1507: Why I Went Back, and The Fear

I was going to write about something else today, but after Mr Russ Pitts kindly linked to a piece I wrote this time last year in an excellent article regarding online abuse and trolling, I felt I should probably elaborate on some things that have happened since then.

Firstly, despite what I said in that piece, it transpires that I did eventually go back to Twitter. Why? Because, to be frank, I was lonely; I have a lot of friends on that social network, and it was difficult to stay in touch with them via other means. It's also a particularly convenient means of reaching out to people for my current profession.

So I went back. However, I did so under a new username and a new email address — and being much more mindful of what I shared in my 140-character bio.

This is in itself kind of silly, really; I have to effectively "silence" an aspect of my personality based on my previous experience, and cannot be fully open about the things I enjoy or love, because it might attract organised bile and vitriol not just towards me, but towards people close to me, too. Thankfully, on the few occasions I have happened to mention ponies recently, things have passed without incident — I suspect the charmers at the "GNAA" have moved on to new victims by now.

Thinking of all this brings up an important consideration that I don't believe a lot of Internet commenters stop to think about before spraying vitriol over an article they disagree with: the fact that the words you read on the Internet are, for the most part, written by an actual person with a brain, a heart, a soul and, you know, feelings. People disagreeing over various things is a fact of life — the world would be a boring place if everyone felt the same way about everything, as The Lego Movie suggested in a somewhat hamfisted way — but it's the way you go about those disagreements that is important to consider, because arguing your case in the wrong way — or wilfully misreading or misunderstanding something someone has said — can have a severe impact on their mental health.

I've been fairly open on this blog about my own self-esteem issues and occasional feelings of "imposter syndrome" — the feeling that one day, you might be "found out" and have everything taken away from you. I consider myself hugely lucky to have the job I have, working alongside people I have respected enormously for many years — since childhood in at least one case. There are days when I feel like I'm even quite good at what I do — but there are also days when I seriously consider throwing in the towel and going to do something "invisible" with the rest of the drones in the daily workforce.

The difference between those two types of day can often be just a single comment. Just one, regardless of how many otherwise positive or supportive comments you might have that day — one single, unpleasant, negative or abusive comment can completely ruin the day of someone like me.

I'm not saying all games journalists are like me — though from some conversation during the establishment of TakeThis.org, which Russ mentioned in his post, mental health issues of various descriptions are alarmingly widespread in our profession — but it's surely just basic human decency to not, in effect, walk up to someone and start hurling abuse at them. And yet it happens. And not just from inconsiderate gamers angry about the score you gave Titanfall, either; sometimes even people who claim to be fighting for worthy causes can be needlessly aggressive, confrontational or even abusive, too. It's a plague across the whole Internet.

This leads to what I call The Fear, which in turn leads to what Russ talks about in his post: the assumption that "do not engage" is the only way to deal with bullying, abuse or even just plain unreasonable comments. There are days when I write things and I'm genuinely afraid to look at the comment section — it's an irrational fear, I know, but it's what this age of anonymous abuse has wrought.

And what a ridiculous situation that is, when you think about it. People who write for a living — many of whom are considerably more talented than I am — are subject to The Fear on a daily basis. You never can tell what it is that's going to attract the next batch of abuse, or death threats, or defamation, or simple spitefulness. It's a horrible feeling.

And yet we still stick around, for the most part. Why? Because even amid all this, we love what we do, and we love engaging with those people who like to have a reasonable discussion about things without necessarily agreeing on everything — those people who, if we're honest, make up the majority of our feedback. Sometimes we even become friends with those people.

But as I say, it only takes one nasty comment to undo all the good those people do for us. Just one.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could live in a world where we could just love what we do without having to worry about The Fear ever again?

One day, perhaps. But there's a long road ahead before we get there.

1494: Another Pledge for Positivity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1489: Championing the Underdogs

If you've ever wondered why I talk so much about lesser-known games and visual novels I come across that I end up loving, Twitter today is the reason why. Specifically, this is the reason why.

For those unfamiliar with the way Twitter works, that's a search page giving a snapshot of the number of people using the words "Titanfall beta" at any given moment — at the time of writing, there are approximately 30 tweets every minute on the subject.

Titanfall, the new game from Respawn Entertainment, the studio set up by the guys who created the astronomically popular Call of Duty series, one of the biggest names in gaming for the past few years, is going to be a big hit, it seems. And this is lucky not only for Respawn, but also for Microsoft, who are counting on Titanfall being a system-seller for its so far disappointing Xbox One console. We'll have to wait and see whether Titanfall shifts Xbox One systems, but if interest in the beta is any indication, chances are good.

But I don't want to talk about Titanfall. I haven't played it and thus can't comment on it in any great detail. I have registered for a beta key because I'm interested to see if it can change the mind of someone who finds Call of Duty utterly mind-numbing, but I'm not going out of my way to get one, and frankly I'm sick of hearing about it.

It's this latter point that ties in with what I said in the first paragraph. Any time something "big" like Titanfall comes along, any smaller developers attempting to promote their work may as well just pack up and go home, because the big game is all anyone's talking about. This is how marketing works, of course; EA and Respawn want Titanfall to be as big a seller as possible, so it's in their interests to ensure as many people are talking about it as possible, and what better way to stir the pot than a steady flow of beta keys being released into the wild?

But what of the poor souls who, like me, have pretty much zero interest in Titanfall? There's nothing stopping us continuing to go about our gaming business, of course, but it's frustrating if it just happens to be this week that we find something really cool that we want to share with people. It's also frustrating if otherwise great games come out, but news of them actually being great is drowned out by everyone stampeding to play the beta for the latest manshoot. I fear for Bravely Default and Danganronpa, both of which are fantastic games that deserve a far greater audience than they will almost certainly get — Michael Pachter would probably brand them "failures" if he had any idea either of them existed — and titles that are competing against Titanfall's beta test for the attention of gamers worldwide.

I certainly don't begrudge anyone who's enjoying the experience of the Titanfall beta; by all accounts, it sounds like something that someone who enjoys competitive team-based multiplayer shooters will have a lot of fun with, and that's great. But at times like this, it's easy to feel a little cynical about the games biz's apparent inability to acknowledge the existence of more than one Good Thing at a time. As ever, the game that's likely to make the most money gets the majority of the spotlight attention, leading to swathes of articles from diverse sites all writing very similar things to one another, providing validation to those who were probably going to buy the game anyway and continuing to alienate those who are more interested in more niche, specialised titles.

At times like this — and I've said this before — I feel as if the games press needs more specialised publications. We're starting to get this to a certain extent with indie-focused websites, but we need to go further. There needs to be an acknowledgement — or more of an acknowledgement, at least — that gaming isn't just about the latest, biggest-budget game out there, and that games don't cease to be relevant after their "opening week". The latter point in particular is something that infuriates me no end; if a game doesn't sell a zillion copies in its first week, it's instantly branded a failure by analysts and press alike — meanwhile, it's extremely rare that people like, say, me buy something the moment it's released.

What have I been playing today, for example? Atelier Rorona, a PlayStation 3 game that came out in 2010. Are the experiences I've had with that game today irrelevant due to the fact it came out four years ago? No, of course not, but you might be forgiven for thinking that if you took a look at Twitter today.

Sigh. I'm pissing in the wind with this, of course, and it's far easier to just get on with what I'm doing, talk about the things I'm enjoying and hope people who feel the same way might gather together with me. I just felt the need to express some frustration, and I'll start taking my own advice tomorrow, I think.

1477: Nondescript

It's been one of those days that just sort of… happened today. I wrote about EA's horrendous molestation of the Dungeon Keeper series, gave Flappy Bird a well-deserved drubbing in a review and a few other things, then played an interesting horror game called Serena which I'm going to write a review of tomorrow, then capped the evening off with some Final Fantasy XIV. That was my day. That was it.

Much as we might like to always have interesting things to talk about and tall tales to tell, the fact is that most days we go through our existence are pretty humdrum, boring and nondescript, with almost nothing of note happening whatsoever.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course, because having humdrum, boring and nondescript days suggests that things are going all right — it's better than having days that are crushing disappointments, or that make you want to punch walls, or that make you want to sit in the shower and cry, for example, but it's also not quite as good as days that make you want to explode in happiness or play a pair of tea tongs like castanets. (Actually, I must confess to doing the latter earlier while waiting for a cup of tea to brew, but it was more through boredom than happiness. Tea tongs actually make a surprisingly convincing castanets substitute, FYI.)

Perhaps this is why social media has risen to such prominence in recent years. Everything from the humble status update to a "selfie" has the potential to make the mundane seem so much more fascinating than it really is — at least it does to the people posting these things. Yes! they'll think. Here's my dinner! It's amazing! Maybe people will be jealous of what I'm having! I have beans with sausages! Joke's on you, losers! Oh God I'm so lonely.

It's sort of baffling if you take a step back from it all, really. Take photography in particular — the rise of digital photography and phone cameras have devalued the humble photograph from cultural artifact to disposable, throwaway thing. Photos used to be a precious commodity — you'd go on holiday with a couple of 36-exposure rolls of film in your bag, and you'd try to make every shot count. Now, you can afford to take pictures of every course of every meal you have and share them to the world as if they give a shit. And Silicon Valley types who enjoy making new social media apps for no other reason than to say they attracted several million in seed funding, whatever that is, can take advantage of people like this by offering them apps that allow them to "turn your photographs into beautiful memories" and the like. Ugh.

Of course, the Internet belongs to everyone so it is your choice how you choose to go about using it. Just remember that the things you're posting might not be as interesting to other people as they might be to you. Heaven knows I know that after writing 1,477 days of nonsense on these very pages.

There you go. I even have something to say on a humdrum, boring and nondescript day such as today. And now I'm going to bed. Good night.

1469: Read Before Posting

I'd like to try a little exercise with you, oh fellow denizens of the Internet.

Find the last thing you posted online, be it chat message, tweet, Facebook status update or, if you've got more time than sense, blog post. Then what I would like you to do is read that post out loud — but with a twist. I'd like you to make all the faces you typed emoticons for, and any acronym you used, I'd like you to actually do the thing you said you were doing. (For example, if you typed "lol", I would like you to laugh out loud; if you typed "lmao" I would like you to laugh until your arse falls off. Yes, literally.)

Did you look like a complete dingbat and/or a creep? Exactly. Herein lies part of the problem with online communication: while emoticons and acronyms were originally intended to allow for some semblance of "tone" to be indicated in the necessarily dry nature of text, they don't really work all that well in the way that they tend to be used today.

Take the humble "lol". Depending on your literacy level, you may actually put "lol" in a sentence where you really would laugh out loud. But more often than not, it seems, it's used as a substitute for punctuation, and it doesn't really matter what punctuation mark should have gone in there if we were going to be all persnickety about Standard English. No, many's the time when I've seen people type a message ending with a redundant (and, frankly, somewhat disquieting) "lol" or even joining two completely largely unrelated sentences to one another. I recall one former Facebook "friend" (actually someone I went to school with but barely spoke to when I was there, let alone since) posting some epic rant about how she had had a difficult week lol but was looking forward to putting her feet up with a glass of wine lol xxx. That's… no. That just doesn't make any sense.

I think more infuriating to me than inappropriate lolling is the use of the tongueface smiley, however. I associate sticking your tongue out with a distinctly 1950s expression of rebellion — something an Enid Blyton character would do while running away from someone they didn't like very much. It's not something I generally think to do… well, at all really, as a 32 year old man, and so I tend not to pepper my online utterances with tongueface smileys at any time other than when I am clearly mocking someone and need to make it abundantly clear that I'm not actually being mean. I will confess to making a fair amount of use of the good old-fashioned smiley face emoticon, but that's about it. (I don't even use "XD", whose usage annoys me for much the same reasons as "lol" does.)

I am sure I am overthinking this, and that the tongueface smiley has somewhat transcended its associations with Enid Blyton characters, but I still find it oddly jarring when I see it somewhere that it just doesn't seem to belong. So again, I urge you, before you send that message, just read it out loud and make all the facial expressions you said you were making. If it feels weird to stick your tongue out… maybe take that particular colon-P out, hmm?

1463: Losing Face

I've been off Facebook for some time now — a cursory search through these pages suggests I closed my account in October of last year — and for the most part I haven't missed it.

I certainly haven't missed the endlessly inane reshares of content from George Takei('s PR intern) which in turn was stuff that already did the rounds on Reddit and subsequently Twitter several days earlier.

I also haven't missed the few people who seem to think that Facebook is an appropriate platform for standing atop their soapbox and bellowing the most ill-informed political and/or sociological opinions they can possibly think of.

I also haven't missed having shit games and advertising jammed forcibly down my throat every time I log in. I spent a considerable amount of time reviewing Facebook games professionally and all it left me with was a bitterly passionate desire to never play one ever again.

And yet…

Over the weekend I went out. This is nothing unusual in itself, but this was something of a special occasion — it was a reunion of sorts for those of us who studied music at the University of Southampton between 1999 and 2002. We were a pretty close-knit bunch while we were there — though I must confess, being a joint-honours English and Music student, that I always felt somewhat on the periphery of this particular social group — and most people have kept in touch pretty well ever since. A number of us are still in Southampton, too, though a distressingly small number of us are actually doing anything with our music studies professionally. (Note to kids planning their future: when someone tells you that a particular degree is a "good, general choice that will get you into most careers," they are talking bollocks.)

Anyway, yeah. We went out to a pub near Newbury and ate our respective body weights in roast dinners and custard-covered desserts. It was thoroughly pleasant, particularly as I hadn't seen some of these people for a while.

It's partly my fault, of course — I could have very easily picked up the phone and invited them over for dinner, or coffee, or whatever, but I haven't. But then they haven't either. I don't say this with bitterness — it's just the way that the rapid pace of modern 21st century life makes people think. Real-life friendships often fall by the wayside somewhat, and people whom you once spent every day with become people that you see a couple of times a year — albeit on those occasions, you'll start singing improvised offensive German barbershop a cappella as if no time whatsoever had passed between the last couple of times you saw one another. (At least you will if you are me and my friends.)

The thing is, though, for many people, Facebook fills that gap between in-person interactions — or "face time" as obnoxious wankers like to call it. It allows you to remind each other of your existence, and to likewise acknowledge one another's existence with a Like or a Comment.

At least, that's the intention. One might argue that said intention has been somewhat diluted over the last few years as Facebook has become less and less about meaningful social interactions and more and more about sharing viral content in an attempt to amass as many Likes, comments and shares as possible.

Having almost missed out on this reunion due to my non-presence on Facebook, I find myself questioning my decision to leave the network. It also makes me ponder whether or not it might be possible to use it in a different way — specifically, to have a substantial cull of my friends list to just those who are local and whom I am likely to want to see again at some point. I'd cut out any Pages that I was following — not that I think I was following many in the first place — and keep my friends list down in the double-digits if at all possible. I'd be ruthless in the culling of people who didn't post anything interesting or useful and consequently cluttered up my news feed with bullshit, and I'd lock down my account so I'd be in complete control of who could find me. I'd also minimise overlap between Facebook and Twitter, because what's the point?

I'm tempted to try this, though with all the changes I've seen Facebook make regarding how it decides what it wants to show to you, I have my doubts as to how useful the service is even with these attempts to take ownership of the experience. It certainly can't hurt to give it a go, anyway, and if it does turn out to be useless nonsense as I suspect, it's little bother to simply hit the "deactivate" button again.

I'll leave you with this, which is a big part of my hesitance to return:

1433: Search This

In the absence of anything particularly interesting to talk about today, I once again braved the pit that is this blog's search terms to see exactly how people are finding me.

Yesterday's search terms were less than enlightening, consisting of one instance of "your minge smells", one instance of "ayakashi ghost guild hot girls" and twenty-two search terms that the search engines in question didn't pass on to WordPress.

I'm not entirely sure how the first one led someone here, since actually searching the site itself for "your minge smells" reveals that, as I suspected, I have never used that particular combination of words in any of the 1,498 posts I've written on here since July of 2008. I can't think why I would use that particular combination of words on a post here, save for the fact that it's an amusing way to tell someone they have an unpleasantly fragrant vagina. That said, there aren't all that many people I feel comfortable enough with to comment on the scent of their lady-parts, so I don't honestly see myself breaking it out all that often.

As for "ayakashi ghost guild hot girls", I can only assume this was a reference to the time when I briefly tried to understand the Japanese card-battling phenomenon by spending a bit of time with Zynga's take on the genre, the aforementioned Ayakashi Ghost Guild. While noting that most of these card-battling games are full of hot girls in various provocative outfits isn't entirely inaccurate, it's not something I commented on in my original post, nor is it a game that I've returned to or deemed worthy of further discussion since then. So to the person who came here searching for the hot girls of Ayakashi Ghost Guild, I can only apologise and send you on your way. (And if you're after sexy pics of anime girls, believe me, there are a lot better places to look than a mobile card game. Uh, apparently.)

What about those mysterious hidden search terms, though? I kind of want to know what they are now, though there's no real way of finding out as far as I can tell. I do know that for some inexplicable reason the top search term on my blog of all time is "BioShock", a game I didn't like all that much, closely followed by "teaching sucks", a viewpoint I still very much stand by.

But then "monster cock" is pretty high up the list too, so I don't really know what to think any more.

Anyway, I'm getting tired and slightly delirious so I think that's a good place to leave that.

1425: An Open Note to @Twitter

[Note: Since I wrote this post this morning, Twitter has reversed its policies on blocking. That was fast!]

I'm not normally one to jump on the controversy du jour and add my voice to the throngs of people yelling about a particular issue, but in the case of Twitter's recent changes to its "block" system, whereby blocked users are now effectively "muted" in only one direction rather than truly blocked, I feel it's important I share my experiences.

Earlier in the year, I suffered an organised campaign of harassment that was enough to drive me from the Twitter service and completely close my account. I only returned a while later for professional reasons — in my occupation of online journalist, Twitter is a convenient means of both getting in touch with people and promoting content. Were it not for my job, I doubt I would have returned.

The harassment stemmed from a single word in my profile: "Brony." Lest you're unfamiliar, this term describes an adult-age fan of the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic by Lauren Faust and her team. The "Brony" community is a large and active one on the Internet, and for the most part a hugely supportive one, with its creed being "love and tolerate". It accounts for a significant proportion of creative derivative works such as fan fiction, artwork and music videos, and is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. I always considered myself somewhat on the periphery of this fandom, since although I liked the show I wasn't so deep in that I was making these creative works; I included the word in my Twitter bio as a means of showing my support for the community, however, and acknowledging something I found to be enjoyable.

What I wasn't aware of until my harassment incident was the fact that there are people on Twitter — and the Internet at large — who specifically seek out self-professed "Bronies" and torment them, usually through repeated and public accusations of paedophilia. In my case, this began as a series of Twitter @mentions that grew in frequency and intensity over the course of several days; I quickly blocked the main instigators without engaging with them, but more and more people came as the situation escalated and the group responsible for the harassment — known as the GNAA — came together against me.

I changed my Twitter username in an attempt to deter the attackers, but all this achieved was causing them to take over my original username, pose as me and post links to pornographic content.

The harassment went a step further than just Twitter @mentions, however. My Twitter bio also linked to the Twitter account of my brother, and to the video games website I was, at the time, managing editor of. The instigators of the harassment followed these links to my brother's personal website and the site I worked for, trawled the WHOIS records to find the phone numbers of the owners — my brother himself and the person who was paying for the hosting of the games site respectively — and then called them to make further accusations of paedophilia against me.

These calls continued for several days, and prompted me to contact the police to find out if there was anything I could do. Unfortunately the police were unable to do much save for keep the incident on file, and recommended that I work with Twitter to resolve the situation.

I contacted Twitter to explain the situation and point the support staff in the direction of the accounts that had been instigating most of the trouble, and which had hijacked my original account name to pose as me. After several days of waiting, during which the harassment continued, Twitter's response was that those responsible were not in breach of Twitter's terms and conditions because it was a "personal dispute". It took another round of contacting them to convince them to suspend my original username, at which point I decided to leave the service entirely, and had no intention of returning unless I absolutely had to.

Without Twitter's Block function allowing for forced unfollows and true blocking of troublemakers, this incident would have been even worse than it already was. Moreover, Twitter has shown itself to be either incapable or unwilling of dealing with persistent and organised harassment that spills out into the non-online sphere.

I am not the only person who has suffered such abuse at the hands of online bullies, but everyone who has has something in common: all they are doing is attempting to be their true selves, unashamed of who they are, what they do and what they like — and attempting to engage with like-minded or supportive people. Harassment on the grounds of something that you are — or, in my case, something that you like — is completely unacceptable, and it's not at all appropriate to just brush these levels of personal attacks off as personal disputes, then do nothing about them.

The changes to the Block policies do not encourage a change in behaviour on the part of the bullies. If anything, they punish the victim more by forcing them to take their account private when they may wish to remain public in order to meet new friends. Twitter is taking its policies with regard to harassment and bullying in the wrong direction — and these policies weren't in a particularly good place to begin with, as I can say from first-hand experience.

I would encourage Twitter to rethink how it is handling this situation, and to ensure that more robust solutions are in place for blocking and reporting persistent offenders. Twitter is an enormously useful online communication resource, and the means through which I have come to know a significant number of friends a lot better. But it needs to be a safe place; for marginalised and vulnerable groups, those who have suffered previous harassment or those who simply suffer from social anxiety, these new changes are not a step in the right direction.

Please consider the good of the community that has been built and not just the supposed needs of the business. When you build a social network, both aspects are important; without the former, the latter simply ceases to exist.

1379: Press Pause

The assertion that "video is the future" of online media is probably more hyperbole than anything else — much like the argument that "free-to-play is the future" of gaming — but it still concerns and frustrates me somewhat.

This isn't to put down any of the hard work that genuinely talented video producers, editors and performers do, of course. It just makes me worried — particularly given my occupation — and also frustrates me as someone who still likes to, you know, read things.

You see, I don't like video as a generic means of consuming information. It's intrusive, it's noisy, it's disruptive and it demands your full attention for a fixed period of time. This is fine if what you are specifically doing is sitting down to watch a video, but when you want to get a piece of information quickly, video quite simply can't compare to a simple piece of text and possibly a Find function.

Video is not particularly portable, either. While mobile phone data networks — and the devices with which to access them — have improved considerably over the last few years, there's still a significant chance that if you're out and about on the go, you may not be able to watch a video link, and even if you do, there's the risk of running afoul of your mobile provider's data limits and/or fair use policies. A simple text link, meanwhile, is something that is quick to download and, perhaps more importantly, easy and discreet to browse in public or while doing other things.

It also makes me a little sad to see people well-known for their entertaining writing skills stepping back from penmanship in favour of video content. Let's take Jim Sterling, for example. This isn't specifically to "pick on" Sterling; he's just a good example of what I'm talking about.

Sterling's work around the Web has historically been somewhat provocative, but to an entertaining degree rather than any attempt to deliberately cause offence. He's mellowed somewhat from his quasi-"shock jock" nature of a few years back and become someone who can bellow well-informed vitriol without alienating people — or at least, without alienating people who don't deserve to be alienated. His reviews and opinion pieces over on sites like Destructoid were always a good read — he wrote in a distinctive voice, but from a well-informed perspective, and even if you didn't agree with his points, he usually made a convincing argument.

Now, Sterling is primarily doing video content, in which he does much the same thing. No bad thing, you might think, and indeed I've specifically sat down and watched a good few Jimquisition episodes when I wanted to have a giggle at the game industry's expense. But I'm significantly less likely to watch a Jimquisition video than I am to read an article simply because of the time involved — and now he's taken to variations on Let's Play videos I now have even less interest in his content whatsoever. It's a bit sad, though I also recognise that I am but one person and he is simply doing what there is apparently demand for.

I've made my thoughts on Let's Plays reasonably clear in previous posts, but I'll reiterate and perhaps reinforce them, since I've had a while to think about them as the format has grown in popularity: I'm not a fan. At all. Particularly Let's Plays of story-based games, which, to me, completely defeat the object of a story-based game. People already get pissy at the slightest hint of a spoiler about games, movies and other media, and yet there are people out there doing nothing but spoiling games… in more ways than one. This is baffling to me; I understand the basic concept of a Let's Play as an opportunity to see how a game plays and get some commentary about it, but to watch a story-based game with someone babbling over the top of it rather than playing it is just, frankly, the absolute last thing I want to do with my time. Again, though, I recognise that the format has popularity and there's apparently demand for it.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't want traditional media to go away. I don't want to see the death of long-form articles about games — or even short, snappy news pieces, though I wouldn't mind seeing the back of two-sentence placeholder pieces. I want to see talented writers continue to have the opportunity to express themselves in a medium that they're comfortable with; I don't want to be forced to watch a video just to find out what a voice I trust thinks about a particular game or issue in the industry, particularly when I'm out and perhaps want to share it with friends.

By all means, then, video content producers and consumers, keep doing what you're doing; just don't forget that the way you do things is not the only way to do things.