want of a better word. And that's sad, but it's also supposedly a natural part of life. I vaguely recall reading something the other day that suggested men of my age generally only have one honest-to-goodness friend that they feel they can rely on — and I'm certainly in this position now.

Well, just make new friends, you might say. But, well, social anxiety tends to put paid to such plans when you explicitly make them — although in the last year or so I have added a number of new people to my personal acquaintances through both work and online socialisation. So I suspect it's probably going to be worth cultivating those friendships further rather than continuing to make an effort in cases where I feel increasingly excluded.

But anyway. That's enough rambling for today. Because aside from all of the above, I'll also be making more regular use of this blog in 2023, too. With the general collapse of my enthusiasm for social media — coupled with the right hash Elon Musk has been making of Twitter — it's probably the optimal means for me to freely express myself and communicate with others. So if you're not already following me here, hit up the links at the side (or wherever they are on your screen) and stay up to date with me that way. This place is probably going to be the most reliable means of "seeing" me online from hereon.

Happy new year. And may your own "fresh starts", however small or grand they might be, bring you joy and satisfaction.

Last night, I dreamed I was ejaculating like a hosepipe in my childhood bedroom.

I love dreams. I've found the concept of them fascinating since an early age, to such a degree that when I was a child I used to deliberately try and think about something really hard before falling asleep in the hope that I would subsequently dream about it. It rarely worked quite so simply, although I have had enough dreams about, say, the video games I was playing immediately before bed to make me think that there probably is something to influencing your own subconscious while you're still conscious.

My favourite dreams are the ones for which there is no rational explanation, which make no logical sense and which sound ridiculous when you talk about them. Take the example of the dream from the title above as just one of many.

Like most memories of dreams, my recollection of the circumstances leading up to the incident in question are hazy at best. But I do vividly remember the conclusion, which was, as has already been noted, the fact that I was ejaculating like a firehose all over my childhood bedroom.

I also vividly remember the fact that I knew I was about to ejaculate, and that I was thinking two things: firstly, the slightest bit of pressure on my todger would set me off, and secondly, that if I aimed carefully I'd probably be able to clean things up without anyone ever knowing that I'd done anything quite so obscene. The reality of the situation became abundantly clear shortly after an inadvertent mild impact caused the incident to commence in earnest, and before long, the question of cleaning things up was… well, it wasn't a question any more.

I'd started by firing at the window. This seemed logical and sensible, as I thought it would be easy to clean up the glass. It apparently did not occur to me to open the window and simply aim out through it — hoping that there were no unfortunate passers-by in the street below, of course — but it made sense in the heat of the moment. Before long, though, it was clear that a single rather narrow sash window was to prove an inadequate receptacle for my product, and I somewhat lost control of the situation.

Teddy bears, books, old cloths that had been draped over things, the wardrobe door — before long, everything was covered, and there was no sign that the tide would be stemmed any time soon. I began to panic — up until this point, for some reason the situation had not appeared to be all that unusual — and, oddly, found myself less concerned about my apparent inability to switch off the flow from my apparently bottomless ballsack but rather more worried about how I was going to explain the situation once it had concluded.

I never got an answer to that, as I woke up shortly afterwards — dry as a bone (no pun intended), if you must know — thoroughly confused by what I had just witnessed and/or experienced.

Since "dream science" is hardly an exact art, there almost certainly isn't a "fixed" definition for this, but most people who claim to know what they are talking about claim that dreaming of ejaculation in some form or another, unsurprisingly, represents a desire for "release" of some description — not necessarily sexual, but perhaps emotional. Specifically, one article I read noted that dreaming of "excess ejaculation" is a sign that you are "in immediate need of emotional and sexual release" and that you are feeling a "loss of control and power over your life".

But then elsewhere on the page it notes that dreaming of "male ejaculation" is a "bringer of good luck and success". Which suggests to me, as I already suspected, that any and all interpretations are largely bollocks (again, no pun intended) and that dreams like this are just your subconscious having a bit of fun with things that would never happen in reality.

Just to be safe, though, I probably better go have a quick wank.

Christmas is the perfect time for comfy sims.

Those of you who have known me for a while will know that I have long been an advocate of the "comfy sim" — a specific type of video game where, generally speaking, the pressure is off and the emphasis is very much on simply enjoying the experience of doing something that you perhaps might not have the opportunity to do on a regular basis.

My appreciation for the comfy sim started right back in the days of the Atari 8-bit and Atari ST, when my Dad introduced me to subLOGIC's Flight Simulator II, the precursor to what we know today as Microsoft Flight Simulator. There was no "point" to Flight Simulator II — to such a degree that my father refuses to refer to it as a "game" to this day — but there was something compelling about it. The experience of flying a plane, of going on adventures, of making use of supplementary material (books, in the case of FSII) to enhance the experience — all of it was a powerful stimulant to the imagination.

There were, of course, military flight simulators also, and I enjoyed those a lot too — particularly because many of them were considerably easier to fly than the hyper-realistic Flight Simulator II! They also tended to have much more of a "game-like" structure to them, in that you'd have objectives to complete, merits to earn, medals to acquire and all manner of other things. But at their heart, they were still pretty comfy experiences about imagining you were doing something that you don't get the opportunity to do on a regular basis.

My comfy sims of preference today are SCS' excellent Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. I'm hard-pressed to tell you which of them is my favourite, because they're both excellent and have their own distinct appeal elements — but what I do know is that when I want to relax and just not really think about stuff for a while, driving a truck is one of the best things I can possibly do, particularly as I have a nice wheels and pedal setup that really helps with the sense of immersion.

For the unfamiliar, in ETS2 and ATS (as we shall refer to them hereafter), you begin life as an aspiring trucker who owns a run-down old garage in the city of your choice, but who doesn't have a truck to their name. You begin your adventure by running "quick jobs" for local companies, who provide trucks and trailers for you, and pay any fees you might incur along the way such as road tolls and fuel costs. After a while, though, you'll crave the freedom that owning your own truck provides — so you can either grind your way up to affording one out of your own pocket (which takes a while) or take out a loan with which to purchase a nice starter truck.

From there, the choice of what you want to do is up to you, within reason — remember that if you took out a loan to pay for your truck, you'll need to repay that a bit at a time. But if you just want to cruise the roads exploring, you can do that; if you want to take jobs from the companies you stumble across, like a freelance trucker-for-hire, you can do that; if you want to systematically search out the most profitable opportunities in the local area, you can do that; if you want to buy your own trailer and pick up freight directly from the source, you can do that. As you progress, you can even buy and expand more garages, grow your fleet of trucks, expand your empire and be rolling in more money than you know what to do with.

The nice thing, though, is that ETS2 and ATS don't put any pressure on you to do any of those things that you don't want to. If the one thing you enjoy is simply driving around, do that — maybe taking the occasional job to cover your daily loan installments. If you enjoy the structured experience of taking jobs, you can focus entirely on that. If you enjoy the management aspect of attempting to build up your company and dominate the entire map with your business empire, you can do that. Or you can do a bit of everything.

There's no "wrong" approach to ETS2 and ATS, and that's the core of the comfy sim. It provides a framework and a playground in which you can have fun, but the exact details of that fun are left up to you. It is essentially an imaginative toy in software form — and sometimes it's just what the doctor ordered.

It's becoming increasingly important to remember that the Internet -- and social media in particular -- presents a grossly distorted vision of how things actually are.

People love to complain. This is a trait traditionally and historically associated with the British, but it's most definitely not an exclusively British thing. Perhaps it once was, but it most certainly isn't any more. And as with so many things, we can probably blame the way in which the Internet has brought people together — something which should, inherently, be a good thing, but which has somehow become corrupted along the way.

As I've noted elsewhere, I'm not spending a ton of time on Twitter any more due to a combination of the horrible atmosphere that seeps from every pore of that website and the constant ridiculous changes Elon Musk keeps making on a seemingly daily basis. But occasionally, I can't help myself from clicking on one of the Trends out of sheer curiosity.

The other day, I happened to see that Evri was trending. Evri, if you're unfamiliar, is the new name that the courier company formerly known as Hermes decided to adopt for themselves a while back. I don't know the reasons for the rebrand and honestly I really don't care, because they're inevitably absolute bullshit and everyone knows that Evri is "really" Hermes anyway, so it's largely irrelevant.

However, what I found when looking at the Evri trend was that everyone was complaining about Evri. Everyone had the same stories to tell of parcels being lobbed over their fence, of packages arriving broken or tampered with, or generally some tale of misfortune and woe related to getting their package delivered from this one specific carrier.

Here's the thing: I've never had a problem with Evri or Hermes. I spent a brief period working for them while I was looking for a proper job and I know what it's like "from the inside" also. While it was a time-consuming, underpaid and largely thankless task for the couriers, it was a reasonably well-run operation in general, and there were various ways in which said couriers were encouraged to do a good job, up to and including being "watched" through the scanny things they're supposed to carry around with them.

As fortune would have it, for some reason during my brief time with the company I never actually got a scanny thing, so I never had to worry about such things — not that I had anything to particularly worry about anyway. But I digress.

I'm not saying no-one has ever had a problem with Evri or Hermes. But if you were to look at that trend on Twitter, the conclusion it would be easy to come to would be that they were a company that should be absolutely, completely and without doubt avoided at all cost, because literally every delivery they do is the absolute worst possible thing that has ever happened to someone, and they have ruined too many Christmases and children's birthdays to count.

This is nonsense. While it's foolish to assume that they're completely without fault — in any sort of "gig economy" sort of situation, you have a risk of bad apples, but this is also true for more formally structured corporations — it's also ridiculous to put across the impression that they're a complete failure that should never be trusted.

It's just one of many examples of the Internet painting the worst possible picture of something. And I could provide plenty of other examples at this point, but I'll refrain from doing so for the sake of time.

What I will urge you to do, however, is that if you see any sort of seemingly universally negative reaction towards something — particularly on any sort of standards-free platform such as social media or user reviews — then be cautious. Chances are the thing that is being ranted and raved about is nowhere near as bad as people are trying to put across — because let's face it, people are a whole lot more likely to complain about something than post about how they had no problems whatsoever with a company or service.

Perhaps we should change our outlook on such things. Perhaps we should start posting positive comments when a company does the right thing and does what is expected of them. Or perhaps that's ridiculous — after all, a service that is being provided to you conforming to your exact expectations should not be particularly worthy of comment at all, because, well, it's what you expected.

But then that means the negativity will always win, because the complainers will always speak up, while the satisfied customers will just quietly get on with their day, thinking nothing more of the company they've interacted with or the service they've received.

Perhaps the answer is just not to listen to anyone and make your own mind up.

I thought your teenage years were the time to not conform, but as I get older, non-conformity becomes more appealing.

As the stereotype of growing up goes, when you're a teenager you're supposed to decide that you want to "rebel" and be something other than the person that your parents took great effort attempting to craft you into.

For me, I don't think that really happened. I mean, sure, I had plenty of the obligatory stroppy teenager moments, when I'd get angry with my parents for what I saw as irrational or unfair decisions, but I never really stepped into the realms of what I'd describe as "counterculture" in any way other than that which I already was: a computer nerd.

And, in our household, that wasn't really counterculture or rebellion at all; our whole family were interested in computers and video games, since they'd been part of our culture at home since before I was born. Not only that, but my father and my brother regularly contributed to the Atari magazine Page 6 (later New Atari User) — and as I moved into my teenage years, I started to contribute a bit also.

But I digress. Nostalgia for times gone by isn't the point of what I want to talk about today. Instead, I want to talk about how homogeneous "Internet culture" has made people today — and how, at the age of forty-one years old, I crave nothing more than rebellion against that homogeneous culture, and feel nothing but frustration at the hordes of people all acting and talking the exact same way.

I'm sure this has always happened in some form or another, but the global nature of the Internet makes it feel like people are losing their own unique (often local) identities. Now, wherever you go, it feels like everyone describes things in the same way, and uses the same often nonsensical turns of phrase.

Every opinion is someone "lowkey thinking" something, even though that doesn't really make any sense.

Every misunderstanding is confronted with "Tell me you haven't [done thing] without telling me you haven't [done thing]."

Every vaguely energetic YouTube video is accompanied by people going "me on the way to school [doing something urgent]."

I feel constant embarrassment at the prospect of linguists of the future looking back at this age and seeing people unironically using the word "pog" at every opportunity.

And there are myriad more, which I'm sure you can think of yourself if you're in a similar position to me.

I can understand why everyone wants to "conform". It's the thing of not wanting to be the outlier, and of wanting to be understood by everyone. But it's boring. If everyone talks about things the same way online — and often has the same opinions, spoon-fed to them by their favourite YouTuber, as often happens — then speaking to one person is much like speaking to any other. You might as well not bother.

Which is why I find myself making a point of very deliberately making use of outdated, very local British slang whenever possible. Yes, it's contrarian, yes, it's childish and stupid, but it's my own little way of feeling like I'm actually my own person rather than being subsumed by the festering, slimy monster that is "Internet culture". Even though I completely recognise that what I'm doing is essentially the exact same thing, only using '90s games magazines as my model.

I think also part of it stems from my Asperger's. Since my diagnosis a few years back, and understanding what that means for my mental health, I feel like I've become much more conscious of the things that sort of "set me off", as it were. And one of those things happens to be predictable, formulaic, repetitive structures, particularly in speech and written communication.

YouTube videos that are always the same drive me bonkers. RuPaul's Drag Race drives me insane for the same reason. And, as I've described, people who all communicate in the exact same way frustrate me also.

I guess in some ways we should perhaps celebrate the way in which people have found how to be near-universally understood online, but I can't help just finding it a bit dull and annoying. I'll keep describing bad things as "bobbins", thank you very much, and replacing the phrase "okay, I understand" with "bonza, Toadie". And there's nothing you can do about it!

My Twitter replacement

Photo by daniyal ghanavati on Pexels.com

Those who have been following the saga of social media for a while will know that Twitter is a right old mess right now. Between Elon Musk's incredible ego and a series of bizarre policy changes and introductions (most of which are likely related to Musk's ego in some form or another) it's certainly been interesting to watch the world's most popular social media platform (for how much longer?) go through some trials and tribulations.

But those of you who have been following me for a while will know that Twitter hasn't been much fun for a long time now. When I first joined (which must have been around 2007 or so, maybe?) it was a great place to make new friends, enjoy good conversation and just generally have a good time. But as the years have gone on — and particularly since the significant online upheavals that can be at least partly attributed to the "Gamergate" mess of 2014 — it's become a less and less desirable hangout, for a variety of reasons.

Chief among them for me is the combative, confrontational tone the site as a whole has taken on. While it is still possible to have civil conversations there, it feels like it's much more likely that if you post an opinion of your own someone will come along and shout it down before long. Even if your opinion is not, in the grand scheme of things, particularly important or worth getting upset over.

Anger seems to be the default state for many posters on Twitter, and this is often expressed through some seriously unpleasant behaviour. Anyone who is into Japanese games, for example, will doubtless have seen the disgusting vitriol that gets thrown the way of localisation staff (more specifically, female localisation staff) on a fairly regular basis, regardless of whether or not any "mistakes" have been made. And the same is true in all fields; the quote-tweet dunk is a universal constant, and it does not make for a friendly environment where one wants to hang out.

But alongside all this, Twitter itself has been changing in functional, mechanical terms. The rise of "The Algorithm" on all manner of social sites — with the most notorious being YouTube, of course — has meant that no longer can you count on your social media experience being your own, if indeed it ever was. Rather than showing you the things that your friends have been posting in the order that they were posted, you now get shit you didn't sign up for pushed into your feed as "recommendations", based on the ill-defined assumptions that Twitter makes about "quality content".

I never signed up to Twitter for "quality content". I signed up to chat with folks from a forum we all used to frequent that we weren't able to use any more due to the site's closure. That's all I really wanted. And that's emphatically not what the site provides these days.

So between the change in atmosphere, the change in the way the whole site works and the whole Musk fiasco, I've come to the conclusion that it's simply not worth wasting time pissing around on Twitter any more — if indeed it ever was. Rather, I think it's high time that I brought this blog back, since it's a much better means for me to express myself — plus the comments section is a much nicer way to hold a conversation in most cases. (Unless those people find their way here, but you know how it is.)

So that's what I'm going to do. I'll be keeping my Twitter account open because it's still useful for things like news aggregation and PR contacts, but pretty much all I'll be posting on there is links to stuff I've done, either for work or for pleasure. When I want to actually talk about something, I'll do it here, like in the good old days.

I'm not making any grand promises about posting frequency or anything like that, this is just going to be an "as and when I feel like it" sort of thing. I'm also not going to commit to doing silly comics or anything, even though I know one particular reader (whom I hope is doing well, given that I haven't heard from her for a while) is a big fan! This is my scratch pad, my brain dump and my place to express myself. No "algorithm" rules the roost here, and as such it's a much better means of getting to know me than the toxic bird site.

So see you around here, I hope!

Gaming Comfort Food

Just recently I have been suffering from what mental health professionals tend to refer to somewhat euphemistically as "low mood" — which is to say I've been feeling really fucking depressed. Video games have long been a part of my own personal coping mechanism for times like this, but I've been somewhat surprised of late as to the specific experiences I've found myself gravitating towards.

In the past, I'd historically try and immerse myself in a thoroughly involving game with a good story to try and get away from feeling bad about everyday life. And don't get me wrong, that's still very much appealing, and something I will absolutely continue with until the end of time. But specifically during my most recent depressive episode, I've found no greater joy than that which I have discovered in the depths of really old video games. Specifically, Atari 2600 and Intellivision titles.

I didn't grow up with the Atari 2600 — it was always the poor cousin to the Atari 8-bit home computers that were in our household during my childhood — but in more recent years I've come to regard the classic system with considerable fondness. This is a result of a combination of factors: the number of times I've watched Mark Bussler's "Classic Game Room" videos on YouTube, where he seems to hold even the very worst Atari 2600 games with a considerable degree of affection, and the Atari A to Z Flashback project I did myself on YouTube, which involved playing through 150 Atari games, many of which were 2600 titles.

The Intellivision, meanwhile, is not a system I had any contact with whatsoever growing up, but having explored it through a combination of Intellivision Lives! on PS2 and the two Evercade Intellivision compilations — both of which I was heavily involved with the production of on the documentation and testing side of things — I have also come to regard it with some fondness. And there are a few games I find myself continually coming back to.

So just for a bit of fun today, I thought I'd pick out a few games that I've been drawing distinct comfort from recently. And if you're open to the idea of really old games — I realise they're an acquired taste for many — then I encourage you to give these a go when you're feeling low. They might just give you the lift you need.

Motocross (Intellivision)

When I first saw Motocross, I thought it looked like a load of old shit. When I first played Motocross, I thought it was a load of old shit. And yet this is probably the Intellivision title I've found myself returning to most frequently of late — there's an undeniably addictive quality to simply chasing your own best times around the three included courses, and on top of that there's a course editor included for you to make your own challenges.

Motocross is an isometric perspective racing game that was noteworthy at the time of its original release for its relatively realistic physics — indeed, the programmer used to troll people in the office by turning the gravity down really low then giggling as people launched themselves into the stratosphere from the various jump ramps.

It's slow and sluggish to play and the scrolling is terrible — the Intellivision wasn't great at that — but once you look past the surface-level ugliness there's a game that strikes a good balance between accessibility and being technically demanding underneath. I've been finding it a great comfort of late.

Enduro (Atari 2600)

The spiritual precursor to The Great American Cross-Country Road Race, Enduro from Activision is an all-time classic for Atari 2600. The concept is simple: you simply have to overtake a set number of cars over the course of a virtual in-game day. If you succeed, you get to keep racing for another day; fail and your race is over. Your aim is simply to record as high a distance as possible on the satisfyingly "rolly numbers" odometer at the bottom of the screen.

Enduro is cool because it's a simple, early vanishing point racer that plays to the Atari 2600's strengths and doesn't try to do anything too ambitious in terms of gameplay. Presentation is another matter, however; this was a noteworthy game back in the day for incorporating a full day-night cycle, variable weather conditions and even a rudimentary form of lighting simulation.

Enduro is simple enough to pick up and play, but massively addictive because of that. You always feel like you might be able to push yourself just that little bit further — and that's just what you need when you're feeling a bit low.

Berzerk (Atari 2600)

It may not be the prettiest or best version of Berzerk — the Atari 8-bit version is rather more authentic to the arcade machine, complete with digitised speech — but the 2600 version has a distinct character all of its own, and it's a ton of fun to play.

For the unfamiliar, Berzerk involves nothing more than moving your little man around and shooting the robots. Clear a room full of robots and you get some bonus points, but stick around too long and Evil Otto comes chasing you down. Like most 2600 games, it's simple but effective, and it really keeps you on your toes as the pace gradually increases.

Cloudy Mountain (Intellivision)

The Intellivision Collection 2 cartridge for Evercade contains two of the platform's best and most ambitious games: Cloudy Mountain (formerly Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Cartridge) and Tower of Doom. Both of these are games that I find myself coming back to regularly, but Cloudy Mountain is probably the one I turn to more often if my brain isn't quite functioning quite correctly and I just want something to fiddle around with for a few minutes.

In Cloudy Mountain, your aim is simple: get your party of three bow-wielding warriors from the little house on the left of the map to the eponymous mountain on the right side of the map. Once there, defeat the two winged dragons guarding the two halves of the Crown of Kings, then grab said Crown and enjoy your well-earned sense of victory. Along the way, you'll have to explore randomly generated dungeons and find helpful items to traverse the various obstacles on the map, with your only defence being your dwindling stock of arrows.

Cloudy Mountain is one of those games that looks and sounds like it might be quite complex when you first try it, but it's actually quite simple — and as such it's a great game to jump into if you just want to play something that doesn't make too many demands of the player.

Missile Command (Atari 2600)

Missile Command is an inherently stressful game, particularly in its arcade incarnation, but I've found the Atari 2600 version on its default difficulty level to strike a good balance between challenge and accessibility. Despite lacking a few features from the arcade game, it plays really well and is an enjoyable game to pick up when I'm not in a great mood.

Most of you reading this probably know Missile Command already, but in case you don't: missiles fly in from the top of the screen, and you have to blast them by setting off explosions in the sky and catching the "heads" of the missile trails in them. Clear out a wave and you get bonus points and the action accelerates. You lose when the six cities you're supposed to be defending get nuked — an inevitability in a game like this, as Missile Command is at least in part a depiction of the futility of nuclear war.

I didn't enjoy Missile Command a ton when I was younger — and I would have probably written the 2600 version off purely for being on the 2600 — but in more recent years I've come to really love this version, and it's a great stress reliever, as well as something of a stress-causer at its higher levels!

So there you go. I'm not going to pretend these games will appeal to everyone these days — for some, they're just too old to be enjoyable, either mechanically or in terms of presentation — but I've been drawing specific comfort from all of these just lately. So if you've found yourself in a similar position, consider returning to your roots and seeing what some of the very earliest games have to offer — you might just find yourself surprised.

What Strange Times We Live In

It's been a peculiar time of late. The Big News at the time of writing is the fact that Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, has died. Opinions are violently polarised on this around the Internet, and I'm not here to start any fights or anything, but I will say that I err on the side of "mildly upset" about it.

The Queen, you see, was a sort of comfortingly familiar presence who had been there my whole life — more than any of the other Royals. Very little she did had any direct impact on my own life, and yet I still found her presence oddly reassuring. She was a constant pillar amid the swirling mists of change; a storm that only feels like it's been building in intensity over the course of my entire life, until we reach today — a time when the whole world very much feels like it's at breaking point.

The Queen was not someone I especially trusted, nor was she someone that I thought was doing a good job of "running the country" — as deliberately disconnected from politics as I have remained for most of my life, I was under no illusions as to whether or not the monarchy had any real power whatsoever. And yet somehow, whenever anyone complained about "our tax money supporting those royal spongers" or whatever the complaint du jour happened to be, I didn't feel like I could get on board with it. Just like I don't feel I can get on board with the people celebrating her passing now.

Because yes, there absolutely are people celebrating her passing, and even people wishing that she suffered. Not just weirdoes on the Internet, either — people who move in some of the same circles as I do, though thankfully not people I'd particularly call "friends" at this point, and especially not after some of the vitriol I've seen them spouting.

Regardless of your feelings on a public figure that has passed, it feels fundamentally disrespectful to spit on their grave in such a manner, particularly so soon after their passing. And honestly, as bleeding-heart as this might make me, I tend to extend this courtesy to the people that the world commonly regards as "evil" also. I didn't whoop and holler and cheer when people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden died; I could celebrate the reaching of a milestone in a conflict or a victory for the supposed "good guys" without taking joy in the death of another human being.

And sure. There are plenty of criticisms one could level at the Queen — though I suspect in the majority of the cases she's more the one who simply rubber-stamped any controversial decisions rather than actually "doing" things herself — but I cannot and will not think that, in any way, justifies some of the genuinely horrible things I've seen people saying over the course of the last couple of days.

The monarchy may be outdated, irrelevant, useless and a waste of money — but she was still our Queen, and a lot of us took an odd amount of pride in her, and drew comfort from her presence. I am, by no means, what you might call a royalist — I take precisely zero interest in what Harry, William and co are up to, for example — but I do feel an important part of our culture has taken that big step into becoming history rather than the present. And things are never quite going to be the same again.