2014: Making Connections

Although I'm not pretending to have any real understanding of social interactions in general — in fact, as I often mention, I go through life feeling like I really do't know what to do in a lot of "everyday" social situations — I find the way little communities and cliques develop to be fascinating, both to observe from the outside, and to be a part of from within.

I have a few examples in mind. First, and most prominent, is Twitter. I've drifted from group to group a bit since I originally joined Twitter a number of years back. Originally, my use of Twitter was primarily to have a means of talking to my online friends with whom I used to interact on 1up.com. After "The Great Exodus", when 1up's specialised forums were mashed together into a NeoGAF-style monstrosity of just "Games" and "Not Games", a significant proportion of the community left the site's forums, and many of them found themselves on Twitter. Over time, people changed, moved and became involved in different things. Some gave up on Twitter altogether; others started using it for professional purposes; others still "rebranded" themselves.

I fell somewhat into the latter category. After suffering a fairly serious instance of doxxing and harassment back in 2013 — see, it's not just women it happens to, contrary to what the media would have you believe — I left Twitter, initially intending not to return, but after realising what a pile of crap Facebook is for actually interacting with people in a meaningful manner, I returned. After realising that the interminable social justice yelling on Twitter was setting off my depression and anxiety, I left again. This time when I came back (they always come back) I decided to "reinvent" myself a bit, and follow fewer of the people I felt I "should" be following, and instead focused on people who posted things I found interesting or enjoyable to interact with. Consequently, these days I find myself on the fringes of "anitwitter", a subculture on the social network that discusses, posts screencaps and generally enthuses about anime and games. I, as you might expect, fit right in.

Elsewhere on the Internet, the Discord server I mentioned the other day (which, dear reader, you're still welcome to come and join) has been developing slowly but surely, but it's our Final Fantasy XIV Free Company server that is perhaps the more interesting example. Taking cues from the in-game friend who introduced me to Discord in the first place, I added an "NSFW" (Not Safe for Work) channel to the server. It immediately became the most active channel in the place, though initially people weren't quite sure what to post in there, i.e. whether or not it was okay to post filth. (It was, though someone stumbled accidentally into it and complained a bit at being confronted with a wall of hentai, so we've since made it invite-only — community management at work!)

What's interesting about the NSFW channel is that the usual boundaries of "politeness" that are up when interacting with other people online in real time — in my experience, anyway; I tend not to hang around with the sort of people who hurl insults and abuse at one another — are nowhere to be seen. I don't mean that people are rude to one another; quite the opposite, in fact. The NSFW channel is a place where everyone can be open and honest about the things that they like, and where no-one judges one another for the things they talk about and post. (Or, if they do, they keep that to themselves.) It's pretty refreshing and liberating, actually, and makes it abundantly clear that there should probably be more places for people — particularly, it has to be said, men — to be able to talk about things like sex, fetishes and all that sort of thing without fear of judgement or anything like that. I shan't go into any further details than that, but suffice to say we're all having a jolly old time in there.

Anyway, yeah. Online communities. Just as interesting as real communities, I think you'll agree…

2011: Let's Talk!

A little while ago, I wrote about chat app Discord and how I thought it was a jolly fine piece of software that had all but replaced Skype and various other solutions for, among other things, in-game voice chat.

Besides high-quality voice chat, Discord is also pretty great for creating text chat servers with custom channels (each of which can have their own permissions set if you so desire) and various other bits and pieces here and there. The app is clearly largely designed with the Final Fantasy XIV community in mind, given its built-in commands to search sites like XIVDB and Gamerescape, but it's also a flexible, lightweight, easy-to-use and cross-platform chat app that is super-easy to get signed up for and really easy to use.

So I'd like to invite you along to come and chat! I created a server named after my other website MoeGamer, along with a bunch of channels. The server is primarily intended for people to talk about Japanese video games, anime, manga and the like, but there are a selection of other channels for people to talk about what they might be interested in. I've had a few people sign up over the course of the day, but not really much participation as yet; understandable, really, since no-one wants to be the first person to say something!

A request, then, dear reader. If you'd like to have a chat with me and hopefully some other like-minded individuals, please do two things for me.

Firstly, join the server here. (You can use Discord via the Web, but I recommend downloading the standalone app for the best and most flexible experience.)

Secondly, participate! Jump into a channel you like the sound of — the invite link I've provided will take you to a "welcome" channel that gives you a summary of what all the other channels are all about — and start talking. Even if no-one seems to be saying much to begin with, people who join the server and channels will see the conversation history when they come along for the first time, so if there are some comments, thoughts and even pictures for people to respond to when they sign up, new members will be more inclined to start participating themselves.

I'd love to build this server into a nice little community where we can chat, share stories, share pics and share our thoughts on all things anime, gaming, manga and whatnot. Discord is a great means of doing just that, and I'd love to see more people making use of it and supporting the great work the developers are doing — it's currently only in alpha, and is already a really well put together piece of software. And who knows? You might even make a few new friends or discover a few new interests in the process.

See you there!

1999: Sowing Discord

I'm always interested to find alternative ways to do things when it comes to technology, particularly if a once-reliable tool has become a messy piece of bloated crap.

Such is my feeling towards Skype, the well-known piece of messaging software that old people think is the only means of talking to people in other countries via the Internet.

Skype used to be great. It used to be simple, efficient, easy to use and easy to understand. It was intuitive and worked well. Then Microsoft got hold of it, and the entire application was redesigned from top to bottom and made almost the exact opposite of all the above adjectives. It's now a cluttered, inefficient, clunky and unintuitive pile of hot garbage — and, for many users, a hog on system resources, too. It still does the job — just about — but its frustrating aspects far outweigh its benefits for me these days, particularly when all I really use it for is in-game chat for games that don't directly support voice chat.

I was switched on to an app called Discord by a part-time member of our raid group in Final Fantasy XIV. I've never really looked into gaming-centric VOIP solutions like TeamSpeak or Mumble before, largely because they sounded complicated (and sometimes expensive) to set up. But Discord promised to be free, easy to set up and intuitive.

And what do you know? It really is.

Discord works similarly to services like TeamSpeak and Mumble in that you set up "servers", which are private collections of text and voice channels that can each have their own permissions set. People then join the server's public channels and, where applicable, are invited to private channels as necessary. From there, it's a nicely self-contained system that means you can keep all your in-game friends in one easy-to-manage place, and you can make use of voice chat with them without having to dick around with "calling" each other — you just all join the same communal channel.

Best of all, it's cross-platform, and even works in your web browser if you're on a public computer or don't want to download anything. It has game auto-detection systems that let your friends know what you're playing and if you're online, and some highly customisable notifications and text-to-speech options for true flexibility. In short, it seems like a really great piece of software that is an ideal solution for those who want a means of chatting with one another both in-game and out of the game, and it's certainly a lot better than the big bag of dicks Skype has become over the course of the last couple of years or so.

I'm conscious I sound like an advert here, but, well, if you're looking for something that fits the description I've given above, give it a shot. (If, on the other hand, you're an elderly person looking to talk to your children who live abroad, as the stereotype goes, Skype probably still fits your needs just fine.)

Find out more here.

1997: Chromecast Initial Impressions

Picked up a Chromecast today, Google's little HDMI dongle that you can plug into your TV (assuming you have an HDMI socket) and stream stuff from your phone, tablet or computer to. Andie and I had been thinking about getting one for a while — primarily so if we want to watch TV at night we're not forced to suffer Dave's endless reruns any longer — but hadn't got around to it. Finding myself at a loose end today, I went and forked over £30 (they're the same price wherever you go, which is nice) to pick one up.

Setting it up was pleasantly simple. It was a matter of going to the Chromecast site on my phone, which subsequently redirected me to Google Play to download the Chromecast app. (I could have skipped that first step if I'd known there was an app involved.) The Chromecast app then walked me through the process of setting it up — a process which took about two minutes, the most complicated part of which was going downstairs to find out what the Wi-Fi password was — and it was then ready to go.

Using it is pretty easy, too. There are several ways you can use it: certain apps such as Netflix, YouTube and Crunchyroll (the three sites where I watch most of my videos these days) support Chromecast natively and effectively allow you to use your phone, tablet or computer as a "remote" and beam the video directly to the TV; other services effectively "mirror" what's on your device to the TV, and via the Chromecast app itself (or natively in your phone's OS if it's one of the relatively small selection of phones that support it) you can mirror your whole phone's screen and sound to the TV. (This latter option is perhaps less practical than it sounds; it's no good for gaming, for example, as there's a noticeable lag of a second or two between doing something on the phone and it happening on the screen, but then it probably wasn't really designed for that.)

Alongside getting the Chromecast set up, I finally also set up Unblock Us on my phone. Unblock Us is a service that allows you to "trick" sites such as Netflix, Crunchyroll and the like into thinking you're in a different territory to where you actually are. The reason why this is useful is that different territories have different stuff available — Netflix's American version, for example, has a bigger selection than its British counterpart, though the later has improved significantly over time. It was a bit of a faff to set up on the phone, because you have to set up IP addresses manually rather than simply downloading a little applet to sort it all out for you (which is how you do it on a computer) but once I managed to find the right combination of numbers to put into the various slots on the form, I was happily streaming Bojack Horseman to my TV via my phone.

I'm really impressed so far. The picture quality is excellent and the streaming seems to be reliable, even though our Wi-Fi signal isn't all that strong upstairs. It's definitely going to fulfil our desire for streaming video in our bedroom, and for those of you with a slightly older, non-Smart HDTV, it's a cheap and effective means of getting most of the benefits of a newer unit without having to break the bank or find a space for a 55-inch behemoth.

Thumbs up to Chromecast, then. Looking forward to playing with it some more.

1994: The Beginner's Guide to Twitter

Longtime supporter of this blog and regular commenter Jud joined Twitter recently, and seems to be at a bit of a loss as to what to do with it. I remember feeling much the same way when I first joined the site; it was quite some time before I got a feel for what it was all about and how it worked. So with that in mind, today's entry is dedicated to Jud and anyone else who doesn't understand what Twitter is, how it works and how to use it.

What is Twitter?

Twitter always used to position itself as a "microblogging" platform; a means for people to express themselves in deliberately short snippets of text: no more than 140 characters. Over time, it's evolved, and can now be used for a lot of different things: as a means of staying up-to-date on topics that interest you; as a means of socialising with people who share your interests; as a means of staying in touch with friends; and as a means of yelling abuse at random strangers on the Internet.

The most important thing about Twitter is that it is a public means of communication. That means that anything you put on Twitter can be read by anyone on the Internet, and they don't necessarily have to have a Twitter account to do so. There is the option to make your account "private" — which means only people who are already following you or people you specifically grant the ability to follow you after they request it can see your tweets — but using that kind of misses part of the appeal of the site, which is coming into contact with people you may not have otherwise "met".

The best way of thinking of Twitter in metaphorical terms is that it's a bit like being at a party, but a rather strange party where everyone present is constantly making speeches in the hope that someone will listen to them. Someone who follows you is someone who is listening to your speech; your tweets themselves make up the speech. This is the simplest possible use of Twitter; use it to express short snippets of thoughts and opinions into the world, and hope that someone, somewhere finds it interesting.

Key terms

Timeline: the main screen you see on Twitter, consisting of all the tweets from people you are following. The most recent tweets are at the top, and as you scroll down the page you'll see older and older tweets. The screen will keep scrolling forever in most circumstances, so don't try and reach the bottom, otherwise you'll be there all day.
Tweet: A single 140-character public message that may or may not include mentions.
Mention: A tweet that includes another user's username.
Direct Message: A private message between two or more Twitter users.
Profile: An individual user's Twitter page that shows just their tweets along with some brief biographical information they may have chosen to share. You can access any user's profile by going to http://twitter.com/username, replacing username with the username of the user whose profile you would like to see. For example, to see my Twitter profile, you'd visit http://twitter.com/AstralFireIII.
Avatar: (also "avi") The small image a user uses to represent themselves on Twitter. The default avatar is an egg on a coloured background. Since a lot of people habitually ignore "egg avatars" as they're a common sign of spammers, it's best to put some form of personalised image here as soon as possible; it doesn't have to be a picture of yourself.
Banner: The large image that appears at the top of your profile.
Follower: Someone who has chosen to follow you and have your tweets appear in their timeline.
Mute: An option that allows you to stop seeing tweets from people or that contain particular terms without outright blocking them.
Block: An option that prevents another user from interacting with you or seeing your tweets.
Retweet: An option that allows you to reshare someone's tweet onto your follower's timelines (optionally with a comment of your own), even if they aren't following the person you retweet.
Livetweet: A slang terms used to describe someone using Twitter to provide "live" updates on a situation that is unfolding. Most commonly used during press conferences or big news events where things can be announced, revealed or happen dramatically and quickly.

How do I interact with people?

There are several ways you can do this:

Mention: Also known as "@replies", mentioning someone involves including the "at" ("@") sign followed immediately by someone's username somewhere in your tweet. If you do this, the recipient will receive a notification that you have mentioned them.
Important to note about mentions is the fact that if you put the @username at the beginning of the tweet, only people who are following the recipient of your mention will see your mention in their timeline. If you want your reply to be more "public" and visible to everyone, even if they're not the recipient, you can either put the @username elswhere in the tweet (at the end is common) or put something before the initial @username such as a full stop. The latter practice is often known as "dot-replying" and is considered bad form by some people.

In our "party" context from earlier, this is like replying to someone's public speech and having a public discussion that other people can overhear.
Subtweet: I include this here only because people complain about it all the time. Subtweeting is a made-up word used to describe passive-aggressive tweets that don't directly mention someone, but which are clearly and obviously about a particular person. While it's delightfully easy to be passive-aggressive on Twitter, subtweeting is considered the height of bad form, so avoid it.
In our "party" context, this is like making pointed comments about someone without actually mentioning them or talking directly to them. ("Someone should have looked in the mirror before coming out tonight!)
Direct Message: Also known as a "DM", a Direct Message is what you use if you want a private conversation with one or more other Twitter users. Direct Messages do not appear on your respective timelines, and instead appear in the Messages tab. To send a Direct Message to someone, either go to a user's profile or the Messages tab.
In our "party" context, this is like dragging someone off to the bathroom (or room of your choice) for a private conversation.
Favourite: Clicking the "star" icon (it sometimes appears as a "heart" on some Twitter apps) under a tweet has a similar effect to the "like" button on Facebook. It's an interaction that basically says "I like this" or "I want to keep track of this for later". You can revisit your favourites from your own profile page, or look at other people's favourites from theirs. Favourites are public!
In our "party" context, this is like nodding approvingly at something someone has said. Alternatively, some people use it like making a note of something someone said to revisit later.
Retweet: If you see a tweet you particularly like, agree with or just want to share for one reason or another, you can retweet it. This means it will appear in all your followers' timelines, even if they don't follow the person you retweeted. You can optionally add a comment to a retweet if you want to add your own thoughts on it.
In our "party" context, this is like repeating something someone said to you earlier to someone else.
Hashtags: Adding the hash sign ("#") to a word (or cluster of words with no spaces) turns it into a hashtag, which your followers (and you!) are then able to click on to see other people talking about the same thing. This is most commonly used by marketers or communities who want to keep track of discussion on a given topic easily without having to follow hundreds of individual users. Some hashtags become mini-communities in their own right.
In our "party" context, this is like all the jocks clustering in one corner and talking among themselves, all the nerds in another corner talking among themselves, and all the Game of Thrones fans sitting in another corner giving their own play-by-play commentaries of the episode that is currently on the television.

What else can I do on Twitter?

Besides following people and interacting with them via the means listed above, you can also group people (including those you aren't following) into Lists, each of which then gets its own individual timeline — this is useful for collecting together things that you might want to keep track of, but don't want to clutter your main timeline with.

There's also a powerful search function that lets you look for users, hashtags, topics and even specific things people have said.

What should be the first things I do on Twitter?

Update your profile. Make sure that you can be found (assuming you want to be found!) by including your name (or a known pseudonym you use) and some biographical information, optionally including your location.
Add an avatar. Egg avatars are habitually ignored, so put a new picture in as soon as possible. Go to your profile and hit the Edit button and it's simple to do.
Follow some people. Twitter is made for socialising, so follow some people you find interesting or want to stay in touch with. Don't feel obliged to follow all the people they follow, because you may have different interests. Instead, over time, gradually curate your following list until your timeline looks the way you want it to.
Interact with people. People won't follow you back unless you give them a reason to. Interact with them, talk with them, engage with the things they're saying.
Try not to get into any fights. Twitter's brevity is a blessing and a curse; the 140-character limit protects against waffling somewhat (though many people get around this by simply chaining long strings of tweets together by replying to themselves) but this also means that, on occasion, certain nuances can be lost. Discussions on contentious subjects can escalate quickly!
Gratuitous self-promotion. Twitter is used by a lot of people as an important means of getting their work in front of as many people as possible. Don't be afraid to link to things you've written or otherwise produced that you particularly want people to take a look at.
Enjoy! Twitter can and should be fun and useful. If it's not, though, don't worry! Some people simply don't get along with it as a means of communication and happily go about their lives without it. Follow the tips above, though, and you should be getting the most out of it in no time.

1991: Reddit in Trouble?

I find online social networks a fascinating thing to observe and sometimes participate in. Twitter is the main one I'm a part of, and over my time using it I've been part of a number of different subcultures that make use of the site as a means of talking to one another about common interests, regardless of geographical location.

In this sense, social networks are a bit like real life; you tend to gravitate towards people with whom you have common interests, and you drift away from people you find objectionable or simply don't mesh well with. It's exactly the same online; I know exactly the sort of people I'm likely to get along with, and exactly the sort of people I want to avoid at all costs. The nice thing about online interactions is that you can — for the most part — take a lot more control over your experience than you can in reality. You can't, for example, choose the people that you work alongside, so if you dislike, say, your manager or another member of your team, you can't get away from them. You can, however, mute or block people you don't gel with online; while there's an argument that this can lead to an "echo chamber" effect in which people are unwilling to have their viewpoints and opinions truly challenged, for the most part I find this a good way of minimising the stress that social interactions (be they real or virtual) can sometimes cause me.

One social network that I've never quite managed to integrate myself into is Reddit, and that's simply because Reddit as a whole is such a hugely sprawling entity that it's difficult to know where to start. There are popular subreddits for pictures, jokes, games and all sorts of other things, as well as highly specialised subreddits for niche interests or simply running jokes. Effectively, each subreddit is like a forum with message threads and discussions that follow on from an original post, but there's also a sort of "metagame" aspect to the site, where you earn points for posts and comments according to the community's overall reaction to them. This metagame doubles as the site's main means of automatic "curation" — high-rated content shifts to the top and becomes more visible, perhaps even hitting the front page of Reddit (which often describes itself as "The Front Page of the Internet", though Facebook might like to believe differently) if it's really popular and transcends its original context.

Reddit's an interesting site to browse even if you don't actively participate, though. It's the birthplace of a number of now-commonplace Internet memes and jokes, and the community as a whole can usually be relied on for some highly entertaining, quick-witted responses as well as scathing takedowns of stupid, ignorant or bigoted people. Assuming the subreddit you're in isn't specifically designed for stupid, ignorant or bigoted people, of course.

Now, this latter aspect is where things have got a little bit interesting recently. Reddit has traditionally positioned itself as being a bastion of its interpretation of "free speech" online, trusting individual subreddit moderators to set the rules for their individual communities and enforce them accordingly, while at the same time ensuring that nothing actually outright illegal is posted, and if it is, that it is removed quickly. To date, it's worked pretty well; while there are some subreddits that are the online equivalent of a notorious dark alley you probably wouldn't wander into alone if you didn't have a very good reason to be there, for the most part each individual community has kept itself to itself, content with its own little space of the Internet for its discussions, even when said discussions might not be welcome elsewhere on the Internet. ("Gamergate" subreddit "KotakuInAction" is a good example of this, and there are plenty of others along the same lines.)

But there have been Happenings recently. As someone who isn't an active participant in Reddit, I haven't really been following the whole drama, but so far as I can make out, Reddit brought on a new CEO recently known as Ellen Pao, and she has not been a popular "leader" for the site. The popular conspiracy theory is that she's attempting to "clean up" Reddit prior to selling it off to the highest bidder — likely Facebook, who would doubtless very much like to get their hands on "the front page of the Internet" — and in the process is ruffling a whole lot of feathers of people who have traditionally found Reddit to be a good home for their discussions and activities.

Pao's actions coupled with a widely-criticised lack of communication between the overall Reddit administrators (who run the site as a whole, and have the power to ban and "shadowban" users according to their behaviour) and the firing of a number of Reddit employees for seemingly questionable reasons have been causing rumblings of discontent for some time, but it seems that today, for whatever reason, was the tipping point; a number of popular subreddits, including front-page, "default" subreddits that are automatically included in a new Reddit user's list of subreddits, have "gone dark" in protest against Pao's management, the aforementioned lack of communication, a very inconsistent application of the "rules" for the site as a whole and, in some cases, a rather opaque sense of what the "rules" actually are. These subreddits have "gone dark" by setting themselves to "private" mode, meaning that only users who are already approved to post there (usually just subscribers to that particular subreddit) can see what is going on and being discussed; casual browsers, those who are not logged in or those who are not subscribed, meanwhile, are simply shown a default page explaining that the sub is private, and the reasons for it.

Over the course of the day, more and more subreddits have "gone dark" in protest, effectively crippling Reddit's traffic as a result. It's been absolutely fascinating to see, and while I don't 100% understand the reasons for the protest at this time, I think it's a potent reminder that when you create something as sprawling as a social network, as much as you'd like to think you can stay in complete control of it, ultimately the site it made or broken by its users. Without users, the site is completely useless, so if you piss off those users then you're going to have a big problem.

It remains to be seen whether Reddit will pull through this debacle, or whether a young pretender like Reddit clone Voat is ready to pick up the baton and try not to make the same mistakes. (I mention Voat specifically because they have reported record amounts of traffic since the controversy really exploded today.) This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened, after all; Reddit originally grew to prominence thanks to the once-popular Digg fucking itself up beyond all recognition, so while it may seem dramatic to contemplate that this might be The Beginning of the End for Reddit, it's certainly not beyond the realms of possibility.

Basically, the lesson from all this appears to be pretty simple: don't think you know better than your users. Because you probably don't.

1972: Togetherness

You know, I really shouldn't be surprised about this any more, what with us living in the Information Age or whatever it is we're in, with the Internet an omnipresent, omniscient collective of intelligences (in most circumstances) that, as a whole, never sleeps. But it does.

What, I hear you ask? The fact that someone, somewhere in the world, is probably doing the same thing you are at the exact same time as you.

I don't often think about this, but it occurs to me when I fire up a multiplayer game that isn't the current "flavour of the month" or Call of Duty. For example, I downloaded Tetris for my PlayStation 4, as it's a long time since I seriously played Tetris and I fancied something that I could play together with Andie. The PS4 version of Tetris has an online mode where you can play any of the game modes with up to three other people playing at the same time as you. In the case of the "Battle" modes, you can directly interfere with one another, as is the tradition in Tetris multiplayer, but there are also a number of modes where you're pretty much just playing alongside other people, perhaps to compare performance or pick up tips.

Now, Tetris is one of the most well-known, loved and respected games in the world, but I still find it surprising that there are people out there who make time to sit down and compete online. I'd ask "why?" but then I'd be forced to ask myself why I had chosen to play it online, too — and their answer would probably be the same as mine: to have some sort of "connection" with another person, even if it's a non-verbal one that is as simple as a shared interest. (Aside: Online Tetris players are frighteningly good.)

It's not just Tetris, either; I can sit down and play a mobile game like Brave Frontier, Love Live! School Idol Festival or Drift Girls and jump into one of the online modes in those and still find a live opponent to compete against. Again, in most cases, communication isn't direct — most of these games don't have a chat facility due to the impracticality of it in a mobile game — but it's oddly heartwarming to be sharing an experience with other people, even if it's only for a few short minutes as you attempt to full-combo Snow Halation or raise your ranking in the Drift Girls world tour mode.

Anyway. It's kind of cool to occasionally connect with people in passing like this; with gaming often being a relatively solitary pursuit, it is sometimes nice to feel like there are other people out there who are into the same things as you — and perhaps even to share an experience with them.

Now I've probably got time for a quick Love Live! score match…

1971: don't bully!!

Here's a curious paradox for you: how much of the supposed epidemic of "bullying" and "harassment" going on on the Internet these days is down to people bringing it upon themselves?

This isn't a question of "victim blaming", as the buzzword has it, but it's an actual phenomenon that I've observed — and, in my younger days, even engaged in myself. I can't explain why I did such a thing, but I know I did it, I know that I was aware I was doing it even at the time, and yet I simply couldn't stop myself.

I suffered dreadfully at the hands of bullies in primary school. I'm not sure what it was about me — my hair, my accent, the fact my ears appeared quite large in comparison to my head (I've since "grown into" them, I think) or some combination of all of the above and a few other things besides — but I was a regular target for some of the schools more notorious troublemakers. And it wasn't to do with my friendship group, either, as on a number of occasions my supposed "friends" actually sided against me in an attempt to win favour points with the bullies (who, inevitably, were the "cool" kids). Perhaps it was self-preservation, perhaps they'd really had enough of me; either way, it was a betrayal, and it hurt.

But I know that I was partly to blame for some of the incidents that happened. I recall deliberately goading the bullies on more than one occasion — swearing at them, insulting them, trying to attack them — and inevitably being knocked to the ground, winded and crying. The teachers on duty would do their usual "come over and look concerned" bit, but then nothing would ever happen to the people who had assaulted me. And so the cycle would repeat, over and over again.

Perhaps it was an attempt to claw my own little bit of "power" on the playground, because I was very much at the bottom of the food chain. Perhaps it was an attempt to let out my frustration about what I now recognise as social anxiety and difficulty interacting with some people. Perhaps I was just a little cunt. I honestly don't know the reason. But what I do know is that despite the fact I was the "victim", I was also genuinely to blame for a goodly proportion of those incidents — not all of them, mind, but a fair few of them.

And I'm reminded of this as I watch interactions on social media today. Mr Brandon Orselli, the chap who runs NicheGamer, an independent games site that I've become quite fond of, regularly has to fend off people who start attacking him, his work and his staff without any sort of provocation. Their reasoning? His site has, at times, been sympathetic to the consumer revolt known as "GamerGate", which has now been raging for some ten months and, despite a considerable amount of evidence to the contrary, is still regarded as a "hate group" of "misogynists".

Now, I'm not here to talk about GamerGate and whether or not it's right (largely because I know it's a topic of discussion that tends to become irrational very quickly — both "sides" are very much at fault in this regard, and frankly I want nothing to do with the perpetual arguments and finger-pointing) but one glance at the front page of NicheGamer will tell you that it's absolutely not any sort of GamerGate propaganda rag. Rather, it's an up-and-coming independent site with a clear focus, a staff that is obviously passionate about their work — including some highly knowledgeable specialist writers — and an editor-in-chief who is not afraid to stand up for himself, his work and his site.

Orselli does admittedly, at times, come across as a little arrogant on social media — but you know what? I understand the pride he takes in his work, and the pleasure he feels when things go well for his site. And I very much respect his choice to take the bull by the horns and engage these "critics" in an attempt at conversation even as they are, at times, spreading information that simply isn't true.

Why am I reminded of my own playground experiences? Well, the sort of people who are attacking Orselli and his staff remind me of the young me. They poke and they poke and they poke and they goad and they goad and they goad… and then they call foul (or, more accurately, "harassment") when the person they've been poking and goading bites back. (It has to be said, mind you, that it's not quite the same situation: Orselli is not a "bully", has shown admirable self-restraint and civility in these interactions, and has been a lot more calm and collected about them than I probably would be!) In other words, observing from the outside and recognising this behaviour as something I once did (as a child!) makes it seem very much like those attacking Orselli, his site and others like them are specifically going out and looking for trouble so they can further their "harassment" narrative.

Certainly nothing I've seen of NicheGamer's output — and since I've pretty much stopped following big games sites as they don't cover many of the games I'm interested in these days, it's one of the few sites I do check in on semi-regularly — warrants the sort of unpleasantness I've seen hurled at Orselli and his team on a seemingly daily basis, whatever your feelings on GamerGate (which, as previously noted, is not the same thing as NicheGamer). If anything, NicheGamer should be applauded for trying something different in a world of identikit big magazine-style or blog-type games sites, and catering to a specific audience rather than casting a very wide but very shallow net.

But anyway. It hopefully goes without saying that this isn't any attempt to diminish any instances of genuine harassment that actually goes on on social media — after all, I've dealt with it myself, so I know how shitty it is. But this sort of behaviour — deliberate provocation — just rubs me up the wrong way, particularly as I've suffered at the hands of bullies many times over the years, both by bringing it on myself and through no fault of my own. So in the words of Twitter's favourite anti-bully ranger:

https://twitter.com/antibullyranger/status/609751052125016064

Or, to put it another way, don't be a cunt.

1949: My Continuing Mission

As I tick ever-closer to 2,000 daily posts (this blog crossed the 2,000 posts in total mark a few days ago, incidentally) I find myself once again contemplating the meaning of this little exercise and how it has changed over the last few years.

Initially, as those who have been following since the beginning will know, it was a community effort. The #oneaday hashtag on Twitter brought together a small group of people of varying levels of commitment who decided to try and post something every day without worrying too much about "quality" — instead, simply helping to flex the creative muscles a bit by getting in the habit of writing every day, even if it was complete tosh or stream-of-consciousness nonsense.

As more and more people dropped out — the person I originally saw the hashtag via dropped out after less than a month, as I recall — it became a matter of pride for those of us still going to make it to the full year. Some of us decided to continue beyond that point, others didn't. I helped to get together a group of people who were interested in participating to form the One A Day Project, a somewhat more organised collective of bloggers with slightly relaxed "rules": participants didn't necessarily have to commit to daily posts — though many did — they simply had to commit to posting regularly, and at least attempt to make it through the whole year. (Professional floppy-haired twat Matt Lees took great umbrage to this clause and posted a lengthy rant expressing his disapproval about how it diluted the original meaning of #oneaday, but then he didn't stick it out for very long in its first year, so he wasn't really in a position to complain. Said rant has, however, seemingly been deleted since. What a pity.) There was also a charitable component; we invited people to sponsor us to motivate our efforts. We made a bit of money — not a huge amount, but some, at least — so we did some good in the process.

This particular year was quite interesting, as it exposed me to a wide range of people, many of whom I probably wouldn't have come across otherwise. Some I've stayed in touch with, others I haven't, but I was happy to have encountered them, even if it was only briefly, and interested to read their perspectives on their life, loves and passions, which ranged from arts and crafts to amateur radio via archery. (And some other things that didn't begin with "A".) It was an interesting and enjoyable experiment, all told, but it was a surprising amount of work that I'm somewhat inclined to believe was a little more trouble than it was worth — particularly as other people were somewhat reluctant to step forward and help me with some of the responsibilities and expectations I'd set in the beginning. I didn't mind, though; it just might have been able to go on a little longer and be a little more successful, high profile and beneficial to the charities if there were a few more people willing to work behind the scenes. But oh well.

After that petered out, I continued to write on here every day. Why? Difficult to say; I think it's largely just become habit now, more than anything. Plus, I've always found it helpful and cathartic; in the early days, this proved particularly helpful as I was going through my separation from my first wife, one of the most traumatic experiences I have ever suffered though. Much like writing a diary allows you to empty your head of wayward thoughts and express things you might not have anyone to talk to about, so too has this blog performed that function for me.

The only difference, of course, is the fact that this blog is public and therefore open for people to look at and comment upon. Sometimes, when I have written on controversial topics that I have strong feelings about, this has attracted the ire of people who want to lay into me for my opinions — though this has only really happened on a couple of occasions, and I've only ever had to close comments on a post completely once. It's easy to focus on this negative side of publishing your thoughts online, though; it's much more beneficial to focus on the more important, positive and almost infinitely more frequent occurrence of people coming along, finding my blog, discovering a like-minded individual and striking up a conversation or even a friendship over something I've written.

None of that is my priority, I have to say; the original point of #oneaday was not to write "for" anyone but yourself, and I've continued with that credo since day one. This blog has always been and always will be a completely honest, open and (mostly) unashamed look at the real person I am inside; the person who may not always be entirely comfortable expressing himself in person, but the person who is there nonetheless. Ultimately you, the reader, can take or leave me based on that, but it's the person I truly am.

As the number at the top of these posts advances towards 2,000 — a significant milestone by anyone's calculations — I find myself contemplating what the future holds, too. Will I continue after 2,000? Highly likely. Will this blog still continue to look the way it does today? Probably not; I revamped the "look" at post 1,000 and will probably do so again at 2,000. Will I continue to post occasionally coherent ramblings about everything from video games to music to pretty anime girls to board games to how people should really stop being such shitheads to one another? Almost definitely.

It's been a long and sometimes difficult ride. And I don't think I'm ready to get off any time soon.

1904: 21st Century TV

The Internet has brought with it many things both good and bad, but by far my favourite thing about it is to do with video.

No, I'm not talking about YouTube generally — the whole "anyone with a webcam can make videos!" culture it promotes feeds into modern youth's unhealthy obsession with "being famous" — but rather the fact that, between the various streaming services out there, both legitimate and… less legitimate, there is probably some way of watching all those programmes/adverts/movies you wish you still had 1) the VHS tapes for and 2) something to play them with.

This last week, for example, Andie and I have watched Police Squad!, the TV-based precursor to the Naked Gun movies. Only six episodes were made, and back at university, when I "discovered" the show for the first time, I had a VHS cassette with two of them on it, so I had only ever seen those two episodes. Now, however, some helpful Polish person has kindly uploaded the whole lot onto YouTube for anyone to enjoy at their leisure. No waiting for TV networks to license them and show them again. No tracking down video tapes and VCRs. Just click and go.

The ability to rediscover old favourites is one of the best things about streaming video, then, as my rewatch of Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time in about ten years will attest. But the fact that streaming services makes new favourites easier than ever to discover, too, is rather wonderful. I doubt I'd have become so interested in anime without my Crunchyroll subscription, for example; prior to widespread streaming video, the only real way to get into anime was to buy VHS tapes or DVDs, and with anime being niche-interest and somewhat "exotic", particularly when it first hit these shores in the mid-90s, it was a rather expensive hobby. Anime DVDs and Blu-Rays still cost up to twice as much as a regular ol' Western film even today, making online services like Crunchyroll much better value.

This is the TV of the 21st century, then; it really is the vision of the future we had twenty, thirty years ago: decide what you want to watch, then just watch it. In most cases, that's possible to do, even if you have strange, bizarre and peculiar tastes. And even if you're more fucked up than most, I can almost guarantee that there's some dark corner of the Internet out there somewhere more than willing to cater to your particular interests, whatever they might be… for better or worse.

In these days of people seemingly constantly yelling at one another on social media and comments sections on large sites being widely (and, sometimes, justifiably) regarded as fetid cesspits, it's easy to forget the great and wonderful things that the Internet has brought to modern life. I'm a strong believer that its ability to "archive" — for future generations to be able to enjoy movies, TV shows, animations and other videos from years ago — is one of the best things about it. And as technology improves and we find more and more ways to interact with this world-wide network, I hope we never lose sight of these simple pleasures that it's allowed us to enjoy like never before.