#oneaday Day 998: Generally Generalising

First up, read this. It's an impressive piece of investigative journalism regarding a Reddit user known as "ViolentAcrez" — a notorious user for his practices of posting creepy photos of often-underage women without their consent. The piece describes the reporter Adrian Chen's (successful) attempts to unmask ViolentAcrez and publicly shame him for the things he has spent the last few years doing.

Fair enough. As a number of people have said in relation to this story today, the "free speech" so beloved of Reddit users does not mean the same thing as "free of consequences". And while Michael Brutsch, the man behind the handle "ViolentAcrez", has not technically broken any laws with his activities — he wasn't posting child pornography or anything illegal, simply reposts of images that were already in the public domain on Facebook and other services, and later voyeuristic images taken without the knowledge of the people depicted — the fact stands that his behaviour was more than a little creepy, inappropriate and actively harmful in a society that is, for the most part, actively trying to improve attitudes towards women.

I'm not denying any of this. While I find the tracking down and public shaming of a notorious Internet troll a little creepy in and of itself, what Chen did in the name of journalism is a far cry from what Brutsch has been doing for the past few years — and probably for the best in the long run. Brutsch will certainly think twice — or at least be a lot more careful about his "social media footprint" — before trying anything like this again. There's a lesson to be learned in all this — if you're a dick on the Internet, sometimes it will come back and bite you in the ass.

There is something that bothers me about this story, however, and that's been the reaction to it. Specifically, the negativity directed towards the entire Reddit community as a result of this story and surrounding issues. For those who haven't been keeping up on this story over the past few days, a number of Reddit subforums, or "subreddits" as they're called, completely blocked all Gawker links in a showing of solidarity for Brutsch who was, despite his behaviour, regarded as a valuable member of the community and a "necessary evil" by many — while he was a notorious troll, the Reddit staffers made active use of him to police the less salubrious parts of Reddit and ensure that nothing that actually was illegal was being posted. A "man on the inside", as it were.

Because certain parts of Reddit decided to show their support for and/or actively defend Brutsch's behaviour on the grounds of "free speech", apparently all of Reddit is now something to be reviled — a "cesspit", as I saw it referred to earlier today.

This is the bit that makes me uncomfortable — an entire community being blamed and ostracised for the behaviour of one man in particular, and also for that of those who support him.

I've been on Reddit. I haven't been on there for a while but I enjoyed a brief stint on there a while back. I joined some interesting discussions on a variety of topics ranging from gaming to TV shows via funny pictures and an accidental excursion into naked photographs that users had taken of themselves. (In the latter case, the notorious "gonewild" subreddit, the majority of comments were in fact, body-positive — particularly on the pictures of those who had been brave enough to post a picture of their obviously-overweight body — rather than perverted, which I found to be interesting. Also, it genuinely was an accident that I found myself in that subreddit — Reddit's main screen gives little to no indication what "gonewild" is all about. In retrospect, I should have thought about it a little more before jumping in, but hey, I'm pretty hard to shock. But I digress.)

I didn't spend long enough to make any particular friends there, but I have heard plenty of stories of people getting to know each other and making lasting friendships or relationships through the site. There are plenty of stories of Reddit communities pulling together to support others, too — stories of helping people through difficult times; stories of helping people who are struggling for money; stories of, in short, human helping human. I know at least one person personally who is using a specific subreddit for support in getting help for some of their personal problems and issues. There is plenty that is positive to say about Reddit.

And yet for the obnoxious, totally inappropriate actions of one man and his supporters — some of whom, it seems, have been or are on Reddit's staff — apparently this entire, incredibly diverse Internet community should be ostracised.

Something really doesn't sit right with that for me. To generalise one of the largest communities on the Internet as all being scumbags like this just seems both dangerous and unfair. I have plenty of friends who enjoy using Reddit for completely innocent purposes, be it discussion, promotion of things they have been working on or discovering interesting new reaction .GIFs. I know that they'd be the first to distance themselves from the sort of behaviour that Brutsch has exhibited, and yet if you were to take what a number of commentators are saying at face value, you'd have to brand these people as deviant perverts and assholes, too, simply by virtue of the fact that they're Reddit users.

This is not helpful.

I'm fully aware that I've been guilty of this sort of thing in the past — not specifically with regard to Reddit, but with 4chan. I've referred to that place as a "cesspit" before and certainly it has more than its fair share of trolls and unpleasant people there — but equally now I realise that there are also plenty of other people who just make it their hangout of choice. They, subsequently, become guilty by association with the "/b/tards" who are responsible for the majority of objectionable material and behaviour on 4chan (and, by extension, the rest of the Internet. And they're probably pretty pissed about that.

The same thing is happening with Reddit. As much as Reddit would like to market itself as a "social news" tool, let's not be under any illusions — it's nothing more than the world's biggest forum. Like most forums, it has tons of subcultures and cliques, most of whom stick to their own neatly-carved niches for the most part. Some of these subcultures and cliques are objectionable in nature, and it's up to the site admins and moderators to determine what to do about that — something that they haven't done a great job with so far, and something they need to work on.

However, the mere presence of some objectionable subcultures and cliques does not mean that the entire website as a whole is somehow objectionable. It's the same as saying that a particular city is a "cesspit" because, say, a greater-than-average number of registered sex offenders live there. Or the same as saying that all people who like a particular thing are a bunch of assholes. Or, in fact, the same as almost any other unfair, unsubstantiated generalisation. It's not helpful — all it does is turn everyone outside that group against them, and everyone inside that group becomes defensive. The two sides inevitably clash, and things just get worse and worse rather than better. It doesn't help anyone.

So by all means think that Michael Brutsch is a creepy old pervert whom you wouldn't want anywhere near your children. By all means criticise those who supported him — including members of Reddit's staff.

I agree with you.

But take a moment to think of the thousands — more likely millions — of people who make use of Reddit on a regular basis and have absolutely nothing to do with this before you start branding the entire community as pond life. Would you want to be made guilty by association with something you had no involvement in whatsoever? I doubt it very much. So quit doing it to others.

#oneaday Day 994: I Don't Care

I'm coming to the rather cynical conclusion that I'm not sure I care enough about certain issues to want to shout and scream and rant and rave about them all day, every day. A big part of the reason behind this is the fact that people who do care enough about certain issues to shout and scream and rant and rave about them all day, every day are wearing me down significantly. I won't get into specifics, as that will likely only provoke more shouting, screaming, ranting and raving, but suffice to say I really can't be arsed with it any more.

I am fully aware that taking this rather apathetic attitude towards Big Issues makes me officially Part of the Problem. But, you know, I just don't care any more. I have had my share of shit things happen to me in my life — nothing on a par with the abuse and crap some social groups have to put up with, though, obviously — and I am just exhausted. I am 31 years old and I just want to settle down with a nice, quiet life. I want to have a nice house with a cat and/or a dog, a car that doesn't rattle when it goes around corners, a job that I enjoy that also allows me the free time to do things I want to do. I am partway there already (mainly on the job front) after a difficult couple of years, and I just do not have the energy to get upset and angry over things outside of my immediate situation any more. It's selfish, and I'm completely aware of that — and mildly guilty about it, to my annoyance — but it's true. I want my own life to be sorted before I try and fix the rest of the world, and I've still got a long way to go yet.

In honesty, it's not that I genuinely don't give a shit about the issues in question and don't think they're a problem. It's that any time a "discussion" on said issues comes up, it devolves within a matter of seconds into people throwing tables at each other, telling each other to "get a grip" or that Their Opinion Is Wrong. I've tried on several occasions to engage in such discussions in a reasonable, rational manner and every time this pattern has emerged, without fail. It's utterly predictable. Someone makes an inflammatory statement deliberately designed to provoke, someone else comes along with a counterpoint, then both sides gather the troops and proceed to bitch and scream at one another with no resolution being reached. Then the whole thing just happens again and again and again. In some cases, people in question repeatedly stoke the fire in an attempt to get the arguments to flare up again long after the initial flurry has passed.

I have one far-off friend in particular whom I otherwise like very much who I now feel I can't really engage with via social media any more because 90% of their posts seem to follow the pattern outlined above. This sort of person attracts like-minded individuals, most of whom are strong-willed and keen to argue their case aggressively. I hate unnecessary aggression and will do anything possible to avoid it, whether it's in actual conversation or on the Internet. If that means no longer talking to someone online, then it's a sad situation for sure, but it's what I'll do.

There's also the fact that in a lot of cases these screaming matches don't achieve anything whatsoever. A lot of the people who hold these strong opinions can very much talk the talk but then don't do anything to back up their bold words. If they took some sort of action regarding the things they feel so strongly about, I might be more inclined to care more one way or the other. But when the same old arguments arise day after day after day, I just get tired and don't want to engage with it any more. The impact is lost. I don't care any more. I just want to have a quiet life. If your points are making me — and doubtless plenty of others like me — feel like that, you are not arguing your case well.

Is that such a bad thing? Apparently so. But if it's wrong, to mangle the cliché, I really don't have the energy or give enough of a shit to be right.

#oneaday Day 989: Blackout

I was all set to write something profound tonight, then the Internet died and I'm relegated to blogging from my phone.

All right, I didn't have anything hugely profound to say and even if I did I could clearly still say it from my phone, but the Internet has gone down, which is, as everyone thoroughly immersed in 21st century living knows, incredibly annoying.

Given its prevalence in our everyday lives, it's very easy to forget what life without the Internet was like. Something as simple as checking the news or finding out what time something was on TV relied on you having… oh, it's back. I'll return when I finish watching this episode of The World God Only Knows. Ja ne!

… … … …

20 minutes later…

There we are, that's better.

Shit, now there's pressure on me to write something meaningful. Umm…

Nope, I got nothing. And fuck all that Internet talk. I've written that exact same post at least five or six times already in the last 989 days.

I finished watching Welcome to the NHK today. The last few episodes were major-league Feels territory. It was a fascinating show, all-told, that I may write about in more detail at some point in the near future. What I particularly liked was that it wasn't particularly easy to pigeon-hole into a specific category of genre. It had elements of comedy, drama, romance, surrealism and all manner of other stuff too. On the whole it was quite an emotional experience for me — I'm not sure how much it would resonate with someone who couldn't relate to some of the issues therein, but I certainly found it to be an excellent, worthwhile, enjoyable and moving watch.

Tonight, as I mentioned earlier, I've started watching The World God Only Knows after recommendations from several people. I'll blog in more detail about this when I've watched more than two episodes, but it seems to be highly entertaining so far.

The premise, for the unfamiliar, is that dating sim addict Keima inadvertently enters into a contract with the unfeasibly cute and broom-wielding demon Elsie to help round up "Loose Souls", runaway spirits that hide themselves inside the hearts of girls. Keima is thus tasked with making said girls fall in love with him, thus releasing the Loose Soul for Elsie to catch. Keima, sadly, is more than a little socially awkward, having spent all his time dating 2D girls rather than interacting with real people. However, since reneging on the contract means that both he and Elsie will be decapitated by the magical collars placed upon them, he has no choice but to go along with the outlandish plan. Consequently, he attempts to use his knowledge of dating sim tropes to figure out girls in the real world and, of course, Hilarity Ensues.

I've watched two episodes so far and already I want my own Elsie to hug. Certain characters just nail the whole adorableness factor, and she has this particular characteristic in spades. The show as a whole is rather endearing, too, though, regularly lapsing into heavily-stylized and chibi sequences rather than trying to remain too grounded in reality. The concept is, after all, ridiculous, so rather than trying to take itself too seriously the show appears to very much embrace its silliness. I'm fine with that, and am looking forward to exploring the rest of the episodes.

Anyway, on that note I think it's probably time I hit the sack. Hopefully tomorrow will see a more coherent entry and less in the way of Internet outages.

#oneaday Day 988: Love and Tolerate

The world is full of social issues that really, thinking about it, we should probably have gotten over by now. As a general rule, hating anyone for arbitrary reasons such as their gender, race, sexuality or haircut is something that the human race of the 21st century should have moved past now, but it's sad to see that this sort of thing still goes on. And yes, people probably should speak out against sexism, misogyny, racism and all manner of other issues when they crop up. If they don't, then these issues just continue to fester and get worse. If you don't get any sort of feedback on the things you say, you never learn that they aren't acceptable, after all.

At the same time, I can't help feeling discomfort at the tone in which some of these criticisms are presented. I read an article over on Boing Boing today about "why the fedora grosses out geekdom". Perhaps I'm not clever enough to "get" Leigh Alexander's writing, but I came out of that article having absolutely no idea of what she was getting at. Supposedly she was exploring why the fedora had such negative associations, even among members of geek culture — this is the first I've heard of it, I have to say — but it actually came across to me as yet another rant against the phenomenon of "Nice Guys". I've written about this topic in the past and it really does bother me — even more so since learning that a very good friend of mine (and a genuine nice guy (no caps) to boot) abandoned his previous (excellent) blog due to its name — "Nice Guy Gamer" — having negative connotations. While I don't argue that there are guys out there who do fulfil the "Nice Guy" (with caps) stereotype, as someone who believes himself to be nice (no caps) it irks me enormously any time this discussion comes up.

In short, Alexander's piece just came across as rather judgemental, even if that wasn't the intention. In providing links to the various "shaming" Tumblrs that focus on men wearing fedoras and these supposed negative connotations, she has fuelled the fire and made people aware of another avenue of bullying people based on their fashion choices. Not only that, she has also drawn attention to a supposed connection between the people who choose to dress this way and undesirable character traits. Statistically speaking, there probably are some men who wear fedoras and who are manipulative jerkwads, but equally, there are probably also plenty of men who choose to wear them purely as a means to express themselves. We geeks aren't particularly known for dressing well at the best of times, so perhaps we should cut those who make an effort to give themselves a distinctive appearance a bit of slack. (NB: I do not own a fedora. I do have a straw trilby that was purchased entirely to stop me giving myself sunstroke when sitting outside, and not as a fashion statement.)

I guess my point is that while there are plenty of issues that really do need resolving — the way that many women are treated on a daily basis is unacceptable; racial epithets just need to go away; medieval attitudes towards sexuality need to be thrown through the window — there are clearly better ways of going about it than attacking (or at least drawing unnecessary attention to) subcultures or trends that may or may not have anything to do with undesirable character traits. Attack sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia and all that other bullshit the world can do without when it comes up, yes. Speak out against injustices. Make a difference.

But seriously. Dudes in hats? Let them enjoy their quirks. Love and tolerate. Not everything is bad. At this rate there will be very little left in the world for people to enjoy without feeling guilty or self-conscious. And that sounds like a pretty miserable existence to me — especially as a geek who feels perpetually uneasy and self-conscious.

#oneaday Day 982: Must Try Harder

I'm not normally one to put down the hard work of others, particularly in my own field of writing, but I feel compelled to say a few words about some things that have been published this week.

Here's one.

Here's the other.

Now, lest I come across as some sort of joyless bastard, I am aware that both of these pieces were written in jest in an attempt to be — I assume, anyway — "satirical", but the fact is that they both utterly fail in what they are trying to do, leaving them both looking rather foolish — particularly the deranged scribblings of the Borderlands 2 piece.

There are several things that irk me about these two pieces. Firstly is the fact that they exist at all, and on high-profile, (arguably) respectable sites that actually pay their writers. It's hard to feel that this sort of thing is justifiable when there are plenty of people across the world writing purely for the love of writing about games. My team over at Games Are Evil is just one of many groups who don't write about games as their main, paying job but still put in a ton of effort to produce great content and strive to improve their own work over time. The scores of community writers over at Bitmob are another great example. The countless bloggers all over the world. Those who run enthusiast sites in their own time in an attempt to get noticed. All of those produce higher quality work than the two pieces linked above — and yet these are the articles that are deemed worthy of pay. There's no justice there.

The second thing that has vexed me somewhat regarding this matter is the amount of praise they have got — mostly from fellow professionals, it has to be said. The first piece in particular drew a frankly astonishing amount of fawning, with quotes including that it was the "most clever [review of Borderlands 2]" that one tweeter had ever read; that it was "anarchic stream-of-consciousness, like the game itself"; that it was the "most incredible piece of games journalism ever" and the "Ulysses of games journalism".

Now, I'm all for celebrating good writing. But this was not good writing. Even from the perspective of it presumably being some sort of parody (or "anarchic stream-of-consciousness") it just didn't work. The number of utterly bewildered comments beneath the article is proof of that — and it's the same for the Eurogamer piece.

The thing is, I know both writers are capable of much better — and I have nothing against either of them personally. The author of the Borderlands 2 piece is not only the editor of one of the biggest video game sites in the UK, but also a novelist. I expect considerably better from him, in short — or if he's going to try something clever, it should be something that actually works.

Since taking a step back from mainstream games journalism (my day job focuses on mobile and social games, and Games Are Evil focuses on the "alternative" side of computer and console gaming) I have regrettably confirmed a few suspicions I had about the state of the games journalism sector in the UK. A noticeable, vocal proportion of it is made up of a very insular "old boys' club" which appears to believe itself immune to criticism, meaning that it feels more and more liberties can be taken with what sort of work and attitude is acceptable — and anyone who steps out of line to say "hang on a minute…" gets summarily ridiculed. I found myself the recipient of such scorn last year when I pointed out my discomfort at the tone and content of the Games Media Awards Twitter feed, and consequently have shied away from publicly criticising things ever since. I was in two minds about posting this entry at all with that in mind, but in this instance I felt the need for a bit of cathartic release if nothing else.

There are plenty of fantastic games writers out there who don't need to resort to… whatever these two pieces were resorting to. Satire? Parody? Childishness? I honestly don't know, even after rereading them both several times.

Demand better from your articles about games. For all the pontificating about how games journalism is "broken" and how it should be "fixed", if these pieces are anything to go by it seems to be getting worse rather than better.

Changed my blog theme. Let me know what you think!

I changed my theme. EXCITEMENT. I've been using the WordPress "Twenty Ten" theme until now but I thought I'd see what the newer "Twenty Twelve" looked like. Pretty similar, as it happens, albeit with a bit of extra white space and borders around images. It also makes these brief "aside" posts stand out a bit better. Let me know what you think.

Updates to Pages

Always wondered what this "aside" thing did — now's as good a time as any to try it out, I guess. I've updated my About Pete and More By Pete pages. In particular, I've redirected the defunct What They Play links on the More By Pete page to use archive.org's Wayback Machine so, as if by time-travelling magic, you can still read the articles, even though they don't exist any more! YAY~

#oneaday Day 963: Being an Attempt to Rescue the English Language from the Imbeciles who Pervert it So

I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this post, as I know for a fact that most of the people who follow this blog, whether they're regular commenters or not, are literate and perfectly capable of using the English language correctly. I just thought it would be fun to have a whinge about some of my pet peeves with regard to English usage… or lack thereof.

I'm not entirely sure what it is about the Internet that makes people's English usage so much worse. The world has plenty of intelligent people in it, yet if you were to go solely by Internet comment sections it would be hard to believe that. I know intelligence is a much more complicated equation than simple spelling, punctuation and grammar — and there are specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia to bear in mind — but the fact is, technology should make it easier than ever to write things technically perfectly. So why do people not bother?

Laziness, usually, or a desire to get whatever is in their head out into the digital domain as quickly as possible. Most people would be quick to blame social media for this one, with the presence of "Like" and "Comment" buttons on pretty much everything these days encouraging people to spew their facile musings all over things they really have no knowledge of whatsoever. But it's actually a much older problem that, most likely, stems from more real-time forms of communication such as chatrooms. "a/s/l" is a linguistic object of ridicule these days, but in the early days of Internet communication it was an essential part of the "introductions" process when entering a new chatroom. (For those who don't actually know what it stands for, it's asking everyone present what their age, sex and location is.)

Chatrooms often got very busy, and it thus became important for people to be able to make themselves heard as quickly as possible. Consequently, a lot of the abbreviations we use (and/or ridicule) regularly today entered popular usage. Some had been around for a while; others had changed their usage significantly, occasionally leading to comic misunderstandings when one speaker thinks that "LOL" means "lots of love" and the other thinks it means "laughing out loud".

This is no excuse, though! Proper English usage when addressing another person online is, to me, a sign of respect. If you don't take the care to spell and punctuate correctly when addressing someone, to me that says that you don't think they're worth more than the bare minimum amount of time it takes to bang out a furious, cackhanded message and then switch to another tab to, I don't know, watch some porn or play FarmVille or something. (Or both. The mind boggles at that possibility.)

Anyway, rambling explanation over, allow me to present the crimes against the English language that irritate me the most at present. If you are guilty of any of these, please stop being guilty of them, because they all make you look like a bit of a tool.

(Oh, before I go on, my day job requires me to write in American English so I am not going to cover any of the silly things they do with English, such as misusing the words "momentarily", "solicitor" and "patronise".)

1. "LOL" is not a substitute for punctuation.

I've lost the original Facebook post (not by me, I hasten to add) where I first became aware of this obnoxious usage of "lol", but it happens all too frequently, particularly in comment sections. "LOL" is not a substitute for a comma, full stop, semicolon or indeed any punctuation mark.

To judge whether or not using "LOL" is appropriate, read the thing you have just typed out loud. Did you laugh out loud when you got to the "LOL"? If not, remove it and replace it with an appropriate punctuation mark. In fact, even if you did laugh out loud, please remove it and replace it with an appropriate punctuation mark.

2. It's "definitely", not "definately" or "defiantly".

Definitely. Definitely. It's not that difficult a word to spell. It's no "accommodation" or "antidisestablishmentarianism" and it's certainly no "floccinaucinihilipilification". So stop fucking it up.

Also, every time you use "defiantly" instead of "definitely", you are significantly changing the meaning of your sentence. Compare and contrast the sentences "I will definitely do the chores" to "I will defiantly do the chores". One is a nice assurance that you will do the things expected of you; the other suggests that you are going to be an arse about it.

3. Games (and drugs) are "addictive", not "addicting".

"Addicting" is a word, but not in the way you think it is used. Angry Birds is not "addicting", it is "addictive". "Addicting" is a verb. "Addictive" is an adjective. Observe:

"I am addicting my little sister to Angry Birds because it is better than crack. She finds crack worryingly addictive."

(Note: I do not have a little sister, and no-one I know is addicted or in the process of being addicted to crack. Also, Angry Birds is shit and I would rather my hypothetical little sister were addicted to crack than play that bollocks.*)

In fact, no. The word "addicting" is a surprisingly difficult verb to put into a sentence without it sounding stupid. So just stop using it. Addictive. Addictive. Got it?

4. When you write in lower case, you look like an imbecile.

I know professional writers who write everything — blog posts, status updates, comments, even their own name — in lower case when they're "off duty". It makes them look like imbeciles. I don't think I need to say anything more than that. The Shift key is right there. Your little finger is probably hovering over it anyway as you type, so stop being so fucking lazy and use it.

5. This review is "biased", not "bias".

I'll grant that speaking like a twat is something of a meme on the Internet, but any time you accuse something you read of "being bias", you look like a complete cock. An article exhibits bias if it is biased. Not the other way round. Or any other arrangement.

If you can't remember the difference, how about you just say you disagree with what you have read rather than accusing it of "being bias"? Or, better yet, just close that webpage before clicking the "comment" button?

6. Apostrophes denote possession, not plurals.

CDs. GCSEs. Sofas. Not CD's, GCSE's and sofa's. Under no circumstances are you to use an apostrophe to denote something is a plural. Why? Because it's wrong, that's why. Even when using an abbreviation. And even when the word you are pluralising ends with a vowel, which appears to be when this issue more commonly raises its ugly head.

Related note: "it's" is short for "it is", while "its" means "belonging to it". This is, I'll admit, a particularly stupid rule, since it breaks the "apostrophes denote possession" rule by overruling it with the "apostrophes also denote missing letters" rule. Stupid language.

7. If you're going to swear, just swear.

You're not protecting anyone's innocence by writing "f**k". Everyone knows you mean "fuck". If you're going to censor naughty language, censor it completely. If you're going to make it clear what all the words you've asterisked out are, then you may as well just type them all out properly, you f**king c**t-faced w**ksplat, you t*sser, you kn*bjockey, you complete twunting sh*tbag b*****d. ("Twunting" is not a swear, despite it sounding like it should be.)

8. You're a twat if your knowledge of "your" and "you're" is poor.

As Ross from Friends put it so succinctly: "Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E means 'you are'. Y-O-U-R means 'your'!"

Read your sentence out loud. Could one of your "yours" be replaced by the words "you are"? If so, you should be using "you're" instead.

Here's an exercise. See if you can spot which ones are correct and which ones are not.

1. You're mum's face smells of poo.
2. Your not very good at this, are you?
3. You're defiantly going to get some of these wrong.
4. Get you're f**king words right lol
5. You're very brave if you successfully managed to navigate your way through those monstrosities.

9. Have fun!

Above all, have fun with language!

Actually, no, bollocks to that. Learn to write properly first, then have fun with it.

(Author's note: Any indication that I am a pompous grammar Nazi in this post is entirely intentional and mostly played for comedy value. Mostly. Comments that do not follow the above rules will be printed out and fired into the sun, then deleted.*)

* not really

#oneaday Day 962: Signal to Noise

We're reaching saturation point with social media. In fact, I think we got past that point a long time ago, meaning that we're at the "completely sodden and dribbling all over the carpet" stage.

There is too much social media. There are too many possible places for people to share things that nobody cares about with people they don't know. And it seems that every day some bright-eyed startup CEO decides that what we really need is yet another social network service of some description.

I've indulged in a few of these superfluous social networks over the years. GetGlue was a bit of fun, allowing you to "check in" to movies, books, games and even "topics" that you were interested in, leave comments and discuss things with other community members. This was at the height of the "gamification" craze, so there were plenty of achievements to collect, and you could even get some real-life physical stickers sent to you if you collected enough achievements.

Similarly, Foursquare and the now-defunct Gowalla proved fun for a little while. During the period of time when I was unemployed and quite spectacularly depressed, I made extensive use of Gowalla to "tag" various places around Southampton and assist with building up a crowdsourced map of places of interest. I even made some actual real-life friends through it, but since then location check-ins have lost their lustre — what's the point, really?

Then I tried Path, which promised to be a high-quality mobile-focused social network. But since you can access Facebook, Twitter and Google+ — the biggest social networks in the world — via your mobile phone, why on Earth would you need a mobile-specific one? Sure, Path had a lovely interface and the bizarre ability to track when you woke up and went to sleep, but it was ultimately pointless.

Today, I reviewed an app/social network whose purpose remained completely obtuse to me even as I made use of it — and even as an employee of the company frantically tried to convince me that the service was worthwhile via both Twitter and the service itself. (I'm not going to name it as I really can't be bothered to be chased further — I gave it a fair shot, I explored it, I found it to be a complete waste of time. Sorry.)

The service in question allows users to, like GetGlue, "Like" things. Any things. Like cake? Then "Like" cake. Like Tori Amos? Then "Like" Tori Amos. Not sure whether you like broccoli and stilton soup? Then add it to your "To-Do" list, then "Like" it if you like it. Great. Sure. Fine. One question: why?

This questionable usefulness was only further obscured by the fact that the app also, for some utterly unfathomable reason, allows its users to "plant" "Likes" at actual physical locations, meaning you can claim to have hidden, say, an iPhone 5 in your local McDonalds, or Jedward in your local sewage works. Fun for about five minutes again, sure — and a means of seeing who lives vaguely near you and likes Jedward — but again… why?

There's too much noise and not enough signal in social media these days, in short, and this fact is a big part of why I stripped back on all "non-essential" social apps a while back. I keep Facebook, Twitter and G+ around because there are people I regularly speak to on all of those, but outside of those "big three"? There's really very little reason for a lot of these services and apps to exist, but the amount of money being thrown at them by venture capitalists is terrifying.

Kind of makes me think that I should come up with an "innovative" idea for a mobile social network in order to attract several million dollars' worth of funding.

Okay… give me a minute.

Thinking.

Eureka! I got it. Everyone likes taking Instagram photos of food, right? Well, I propose a social photography network that is nothing but pictures of food with a selection of retro filters (some of which are available via in-app purchase). You can "check in" to the food you're eating, discuss it with other people and share photographs of your lunchbox. It'll be a big hit. I'll call it "füd", all in lower case, naturally.

That'll be two million dollars, please, Mr Venture Capitalist. KTHX.

#oneaday Day 958: Gratuitous Self-Promotion (And Promotion of Others, Too)

Hello! How are you? Great!/Sorry to hear that! (delete as applicable)

I have something to share with you that I've been working on recently. Some of you may have already seen what I've been up to; it may be news to some of you. I thought I'd share it here, though, in the hope that I can get more people looking at it.

I'm talking about the website Games Are Evil. I was a contributor there a while back in the post-Kombo years, but was then lucky enough to score my gig at the late GamePro. I kept abreast of what the team was up to during and after my time at GamePro, and always felt a certain degree of "attachment" towards it, even during the times when I wasn't actively involved.

So when it became apparent that the site was in need of a bit of a "reboot" and resuscitation, I was keen to step forward while I had a bit of free time on my hands. I'm lucky enough to have a flexible (and well-paid) enough day job that I have time to take on a "pet project" like this as well as fulfilling my other responsibilities, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to gain some experience in running a site as well as experimenting with some "alternative" directions and content strategies.

That "alternative" thing is key. Having had some interesting conversations with a couple of my friends in the PR industry in recent months, it became clear that a lot of representatives were becoming frustrated that the vast majority of gaming sites focused on the upcoming blockbusters, while "B-tier" titles (for want of a better term — I'm not saying their quality is lower, only their profile) went forgotten, or were barely acknowledged with a somewhat dismissive news story. As such, I felt that there was clearly a gap in the market for a site to cater to the "niche". Since Games Are Evil was not particularly beholden to advertisers or investors, the time was ripe to launch something of an experiment — a video games site that deliberately eschews stories regarding things like the Call of Duties and the Mass Effects of this world in favour of smaller-scale titles and interesting stories from around gaming culture. My original manifesto from when I took over can be found here, if you're curious.

Since taking over the reins at GrE, I've launched a series of regular columns from a range of talented and enthusiastic writers keen to write about their passions. These columns are becoming the main focus of the site, supported by a few daily news stories and occasional reviews when we have code to hand. Each column has a tight, narrow focus and concentrates on a specific genre or aspect of gaming culture, meaning that readers of Games Are Evil will be able to follow their favourite niche and get to know the writer of said column in the process rather than having to scroll through page after page of news which might not be relevant to them. The model which I wanted to follow with this was the way old-school 1up used to work — people came for the personalities rather than necessarily the specific content of the articles. It's too early to determine whether or not this has been successful or not so far, but I am very proud of what the team has achieved to date — we've seen some great columns ranging from comprehensive roundups of Minecraft news to in-depth explorations of obscure strategy games.

Here's some handy links for you to find your favourite column and follow it:

Distant Worlds — a weekly roundup of news from the MMO sector. What's new, what's hot, what's not.
FreePlay — a weekly delve into free-to-play and freeware games to sort out the "must plays" from the microtransaction-riddled crapfests.
Insert Coin — a weekly exploration of arcade machines, arcade restoration and arcade culture.
READ.ME — a weekly foray into the world of visual novels (I do this one!)
Swords & Zippers — a weekly roam through the colourful worlds of Japanese role-playing games (I do this one too!)
Tactical Tuesday — a bi-monthly deep dive into some of the most obscure, underappreciated and fascinating strategy games available for PC.
The Craft — a weekly roundup of what's new in the world of Minecraft.
The Vault — a weekly dive into the annals of history to rescue underappreciated or forgotten classics from obscurity. Fans of the Squadron of Shame will be right at home here.

It's early days for the site's new direction as yet, but things are starting to come together nicely. If you've been reading the daily new content, thanks! If you haven't, please feel free to check it out. Leave a comment on articles you'd like to discuss. And please, please share anything you happen to read that you find interesting, entertaining or just plain awesome. With your help, we can make Games Are Evil into the go-to destination for "alternative gaming".

Gratuitous self-promotion (and promotion of others) now over. Normal business will resume tomorrow.