#oneaday Day 85: Find another word than "weird"

It seems that people of a certain — I don't even know if it's age, but it's definitely a specific social group of some description — are incapable of describing something via any word other than "weird". This is particularly apparent on YouTube, where there is a veritable surfeit of videos called, simply, "[x] is weird".

Here's one:

And another:

Here's a brand new one with no views:

And here is part of what is apparently a whole series of the bloody things:

What these videos inevitably go on to describe is something that is emphatically not weird, usually rather mundane and which could have probably been better served with a more descriptive title.

At this point I'm sure someone desperately wants to bring up the American left-wing tendency to refer to anyone on the right of them as "weird", which is a current trend in the run up to the next U.S. presidential election. This is a separate issue — and one which, I have to say, I'm kind of on board with, because nothing shuts down a raging idiot like telling them they're being weird and making an idiot out of themselves — so I am not including it in the trend I am describing above, which has been around a lot longer.

I often find that the "[x] is weird" trend goes hand in hand with the tendency for Certain Types of People (again, not necessarily age-specific, but a definite type) to write things all in lower-case. You can see this in the first video example above. Nothing in the video title or the text on the thumbnail uses a capital letter, even when one is really needed (such as in the word "I", on the name "Tony Hawk" and the abbreviation "THPS" for "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater"). And, again, the people who do this sort of thing often like to make out that exceedingly mundane things are somehow outlandishly remarkable.

I'm not even entirely sure why this bothers me so much. I think it's that "[x] is weird" does the video (it's usually a video), the subject matter the video is covering and the creator of the video a disservice. I'm sure many of these "[x] is weird" videos are actually quite interesting, but I am, at this point, completely put off from clicking on them almost as much as if I see "I played 100 days of [game]".

I guess it's just another example of Stuff That Isn't For Me. And judging by the viewing figures on a couple of those videos I posted above, it seems I'm in a bit of a minority. But still. If you ever catch me posting a video with the name "[game name] is WEIRD" you have full permission to slap me. Even if I'm covering a French home computer game from the early '90s. Now those really WERE weird.

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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#oneaday Day 74: Flashbacks

Yesterday, we updated the rules on a Discord server I help run. The rules did not change from what they were before; they were simply expanded and clarified in a way that allows any of us on the moderation team to easily step in if things look like getting out of hand.

And you know, people absolutely lost their shit over it to a frankly baffling degree. We had people claiming that the server had been "destroyed", that they were no longer able to express themselves fully, that mods were "power hungry"… if you've been on the Internet any length of time all this will be familiar, I'm sure, particularly if you were ever part of forum culture.

I have found the whole experience baffling and extremely frustrating. The new rules amount to "don't be a hateful bigot", "don't be mean to other people" and "please use the channels as they are designed to be used". Bizarrely, it's that last one that got people most upset, because apparently asking people to keep off-topic discussions to the off-topic channel is something approaching a fascist dictatorship.

All this gave me exceedingly unpleasant flashbacks of "behaviour management" when I was working as a teacher. A classroom full of screaming children and a Discord server full of crying adults who are very much old enough to know better are remarkably similar. And it all comes down to people, regardless of age, having a great amount of difficulty with someone who isn't them laying down boundaries.

In both cases, kids and adults, they feel they're not able to behave as they please. In both cases, the rules are in place to help keep things somewhat more orderly: so that lessons can be taught in the classroom, and so that people who came to the Discord server to get specific information can find that information in the latter case.

No-one has quite gone as far as throwing out the "but my free speech!" card as yet but some people came remarkably close earlier. And I suspect we will continue to have some unrest for a few days.

I don't get it. I've always been quite happy to follow the rules when I've been invited into someone's house, be it real or virtual. I'm still mortified about one time, aged 12, when I used the word "bog" to refer to the toilet at a friend's house, only to be admonished that "we don't use that word in this house" (or at least not in front of his mother anyway). If someone asks me to behave myself online, I behave myself. It's really not all that difficult.

I suspect much of it stems from the people in question never having had those boundaries set in the past, and not knowing what to do when they are set — even if they were already following the rules anyway. I suppose it's easy to feel a weird sort of guilt when you're involved in a community and that community feels the need to lay down the law, even if you know you had nothing to do with it.

But honestly, come on now. If you have difficulty with rules that amount to "don't be a dick" and "use this server for its stated purpose", that's an issue with you, not the rules.

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#oneaday Day 68: YouTube thoughts

I've been pondering my YouTube channel ever since I wrote this post. Indeed, I'm still firmly of the opinion that Not Everything Has To Be Content, but I also think I work best when I have some sort of "structure" to proceedings, to know what I'm doing when. So I've come up with something for myself.

This is not intended to be a completely rigid structure of [x] videos per week or anything like that, but more some guidelines for me to work within that allow me to cover my diverse interests, celebrate a variety of games and still focus on the things that I'm most passionate about.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to work on a four-week cycle, which will go as follows:

Week 1: Atari 8-bit. One or two videos on Atari 8-bit games. Now I've covered all the built-in games of The400 Mini, this will be pretty much anything.

Week 2: Atari ST. I love the ST, and there are sections of my audience who love it too, so I want to make sure I make some time for it. Like the Atari 8-bit week, this will be one or two videos on Atari ST games.

Week 3: Public Domain and Magazines. This is relatively "open" to interpretation each time it rolls around, but in this week I'd like to either take some time to read through a magazine on camera, or to cover some of the Page 6 Public Domain Library disks for Atari 8-bit and ST, as I enjoyed the few videos I made on those a while back.

Week 4: Wild Card. This can be absolutely anything I feel like doing. If I feel like playing some DOS games, I'll do that. If I feel like playing some SNES games, I'll do that. If I feel like playing some Amiga games, I'll do that.

I feel good about this; it lets me cover the things that I definitely want to keep covering on the channel, as well as the flexibility to do other stuff. And at any point, I won't feel guilt if I want to take a week off due to fatigue or the weather or anything like that… I'll just pick up where I left off!

So that's that. I'm going to start implementing this from this coming weekend and we'll keep moving from there. I hope you enjoy!

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#oneaday Day 60: Not everything has to be "CONTENT"

I've gone on the record numerous times about how much I hate the word "content" to describe individuals' hard creative work online, but that's not what I want to talk about today. Instead, I want to talk about a somewhat related matter that has arisen as self-publishing your own writing, videos and all manner of other creative material online has become more and more straightforward.

And that is: not everything you enjoy has to become "content". Not everything you do has to turn into a video or an article or a blog post or even something on social media.

I am saying this primarily to myself, because I've definitely felt myself veering in that direction at times. Indeed, a significant portion of my game collection consists of stuff I picked up because I thought it would be fun and/or interesting to write about at some point — though this was back when I was working an incredibly boring job pre-COVID and had both the time and mental energy to be able to post something substantial about video games nearly every day.

The trouble with thinking that "everything has to be content" (and I'm using that phrase as a shorthand, not as approval of the term) is that it gradually makes it more and more difficult to just enjoy yourself — to such a degree that it can lead to a form of analysis paralysis where you end up discarding certain experiences on the grounds that they won't be "meaningful" enough. And by "you" in that sentence, I mean "I".

I am proud of what I have created online: there's this blog, which might be of interest to someone; there's MoeGamer, which features a wealth of in-depth articles about games that don't get much attention anywhere else; and there's my YouTube channel, which focuses primarily on retro platforms that don't get as much love as others.

But my brain is always going. It's always thinking "oh, yeah, wouldn't it be cool to make an in-depth video about Disco Elysium?" or "go for it! You absolutely can write one article for every single game on Evercade!" or "don't start playing something else until you've finished what you're playing, because you might not be able to write about it otherwise".

These of the words of someone who is at risk of turning his hobby into work, and I have become increasingly conscious of it over the last few years. The trouble is, I am increasingly aware of how I'm growing older, and thinking about what sort of "legacy" I want to leave behind. My wife and I aren't having children — by choice, I should probably add — but that doesn't mean I don't want to leave anything behind. I would love it if some of my writing and videos were useful to someone down the road, even if they only have something of a niche interest audience now.

But that doesn't mean I should spread myself too thin and try to cover everything. That's simply unrealistic. So I think I should probably try and impose some restrictions on myself to keep my "ambitions" under control, because otherwise I risk 1) overwhelming and burning myself out, and 2) never being able to "just enjoy" something ever again.

So for now I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to keep my YouTube channel focused near-exclusively on Atari stuff: primarily 8-bit and ST, perhaps with some 2600 stuff thrown in here and there if I can be bothered. MoeGamer I'd like to get back to doing some stuff a little more regularly with, so I think I will continue to use that as a means of posting in-depth thoughts on games I've actually finished in the case of narrative-heavy games, or spent enough time with to be able to comment on in the case of gameplay-centric titles. That may mean updates are sporadic, but there's nowt wrong with that. It's not a professional site, and I'm not in a position where I need or want to use it as a "portfolio" of sorts right now.

Evercade stuff is my day job, so any time I'm tempted to write something or make a video about Evercade stuff in my free time, I should instead channel that energy into doing something about it during working hours, particularly if I hit a period of "downtime" between major time-sensitive jobs. Of course, there are things I can't do or say when doing things from a "professional" perspective, but honestly it doesn't really matter too much; if I was doing Evercade stuff privately, I'd be wanting to explain why each and every game (yes, even the "bad" ones) is interesting and worth exploring rather than tearing it apart, and that's not much different from taking a slightly more "marketing" approach. (Incidentally, if you want to see some of the stuff I've done professionally for Evercade, check out the official Evercade blog, and particularly the Evercade Game Spotlight, Evercade Cartridge Preview and Top 5s sections.)

Everything else? I should just enjoy it. Sit back, enjoy without guilt. Write about it or make a video if I feel like it, but don't place undue pressure on myself to make everything into a video or an article. Sometimes a good time is just a good time and doesn't need writing about. Sometimes a good time is something best kept to yourself. Sometimes it's nice to try and forget that the Internet exists, and get yourself back into the '80s mindset of just enjoying things because.

Anyway, that's my ramble for today. I'm off to go put it into practice.

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#oneaday Day 59: Popularity produces pricks

And not in the way you might be thinking. Okay, there are times when someone getting popular or enjoying some success with something leads to them becoming a prick, but that is not what I'd like to talk about today. I'd like to talk about life as a small-scale creative person on the Internet, and what happens when something you produce manages to extend far outside of its usual audience.

I'm prompted to talk about this as a result of the thoroughly lovely RoseTintedSpectrum's recent video on the first series of beloved video game TV show GamesMaster, which, to put it mildly, has been doing numbers since he released it. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend giving it a look:

What we've all been noticing since the video started blowing up, however, is how much more frequent comments from complete arseholes become once you cross a particular popularity threshold. Not necessarily comments that are being directly insulting to the video maker, but comments from people who are just being dickish. People who use terms like "woketard". People who think the '90s was a utopia where white people flourished and you never, ever had to look at those filthy Muslims. You know the sort of people. The same sort of people who cry "DEI" anyone someone with a slight tan appears on screen.

When this first started happening, we were discussing the phenomenon in a Discord server that hosts a number of UK-based retro gaming and retro tech YouTubers, and we all had similar stories to share. There comes a point, it seems, usually after you cross the 1,000 views mark, where there's a marked uptick in comments from twats.

It makes sense when you think about it. A video blowing up and getting a lot of views means that it's being pushed by the ever-mysterious YouTube Algorithm to people beyond your usual audience and subscriber base, which means people from circles you might not normally mix (or want to associate) with may start stopping by. And boy, do they love to hear themselves talk.

I had something similar a while back when I had my own video "blow up". It was this one, a video I'm still pretty pleased with, but which left me feeling well and truly vindicated in just making videos about what pleases me, rather than what is guaranteed to be "popular".

Because what no-one tells you about getting popular and suddenly attracting all these complete penii is that it's genuinely stressful and often quite upsetting. I got to a point where I had to "pause" comments on the video above because the influx of them was stressing me out so much. And I wasn't even getting nearly as many dickheads as Rosie is getting on his video. It was just overwhelming, and not in a good way; I did not like it at all.

The same is true for anything tangentially related to social media or online presence. Post something — be it picture, video, blog post, article, whatever — that manages to get a significant reach, and it's seemingly inevitable that you'll have to deal with dickheads. This is, of course, frustrating, because one would hope that it's possible to get a significant reach on something without attracting the very dregs of Internet society, but with every "success story" like the ones I've described above, it seems increasingly inevitable that the dickheads? Oh they will come. They will come in droves.

I wonder how many people have been put off from a potential career of making creative things online by this sort of thing. I guess after a certain point you start to get used to it and be able to tune things out — and once you reach a certain size as an online personality, you can start hiring staff to take care of things like the comments section for you, so you can focus exclusively on actually making the videos.

But for everyone who gets to the point where they're able to hire a staff, I'm sure there are myriad more who gave up the first time they saw mild success, because the dickheads came. And I can't help thinking that's a real shame. Online culture shouldn't have come to this. But it has, and we just have to live with it, it seems, because no-one seems in a particular hurry to do anything about it.

Thank heavens for YouTube's "Hide user from channel" setting, at least, which means the dickhead of your choice is banished to the abyss; you'll never see them in your comments section again, and neither will the rest of your audience — but, here's the fun bit: they're still able to rage impotently at you, never knowing that you've effectively "blocked" them because YouTube doesn't tell them that.

This is the one bit of YouTube I can honestly say is absolutely masterful. There are few things better than knowing that there are dickheads who think they're posting amazing putdowns of your latest work, only for their comments to be silently banished to the abyss before they get anywhere near you.

Anyway, the Internet sucks, but go subscribe to Rosie 'cause he makes good vids. Ta-ra.

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#oneaday Day 58: Was Ignorance Bliss?

There's some nasty shit going on in the world right now. Without getting bogged down in the details, there are some vicious riots going on "Up North" in this green and pleasant land, following the horrible killing of several young girls at their dance class.

It's hard to understand quite how outrage over the murders has escalated to what it is, but it's fair to say that things have gotten A Bit Racist, to say the least. Last I heard of the situation, a Holiday Inn Express that was supposedly housing immigrants — immigrants completely unrelated to the murders, I might add — was besieged by exactly the sort of people you're probably picturing when talking about people who are A Bit Racist Against Immigrants.

I won't dwell on the situation because I haven't read up much on it, so I'll refrain from commenting further about specifics. But it's brought something into focus for me which is a tad worrying: the fact that despite how we're supposedly a lot more tolerant, progressive and understanding these days, as a society, a lot more of this horrible shit appears to be happening.

Whether it's racist riots against people who had nothing to do with a horrible crime, transphobia at the Olympics (against someone who isn't actually trans) or just general foul behaviour and intolerance, we seem to have hit something of a bump in the road in attempting to create a 21st century utopia.

Who am I kidding; we absolutely were not on the road to a utopia. Everything has been going to shit for a while, so it's perhaps not altogether surprising that people are starting to act up, even if their behaviour and attitudes are completely misdirected. So I have to ask myself: was ignorance actually bliss?

I think back to my time living through the '80s, '90s and '00s and I don't remember ever feeling the sense of existential anxiety and dread over the world that I do these days. It's entirely possible that this was entirely due to our collective ignorance of various groups of people who were downtrodden and oppressed, which of course carries its own problems, but I don't remember encountering anywhere near the sort of outright hatred that is expressed today towards certain groups.

And it wasn't as if we weren't aware of the people who come in for the brunt of the abuse today. I just legitimately don't remember the hatred being anywhere near as vicious as it is today.

At least some of that is down to social media, of course. It's entirely possible that hatred like this was going on, but no-one saw it because not everyone had the means to plaster all their odious beliefs over every available space online. There was no "collective public space" like Twitter once was (and I don't think it is that any more, since a significant portion of people have abandoned it completely, and the most active of those remaining tend to veer fairly hard right) and so people tended to stick to their own communities.

On the one hand, that probably allowed hate groups to thrive in private; on the other, well, you can see the result of everyone being thrown together just from a casual glance at Twitter on any given day. It's not pretty.

Part of the existential anxiety and dread I feel over this whole situation is whether or not I "should" be doing something more, or even if that's possible. I've always settled for some variation of "treat others as you would like to be treated", and even take that as far as not commenting mean things on YouTube videos I really dislike (because I hate it when I get horrible comments). But is that really enough today? And if not, what can one do, other than simply actively not be a racist transphobic shit, and not go deliberately seeking fights?

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#oneaday Day 56: Disconnect

I'm officially on holiday for a week! I don't have anything much planned for the time off, aside from our trip on Thursday to go and look at pianos, but I'm going to try and be vaguely "productive" with my time. That means I'm going to try and force myself out in this heat and into the gym — once I'm in the air conditioning, I'm sure it'll be fine — and I'm going to record some videos, and perhaps write some stuff.

One thing I'm going to try and make an effort to do is not look at "online" stuff as much as humanly possible. I'm not going to look at Twitter (easy, since I don't have an account any more except the official one I use for work), I'm not going to look at Facebook (ditto), I'm not going to look at BlueSky (easy enough) and I'm probably going to try and ration my Discord usage as much as possible also.

I just don't want to know, you see. I don't want or need to know what people are arguing about today, or what the worst people on the Internet are being sexist, racist or transphobic about today. I don't want to know about the seemingly endless parade of layoffs in the games industry. And I don't want to know how shit online media in general is. I know all these things. They are not going to change.

Instead, I would like a nice, quiet week off, away from it all as much as possible. This will demand a certain amount of willpower, of course, but I'm confident I can find enough things to occupy myself with that I won't need to idly flip through social-related apps on my phone. I have games to play, books to read, episodes of Deep Space Nine to watch, music to play, videos to make and all manner of other things. So why should I waste my time with stuff that, on balance, makes me miserable?

I shouldn't, obviously. So that's the plan. Minimise looking at anything potentially upsetting, frustrating or annoying online and just enjoy the things I have around me. I will, of course, still be checking in here and those videos I'm making will be up on YouTube, but aside from that… a bit of "digital detox" is just what the doctor ordered for a week. I hope it leaves me feeling refreshed, because heaven knows I feel run-down right now.

Time for the first sleep of the holiday, then. Bring on the aircon!

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#oneaday Day 55: Do Not Turn AI On Without Asking Me

Partway through writing the previous post, I was surprised to see a weird yellow underline appear under one of the words I'd used. I hovered over it and was horrified to see the symbol no-one wants to see pop up, completely unasked for and unbidden. It seems that Automattic, makers of WordPress and specifically the JetPack plugin that handles things like social sharing and search engine optimisation, have been sneaking in an "AI Assistant" without anyone asking for it.

And I really haven't asked for it, because I saw it pop up in the sidebar a few months back and immediately turned it off in the options. See:

And yet turning it off in there has not made it go away. Because this shit is still here:

I do not want this. I did not ask for this. I specifically turned this off and it's still fucking there. And you can guarantee with that "Available Requests" counter at the bottom, they're going to try and sell me a subscription plan to get more "credits" for their stupid pointless pile of crap feature.

I am not the only one who feels this way. And the fact that comments are closed on WordPress' blog announcing this garbage feature speaks volumes.

A recent study published by the Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management suggests that the terms "AI" or "artificial intelligence" are proving a turnoff to users.

"When AI is mentioned, it tends to lower emotional trust," said the lead author Mesut Cicek. "We found emotional trust plays a critical role in how consumers perceive AI-powered products."

The study is mostly around purchasing decisions rather than just generally using services, but the point stands: people see "AI" in something these days, and unless they're an insufferable Silicon Valley-poisoned techbro, they are immediately switched off by it. Social network Bluesky recently announced that they were partnering with social analytics and scheduling platform Buffer, and the response was universally negative not because Buffer is a particularly bad service on the whole — I've used it in the past — but because they, like so many other tech companies right now, have shoehorned in an "AI Assistant" when no-one wanted one.

No-one wants this. Stop trying to make AI happen. It's not going to happen.

I've long recommended WordPress as a great platform for folks who want to build a regularly updated website without getting too deep into the nitty gritty of web dev. But forcing AI on people may cause me to rethink that somewhat.

I wouldn't mind it being there if it was opt-in, and one could ignore it. But it is not. It is turned on by default. And you can't make it completely go away, only stop it being quite as annoying.

I cannot wait for this AI "gold rush" to be over. It is infesting everything even vaguely tech-related right now, including services that, as noted, I would previously have recommended without any reservations whatsoever.

Fuck off, AI. As a large language model, you are ill-equipped to receive my fist up your arsehole, but you're going to anyway.

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#oneaday Day 53: Our AI-powered dystopian garbage future

I was unfortunately exposed to this video today:

For those who quite understandably can't bring themselves to watch it based on the thumbnail and source alone, it's a video about how a dad is super-proud of his daughter and her athletics ability, but how he also knows that his daughter idolises an Olympic athlete. All seemingly wholesome and nice on the surface, until the main point of the ad: the Dad gets Google Gemini (which is Google's ChatGPT-esque chatbot interface) to write the athlete in question a "fan letter" that is supposedly from his daughter.

It's difficult to know exactly where to start with how fucked up this is. But I think as good a place as any is to point out that written communication between people has always been a means of direct, personal contact — particularly if it's via what is seen as a medium that takes a bit more effort, such as a handwritten letter. Of course, chances are that if the "fan letter" ever made it to the athlete in question, any response would probably be a carefully vetted template from a PR representative rather than the athlete herself, which sticks something of a pin in the "direct, personal contact" thing, but that's no reason that regular people who aren't PR consultants should auto-generate things that are supposed to be personal.

If someone inspires you, you presumably respect them. And if you respect them, you should demonstrate that respect by making an appropriate effort when attempting to contact them. And getting an AI to write a fan letter for you is the height of disrespect. It tells the recipient that you don't even respect them enough to communicate with them in your own words. It tells them that you would rather get a machine to handle your communication than "waste time" writing things yourself.

"But what about people who aren't able to write?" you may ask. To that I would point out that in order to get Google Gemini to write something, you still have to write a fucking prompt for it, and if you're capable of doing that you're capable of writing a letter. They teach how to do that in primary school. At least they used to.

There are myriad other ways to get your point across without getting garbage generative AI involved, even if you're incapable of holding a pen or typing on a keyboard. There's voice recognition, allowing you to still communicate in your own words without typing. Or you can get someone to help you — remember other people? Remember how to speak to them? Or do you need ChatGPT for that too? I'm a socially anxious autistic recluse and I can still talk to a person if I absolutely have to, and on more than one occasion I have sent some form of personal message to someone who genuinely inspires me, all in my own words.

We absolutely should not normalise the use of AI to craft even form responses to emails. I used to get mildly offended when a pal of mine used the "auto-respond" text message facility on his phone, which would send a rather blunt "Answer is YES" or "Answer is NO" SMS on his behalf if he couldn't be bothered to type a full message, but at least in that instance I know he had at least read my message and considered whether to respond in the affirmative or negative.

AI zealots seem to think that garbage like this is going to revolutionise communication between human beings, making it "more efficient" or some such bullshit. But all it's going to do is remove any semblance of personality from an individual's method of communication with you — something which is already somewhat at risk as a result of the homogenisation of culture brought about by the Internet. Look at how many people fall back on the same memes and turn of phrase these days rather than communicating in their own individual fashion, using their background and location as a means of making their communication unique. Now imagine even that layer of personalisation being taken away, with everyone "communicating" with one another using that smug, pretentious tone all AI chatbots appear to have developed.

"You're just resistant to change!" Yes, I am, if that "change" is demonstrably harmful to the way we interact with one another and our culture in general. Anyone who uses AI to communicate with someone rather than drafting an email, chat message or social media post themselves is an inconsiderate, disrespectful asshole, and I will absolutely not shift my opinion on this. I will, however, point and laugh.

So fuck off with your "Gemini" garbage, Google. And Mr Man's little girl? Tell your father to go fuck himself, punch him in the balls hard enough that he doesn't have any more children, and go write something yourself, with a pen. I can guarantee that your idol Sydney will find that far more meaningful and emotionally worthwhile than what is effectively a form letter that you didn't even write the prompt for.

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#oneaday Day 51: The Art of the Thumbnail

I'm in a Discord with some other (relatively) low-subscriber retro gaming and tech YouTubers, and we've had some interesting discussions over there. One subject that comes up frequently that I think I've derived the most value from is that of video thumbnails.

To put this in context, prior to joining this Discord, and for quite some time, my YouTube channel looked something like this:

I don't dislike this look. I was rather fond of how each "series" I was doing had its own distinct appearance, and I feel each thumbnail got nicely to the point: telling viewers that it was a video about a particular game on a particular platform.

But that's not really how YouTube works. However nice it looks to have a lineup of games with lovely consistent thumbnails Criterion Collection-style, it doesn't necessarily bring the views in. And so, with the advice and encouragement of the folks in the aforementioned Discord, I do things a little bit differently now.

This is how my channel looks today:

I'm pleased with this. Because I feel like these thumbnails do a much better job of intriguing and attracting the viewer's attention without assuming knowledge — i.e. "what is 'Atari A to Z'?" — while still allowing me a certain degree of consistency and coherence that makes my work immediately identifiable if you know what to look for.

Best of all, I haven't resorted to any of the more flagrantly transparent "clickbait" techniques, and "YouTube Face" is nowhere to be seen. The videos I make on YouTube are not for the same audience as Mr. Beast, so I make zero effort to court the sort of people who respond to those sorts of thumbnails.

And it works. At least I think so. Some of my videos perform about as well as what I considered a "solid performance" two or three years ago — that is to say, breaking three figures in the view count — but quite a lot more of them exceed that by two, three or even four times. And I've had a few breakout successes: my Super Woden GP 2 video sits at 86K views to date, my look at Ultima love letter Moonring has 21K views to date (and a very long tail), my video covering the announcement of The400 Mini attracted 14K views, and most recently a video on Project Gotham Racing 3 brought in a relatively modest but still impressive-for-my-channel 2.5K pairs of eyes.

I don't do this for the views, as I quite frequently state; I do it because I enjoy it. But I won't pretend it's not nice when a video does well — at least partly because it results in a bit of pocket money for me. That Super Woden GP 2 video made me over a hundred quid within a few days of it being posted. And now I get a small payout from YouTube earnings (i.e. the minimum payment threshold) every couple of months, whereas once it was a far-off goal I thought I'd never achieve. That's nice.

The secret behind those thumbnails? It's not really anything complicated. The most effective advice from the Discord I've followed is to keep text to just a few bold words, and present those words using at least two of the following: a bold outline around the letters; a bold drop shadow; and slightly rotating various parts of the complete text so that the eye is drawn to lines that aren't quite "straight". That's about it. I don't overuse colour; I don't overdo the "big red arrow" or "circling the obvious thing" tricks (although I put in a big red arrow occasionally as an in-joke to the group, which refers to itself as the "Big Red Arrow Club"); and, as noted, I don't do the "YouTube Face".

It works for me. The result is a channel full of videos I'm proud to call my own, and which a gradually (very gradually) growing number of people are coming to appreciate. That's pleasing to me.

YouTube and YouTube culture has myriad problems, but it's still the best place to create and share stuff like this. It's a valuable means of self-expression and sharing one's interests, and it's something I'm glad I decided to get stuck into exploring properly.

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