#oneaday Day 686: A space to say things

As I mentioned a few days ago, I have started Going to Therapy. It has been pretty good so far, for one big reason: it is a place where I can go where I feel like I can pretty much say anything.

psychologist writing on clipboard during session — Photo by Alex Green on Pexels.com

This is such a valuable thing to have, whatever form it takes. And I know I say a lot of things on this blog, but there are certain things I have second thoughts before posting about. Just this evening, I deleted the start of a post where I was going to have a go about something, then decided that the potential arguments it might start (it's not anything racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic or anything like that, don't worry) just simply would not be worth the stress it would cause.

To put it another way, the benefits I would gain from getting those thoughts out of my head and onto paper would be far outweighed by the stress any subsequent "discourse" might cause. (Or it might not. But in this instance I think it's best to just not take the risk at all.)

Modern life is exhausting, and talking to the people who are closest to you can sometimes be difficult for all manner of different reasons. When that's the case, you can find yourself bottling up emotions, particularly frustrations and anger, and not really having any way to release them. And that's why having a space to say things is important.

Your space to say things doesn't have to be Going to Therapy. It could be a journal that you keep for yourself, written by hand and locked in a drawer, for your eyes only. It could be a password-protected note in your note-taking app of choice. It could be a voice memo you leave for yourself. It could be abstractly represented through a piece of art, music or writing you choose to create. It could be something you tell your cat when no-one else is around.

It can take many forms. What's important is that you feel like you have it. Ideally it provides you with a feeling of "release", that you've let those emotions out of your brain, acknowledging their existence and how they are making you feel, and perhaps contemplating why you are having them in the first place.

Is the thing you think you are mad about really the thing you are actually mad about, or is it a symptom of something more broad that you need to deal with? Is the whole thing a situation you have put yourself in that you can just as easily extract yourself from? Take a step back from the part of you that is angry and frustrated, and talk to them. What, exactly, is upsetting them? Why are they feeling that way? What do they think they should do about it? What do they think they can do about it? What do they think the consequences for doing something about it might be, and do they think those consequences are worth the temporary catharsis of doing the thing?

There are no easy answers about this sort of thing, but it always pays to be reflective and contemplative. The modern world — and particularly the Internet — is set up in such a way to deliberately make us nearly constantly mad and frustrated, and it's easy to forget that when the red mist starts to descend and all you want to do is yell at someone. That's what a significant amount of the Internet wants, and I'm not just talking about trolls. It's in corporations' interests to keep you mad, because being mad means you're engaged. And engagement, after all, is the be-all and end-all of modern-day "KPIs".

I've taken a step back from the thing I was mad about. I'm still a bit mad about it, but on reflection, it's really not something that is all that worth getting mad about. It is something I can, relatively easily, put to one side and never think about ever again.

So I think I'm going to do that. Or at least try to, anyway.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 682: Freedom!

I'm officially free of professional social media responsibilities from today, and let me tell you, I am incredibly glad and very grateful for the opportunity to take this sideways step in my career. I didn't come into my job with the intention of being The Social Media Guy, it just sort of fell to me. And before long, it was something that started to really get me down.

You see, being The Social Media Guy for a brand means that you have to face down the absolute worst end of humanity online day after day. You have to just sit back and take abuse from random strangers. You have to listen to fuckheads taking the piss out of things that you've worked hard on. You have to watch people spread lies. And in pretty much all of these cases, you have very little power to actually do anything about them. In the meantime, you're expected to put across the image of being relentlessly chipper, positive and call-to-action-y in an attempt to get a society full of people with an attention span of less than three seconds to give a shit about the thing you've worked hard on.

Honestly, it's a complete and total drag. When you're working at a job you actually like, on a product that you actually believe in and are proud to be associated with, the absolute last thing you want to see is a bunch of Facebook randos wilfully misunderstanding what it is you're doing, and being incredibly rude about it. I know that most of these people aren't posting the things they post out of an intention to make someone feel bad — most people see a brand account and think it's a "faceless" thing — but, as someone who has spent some time being the face behind that brand account, let me tell you: when you act like a cunt to the brand, someone has to read your bullshit just in case you might actually have a valid issue, and if you're being a cunt, you're probably making someone feel bad.

It's one of those things that you don't really notice at first. You can laugh it off as "oh, look at these silly Internet people". Over time, though, it really starts to get to you. The fact that you can't just respond to one of these people, go "look, shut the fuck up, no-one gives a shit about what you think, and there is an entire team of people behind me who have worked their arses off on this thing you're being dismissive about" is frustrating. Honestly, I would respect any brand account that fully took the gloves off and took an abusive commenter down a peg or two, but it's Not The Done Thing.

I'm glad to be out of it. It's not my problem any more. There are people who can do a much better job at it than me, and I am more than happy to let them take care of it while I get on with some of the things where my actual strengths lie. For now, that means continuing to write blog posts, videos and documentation, and stepping up the amount of playtesting and "tech" work that I get to do. I'm hoping I will learn something over the long term — and in the short term, it feels like I have even greater involvement in working on things that actually mean something to me, and that I feel have value.

I hope I never have to look back. I have been looking forward to the day I never have to look at Twitter and Facebook ever again for a long time, and now it's pretty much here — barring any occasions when I need to cover someone who's off, because unfortunately I'm the one who is most qualified (or I should perhaps say experienced) for that cover. But I'll take it for now. This is a positive step, and one that I'm happy about.

Just remember to be kind to the people posting stuff from a brand that you have an interest in. Someone has to read that vitriol you post, and I can guarantee they have a million and one ways they'd rather spend their day.

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#oneaday Day 646: #justice4rts... again

The thoroughly lovely video maker and online pal RoseTintedSpectrum has just received an unwelcome email from YouTube informing him that his channel is "no longer eligible for monetisation" due to "reused content". A link in the email then goes on to define "reused content" as material that "is not clearly an original creation of this channel and may have been repurposed from another source without adding significant original commentary, substantive modifications or educational or entertainment value."

If you've ever watched any of Rosie's videos, you will know that he absolutely adds "significant original commentary, substantive modifications" and "educational or entertainment value" to every one of his videos. If you're unfamiliar, Rosie's shtick these days is to go through an old TV show and provide acerbic, sarcastic but thoughtful commentary that is frequently hilarious. This commentary is often punctuated with original creative work that Rosie has produced, including remixes of songs in the show, all-original songs that he has created, and sometimes some absolutely brilliant overdubbing and re-editing.

His difficulties largely seem to stem from the fact that he primarily covers old TV shows now, and, as you might expect, making use of clips of these is rife with potential copyright issues. However, YouTube's provisions — and indeed the legal definitions of "fair use" and "fair dealings" — allow the use of copyrighted material, so long as the creator using that work is making substantive changes to them, making it clear that they cannot in any way be confused for the original material.

No-one is going to watch a video on Rosie's channel and say that he is making anything that could be confused for the original. No-one can possibly watch his channel and say that he has not made substantive, creative changes to the stuff he is providing commentary on. He puts in a whole lot more effort than a lot of "reaction" YouTubers — and at the very least, his work could be described as "reaction content". In reality it's much more than that, but since "reaction content" is one of the specific examples YouTube provides of material that can safely be monetised, it's a relevant, absolute bare minimum definition.

The infuriating thing about whenever something like this happens is the completely opaque way in which YouTube communicates these things. There's a problem with "reused content" — sure. Where? When? What video? Why, exactly, is this being picked up on now when it's been fine for several years? None of those questions are answered by YouTube, and you can bet your sweet bippy that they will make it as hard as humanly possible to speak to a living, breathing person who should be able to get this resolved in a matter of minutes.

It's bad enough when something like this happens to small creators who are making little to no money off YouTube. But Rosie, who has found some decent success on the platform over the last few years — and deservedly so — is using YouTube as an important income stream to support himself and his family. For that to be suddenly taken away without warning last thing on a Sunday night, of all times, is completely unacceptable.

At the very minimum, platforms like YouTube should be legally obligated to say exactly what the problem is when inflicting as harsh a punishment as "you now can't make any money from your videos". I suspect the reason they don't is because the majority of this shit is the fault of their "automated systems", and they don't want to admit that sometimes (quite often) they get things very, very wrong.

This is, after all, the second time this has happened to Rosie after a similar incident in November of 2024. Thankfully, that was eventually resolved after a concerted effort by Rosie and people who cared about him — here's hoping that this time is similarly fixed, and our friend can get back to doing what he does best, and what he loves doing.

In the meantime, if you're not subscribed to Rosie, drop by his channel. He's got a lot of great videos there, and deserves your support.

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#oneaday Day 642: I will never use Gemini when I'm bored

yelling formal man watching news on laptop — Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

The website "Android Police" posted an incredibly stupid article today, headlined "I use Gemini when I'm bored — and it's better than doomscrolling". I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the premise of this article is spectacularly dumb and the author, Anu Joy, should feel bad for having written it… if indeed they are actually a real person. You never can be sure of that with engagement-bait articles these days, and the author's complete lack of online presence beyond LinkedIn doesn't fill me with confidence that they actually exist. But never mind.

I'm not going to link to the article because it doesn't deserve it, but I am going to systematically destroy it for today's post, which features a lot of swearing. Hope you don't mind, about either part of that statement. If you do, well, tough titties.

Cock!

Turning boredom into a 5-minute adventure

The first lake-boiling, environmentally ruinous use of the lying plagiarism machine that Anu Joy cites as an antidote to boredom is "turning it into a mini choose-your-own-adventure generator", with her argument being that "rather than passively consuming content, I now engage with short, interactive stories that unfold in real time, making them ideal for five-minute boredom gaps."

In response to this, I would like to introduce any Gemini-brained fuckwits to the long, rich and deep history of the interactive fiction genre, all of which has been written by actual humans, and designed to occupy you for anything between a few minutes and multiple hours — possibly even days or weeks if you get stuck and have the willpower to not look at a walkthrough.

It's easy to get involved with interactive fiction, too! There are plenty of great standalone games that fall into this category, such as Inkle's excellent titles 80 Days, Overboard!, Expelled! and more, plus their adaptations of actual choose-your-own-adventure-style gamebooks such as Sorcery! The indie marketplace itch.io has a whole tag for titles developed in Twine, which are essentially hypertext-based choose-your-own-adventure games. And if you want to get into the history of the medium and its rich diversity developed over the course of the last 40+ years, the Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB) has more interactive fiction than you can probably get through in a lifetime, much of which can be played online right there in your web browser.

Or you could, I don't know, actually read a Choose Your Own Adventure book. They still exist, you know! And, as an adult, a single "run" through one will probably only take you about five minutes!

"Oh, but Gemini can make me something that's never been done before!" No it fucking can't! That's sort of the problem with LLMs! They will never, ever have an original thought because their entire fucking functionality is built on plagiarising other people's work. So why not actually go and enjoy a human being's work rather than burning down a forest to get the obsequious chatbot to "tell you a story?"

FUCK.

Quizzes, riddles and brain-teasers on demand

Do I really have to dignify this with a response? Okay, here are some places you can take quizzes online that don't involve getting a lying robot to make shit up:

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, the place where we used to go to look things up before the Internet, has a whole page full of quizzes.

Puzzle publishing company Lovatts has a straightforward and flexible quiz you can challenge any time.

Fucking Buzzfeed, the website where clickbait goes to die, has tons of quizzes. They're sort of famous for them! (EDIT: I had forgotten that Buzzfeed "pivoted to AI" a couple of years back. Maybe forget about this one.)

The best news of all is that these quizzes are put together by actual humans, so the answers should be right, which is not something you can guarantee with the garbage LLMs like Gemini spew out!

FUUUUUCK.

Curiosity on demand, without the time sink

"Oooh, but Gemini is so good at research and telling me fun little facts!"

Heard of Wikipedia? They feature a different article on their front page every day. And those articles are written by humans. (They're specifically trying to fend off the lying chatbots right now.) Not only that, if you want to dive deeper, they are sourced, so you can actually follow up on the things they say.

If you really want to surprise yourself, bookmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random — that will take you to a completely random page, where you can start a whole new knowledge journey that doesn't involve polluting the drinking water of any communities. (Fun fact: you can use /wiki/Special:Random on any sites that run on the MediaWiki software, not just Wikipedia!)

FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

Gemini as a creative partner

"Some days, I'll argue whether pineapple on pizza is a culinary crime or a stroke of genius," Joy writes. If that's the level of your creativity, I suggest throwing a dart at Reddit and posting about how cool and random?! you think bacon is, you t3hPeNgU1NoFd00m, you.

If you just want someone to talk to, that is literally what social media is for. I know there are lots of things one can criticise about social media (particularly the Nazi bar that is Twitter in 2026), but if you just want to start a conversation with someone, there are few things easier than typing "@random hello, I disagree with your opinion on the Star Wars prequels, let's have a fight" or some other such bollocks.

If you want to talk to someone you don't know, there are services for that, too! Join a random Discord — or even better, one for something you're interested in! Play an MMO! Go on IRC! Brave Chatroulette! (Omegle apparently doesn't exist any more after some nasty shit went down there, so maybe don't go there.)

Just don't waste your fucking life talking to the cunting chatbot. It doesn't love you. It never will. And you're making the worst people in the world richer just by looking at it.

FUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!

Boredom doesn't stand a chance

If you are bored in the world as it exists today and can't think of anything better to do than open up Google fucking Gemini, you are a lost fucking cause. There is more entertainment, more media, more games, more reading material, more opportunities for socialising online than there have ever been. Not only that, there are unprecedented opportunities for you to get creative and express yourself in all manner of different ways, regardless of your past experience. You could even start your very own blog where you yell at people who might not exist!

There is no fucking excuse for turning to the chatbot "because you're bored". Even if the absolute limit of your creativity is "debating the merits of pineapple pizza", which Joy mentions twice in that dogshit article.

I realise that I have given the article in question far more attention than it ever deserved. But hey! It was the inspiration for something actually creative. And who knows? Someone might actually find some of the links I've provided useful.

Friends don't let friends use chatbots. So if I ever hear that you, dear reader, have turned to Google Gemini "because you're bored", I will hunt you down, wherever you are, and I will slap you repeatedly about the face with a wet trout.

Here endeth the lesson.

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#oneaday Day 639: The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies

There's a telltale sign you can use in any online argument that it is Time to Step Away From the Computer, and that is someone pulling out what I like to call The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies.

What I mean by this is that point in an online argument where people start going on about "ad hominem", "strawmen", "motte and bailey" and "No True Scotsman". And probably some others.

These are all valid logical fallacies, of course, but the sheer frequency with which they are trotted out by people absolutely desperate to win an online argument makes it absolutely exhausting to even attempt having a discussion about some things. Because more often than not, the person busting out The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies isn't actually interested in getting their point across or changing anyone's mind; they just want to feel like they "won" the argument. And, at the point The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies enters the picture, this is usually part of an attempt to paint themselves as the victim.

Other telltale signs include attempting to argue that positive representation of marginalised groups is actually a form of racism and/or sexism (against straight white men, obviously), taking great offence at the concept of fascism even being mentioned (and often expressing a desire that it be "discussed" or "debated"), using the term "diversity of opinion", claiming that women, non-white ethnic minorities and/or transgender people in leading roles are somehow "unrealistic" and, of course, turning to that old favourite term: woke.

Now, I won't lie. There were a few years where I found myself skating around this territory. I've talked more about that in this post, so I won't repeat the soul-searching and heart-opening from that post (though I encourage you to read it if you would like to know more). However, people can learn, grow and change, and that is exactly what I have done over the years. Across the COVID years and into Trump's second presidency, I have come to see that a lot of the things the people I once dismissed as online firebrands were attempting to warn us all about have actually come true.

And, as an extension of that, I came to see that some of the times I was needlessly defensive and insular, I should have been standing alongside people. After all, my beliefs have always erred on the left-leaning side of things; my frustration from those dark years was, as much as anything, frustration at being lumped in with right-wing-to-far-right-outright-Nazis based on nothing more than the media I enjoyed — particularly anime-adjacent stuff that often took a walk on the lewd side of life.

I knew that I wasn't a bad person, and I knew that enjoying the things I enjoyed didn't make me a bad person; frustration at being assumed to be a bad person based on those tastes was what caused me to lash out and, at times, do and say things that I regret. And yet even back then, I could see those deploying The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies as what they were: people who didn't really care about anything other than scoring imaginary Internet Points. They were not my allies. They were not my friends. They were insufferable dickheads.

Today, I recognise that it is, in fact, possible to have the interests and tastes I do and not find yourself drifting towards the shit-encrusted mouth of what is typically referred to today as "the alt-right pipeline". There are lots of left-leaning folks who do love sexy stuff, and one thing I will say for online discourse is that discussion over such things has improved over the course of the last ten years or so. There's still a way to go, but it's better.

As part of that, it's important to recognise that certain parts of popular media do have a far-right problem. And as part of that recognition, it's important to stand up and say that you will not stand for tossers ruining the thing that you love, rather than being frustrated at feeling like you're getting lumped in with said tossers. You probably aren't, so long as you're not using their talking points.

Such as, you know, The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies. There really is only one type of person who busts out The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies during an online discussion. And believe me, you don't want to be that person.

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#oneaday Day 630: Mr Cellophane

Cellophane, Mister Cellophane
Shoulda been my name, Mister Cellophane
'Cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me
And never know I'm there

(Mister Cellophane by John C. Reilly, from the musical "Chicago")

I don't wish the following to sound like self-pitying or a cry for attention, but it will almost certainly come out that way, and for this I apologise in advance.

Do you ever have days where you feel like you're "invisible"? Like, if you just weren't there, no-one would notice? I seem to be feeling this a lot more as I get older, but it's something that has always followed along with me to one degree or another.

As young as my teenage years, I remember, on several occasions, feeling like I wasn't sure if my friends really liked me, or if they were just putting up with me as a sort of "attachment" to one of their other friends. Given the oddly volatile nature of hormonal adolescent friendships, this is perhaps not a surprising way for someone to feel — I recall multiple other occasions where, for one reason or another, several of us who were, under normal circumstances, best friends, suddenly just… weren't any more for a little while. This normally only lasted a day or two, and it usually involved the one who instigated the temporary "split" trying to get "in" with some of the cooler kids. I don't recall any occasions where something like this resulted in a member of our mutual circle of friends completely abandoning us, but it is this sort of thing that made me uneasy and anxious at times.

At university, I had friends and acquaintances I attended my course with, but again, there were times where I felt like if I just wasn't there, nobody would really give a shit.

A lot of this stems from what I now know to be social anxiety caused by autism, but that unfortunately doesn't make it much easier to deal with — because I still feel this sort of thing to this day. I find it difficult to "maintain" relationships because I get overly worried about being a bother to someone who, in my mind, I have built up to be someone who resents my presence. And, on occasions where I feel like I have been someone who has been making that effort, it's hard not to feel rejected when the other parties involved aren't as interested in maintaining the relationships as you are.

The reason I'm talking about this today is because, once again, a video game site has been suffering layoffs — this time the long-established Eurogamer. And as the various people announced that they were no longer working there, and that they were looking for employment, lots of other people piped up and said how important their time together had been, how much they enjoyed working together, what fond memories they had of various projects they collaborated on.

I saw that and I felt painfully conscious that, when my career in the games press came to an unceremonious end, I didn't really feel like any of that happened for me. I feel like very few people really noticed my time on USgamer, let alone GamePro before that, and very few people spoke up for me to say that they had enjoyed my work. I certainly didn't get a string of adulation from former colleagues waxing poetic about past collaborations. And all that kind of hurt, frankly; I had made that site my life for the time I was there, and I was immensely proud of all that I had done. And yet when people look back on USgamer's existence now, I'm not even a footnote; I doubt anyone other than the few people who did regularly read my work there — most of whom are still online friends, I should add — would even be able to tell you that I was a founding member of the site.

I feel this under other circumstances, too. There are several Discords I'm a member of where I feel like my presence and existence is often forgotten about. I don't really have an online community that I feel like I can call "home" any more, and that is, I think, where a lot of this stems from; it's that age-old fear that, if you were to drop dead tomorrow, no-one would notice or care. (My wife, at least, would. Hopefully.)

And I don't really know how to "fix" this. As I say, my social anxiety makes it very difficult for me to step up and say "hey, hello, please pay attention to me" without feeling like I'm inconveniencing or annoying people, and as such, I continue to just sort of quietly exist in the hope that I don't get forgotten entirely.

If you're reading this, none of the above applies to you. I am grateful for your presence, your support and your friendship — because if you are reading this at this point, you are someone who is present in my life; you are someone who has, in one way or another, supported me at some point over the years; and you are someone that I'm happy to call a friend. I thank you, sincerely, from not letting me become completely invisible to the world at large.

And perhaps I should be content with that.

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#oneaday Day 629: Another site falls to AI

Earlier today, a review was being shared around. It was a featured review on Metacritic for the new Resident Evil Requiem, and it was very obviously AI-generated — both in terms of the review text itself, and the image and biography of the completely fictional author.

Now, I know there is plenty we can criticise Metacritic for, but to the site's credit, after being made aware of the situation, the review was not only pulled from Metacritic, but the site in question was blacklisted from being featured on there for future reviews, too.

The site in question was VideoGamer.com — not a site I ever particularly frequented, but one that has been around for many years, and one of many, many old games press brands that have been bought up by private equity and turned into sites filled with AI-generated drivel, usually in the form of undisclosed advertorial features pointing people towards shady gambling sites. VideoGamer is not the first site to fall in this way; previous victims have included AdventureGamers and The Escapist, and there are almost certainly countless more that we haven't found as yet.

My initial reaction to anything like this happening is to ask "why?"

Why are once-good sites being replaced with AI-generated drivel? Who do they think is reading this stuff? Why do the people in charge of these hollowed-out husks of websites think this is, in any way, a good idea?

The answer, of course, is that this is the natural endpoint of SEO-driven online writing. The sole reason these articles exist is to get people to click on them and generate advertising revenue for the site's owners. And if they can do that without having to do anything silly like pay actual people to write actual articles, so much the better! (Although the more astute among you out there may well point out that being an AI power user probably doesn't end up much cheaper than hiring an actual person — particularly in the games press, where, as Mat Jones of IGN put it earlier today, "games freelancers will turn in 2,000 words for an egg sandwich". I wish it wasn't true.)

Couple this with the news that Eurogamer and surrounding sites are suffering some considerable layoffs and things do not look altogether rosy. I also learned that VG247 is now little more than an SEO guideslop site; I never really liked that site all that much, but since most of my USgamer stuff ended up archived there after USgamer itself closed down, I do have a certain attachment to it.

The frustrating thing for me is that all this seems so unnecessary. Video games, as an industry, creative medium, art form, whatever you want to call them, are huge. One would assume that would mean they would need a specialist press around to cover them effectively, but given that so many sites have been gutted over the last few years — and, in many cases, replaced with AI slop — something doesn't quite seem to add up.

Sure, we've seen the rise of sites like Aftermath, who do good work, and it was gratifying to see Giant Bomb successfully extricate themselves from their former corporate overlords — full disclosure: I subscribe to both to support them — but neither of them quite take the place of what we used to have. And you can interpret that however you will, because the same is true if you think I'm referring to traditional "news, previews and reviews" websites, or if you think I'm referring to magazines. (Spoiler: I'm talking about both.)

Part of this feels like an extension of the whole "New Games Journalism" discussion we had in the latter-day 1up years. And while that discussion went to some odd places, I do acknowledge that there is some valuable work going on over at a number of worker-owned, reader-supported sites, particularly when it comes to telling the stories of people who work in games. But sometimes you just want to read something simple like what someone thought of a game you're interested in, y'know? And that side of things seems to very much be a dying breed.

One might argue that there's less need for that, what with social media, online discussion and "influencers" (you will never get me to not use scare quotes around that odious term) dominating the way games are promoted online these days. But I still like to read a straightforward review of something — and the continued existence of Metacritic, as flawed as it is as a concept, suggests that there's still a place for that sort of thing.

I can't help but wonder where all this will end up. With people starting to get interested in physical media once again, I would love to see proper magazines become a thing again. I suspect that won't happen, but we certainly can't go on like this. Can we? This feels like how you actually end up with a completely dead Internet.

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#oneaday Day 627: Finding your niche

I was a bit of a latecomer to YouTube. I remember a friend of mine trying to encourage me to follow some of the YouTubers she liked, and feeling curiously resistant to it all. In some respects, I am still quite resistant to certain quarters of YouTube — I have no intention of ever watching a Mr. Beast video, for example — but it's fair to say at this point that YouTube, as a general cultural entity, is an important part of my daily life for various reasons.

One of the things that I've particularly enjoyed about more actively engaging with YouTube over the last decade or so is coming across channels that have very much found their niche, and stick to it. Sometimes this is as simple as "gaming", but oftentimes I find that the most interesting and enjoyable channels are those that get a little more granular: those that choose to focus on a specific aspect of something that they enjoy and dive deep into that.

This can take many forms, so I want to share a few favourite channels in this regard today. Not all of them are gaming related, but all of them are run by people who have found something they enjoy doing and continue to do just that, often regardless of what "the algorithm" supposedly wants or viewing figures. I respect this because it's what I aspire to do with my channel; while my YouTube channel is broadly a "variety gaming" channel with a focus on retro, my preference is to explore overlooked and underappreciated games and platforms from over the years — and sometimes to give games that had a less than stellar reception on their original release another chance.

But I digress. This is not about me. This is about some channels I enjoy, so let's go on a little wander around YouTube, shall we?

Yesterzine

As you probably know if you've been reading this for any length of time, I enjoy old video game magazines, and as such I'm gratified to see how many people out there enjoy making videos and writing about them. One of my favourites is Yesterzine, a channel that describes itself as "The Literal Magazine Show", because it takes a "magazine show" format and is also about magazines, you see?

Presenter Dudley (who, full disclosure, I Actually Know) has a characteristically deadpan style that works well with the show's humour. He strikes a good balance between acknowledging and celebrating the original cultural context of these publications and providing appropriate modern commentary and criticism of aspects that, in retrospect, have not aged well for one reason or another.

Yesterzine videos are worth sitting down and paying attention to rather than putting on in the background, and with such a rich vein of classic magazines to draw on for future episodes, it's a show that will continue for as long as Dudley can be bothered, and he's showing no signs of slowing down just yet.

Zilog and Moto

I've always enjoyed Sega games, particularly from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. In fact, if you follow my YouTube channel, you'll notice I'm going through a bit of a Master System phase right now.

Zilog and Moto is a channel with a bold aim: to collect all the English language releases for Master System, Mega Drive/Genesis, Mega CD and 32X, then play and review all of them. Presenter Dave is making good progress in both regards so far. His videos are simply presented but effective in what they do, consisting of a short introduction to camera, a look at the game's physical component and then some commentary on how it actually plays.

Dave clearly spends time with each and every game and gives it a proper chance — even in the case of notoriously bad titles. Sometimes this leads to pleasant surprises… and, of course, sometimes those poor receptions are well-deserved. Either way, an episode of Zilog and Moto is always a worthwhile watch if you're an old-school Sega fan.

League of Extraordinary Board Games

This channel, a collaborative affair between well-known tat acquirer Stuart Ashen, CheapShow's Paul Gannon and movie enthusiast Oliver Harper, has a simple premise: dig out an old, obscure board game of the ilk you would have once got at a jumble sale, then give it an honest shot to see if it's any good.

The trio doesn't always get through a full game of something — particularly if it looks like running particularly long, or if it is clear that the game itself is not actually very fun — but they always give it a chance.

It's especially interesting to see the variety of licensed board games based on TV shows — I have fond memories of these from back in the day and wish I'd held on to more of the ones that I used to have copies of. As it stands, all I still have is a copy of MB Games' adaptation of Williams' arcade game Defender.

Anyway, this has a similar feel to Gannon's CheapShow: the sense that you're being let in on a group of friends just having fun together. A good show for when you're feeling a bit lonely.

Lord Heath

I won't lie: I found Lord Heath's channel because of his frankly astonishing fart videos, one of which can optionally be enjoyed above. But I've been enjoying his other… err… output too, the majority of which are the rather more socially acceptable and/or safe for work reviews of drinks.

These are short, simple, self-explanatory videos: he tries a drink, he gives his thoughts on it. Most of them are under three minutes long, but they're all rather entertaining; Lord Heath himself is a joyfully exuberant character who is not afraid to make a twat of himself in public, and he always makes a point of shooting his videos in some pleasantly picturesque locations.

In many respects, this is perhaps the purest example of what I'm talking about today: he's clearly got a vision in his head for what his YouTube channel should be, farts and all, and he's stuck with it. He's not trying to be Internet famous; he's not trying to clickbait; he's just a cheeky chappy who likes burping, farting and trying an increasingly esoteric selection of beverages. Eternal respect to him.

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#oneaday Day 625: It sucks to see someone defeated

I am, as I've mentioned a number of times in the past, a big fan of Mark Bussler's Classic Game Room video series. It's one of several things on YouTube that I found enormously inspirational in starting up my own channel, and his many, many videos on classic retro games are among my most-replayed YouTube videos.

I've known for a long time that Bussler was intensely dissatisfied with the way the online landscape had been going — and how it had meant that something he once clearly loved doing had become something that it felt like it was pointless to carry on with. After he stopped doing Classic Game Room as his main thing, he tried various other projects online, but has seemingly met with nothing but frustration with pretty much every one of them.

I still follow his Patreon for updates on what he's up to, and today he mentioned that people should have a look at his website, classicgameroom.com, to see what he's up to, since he doesn't really do social media any more. And his FAQs made me feel very sad indeed.

The question he gets more than anything else, I reckon, is "is Classic Game Room coming back?" and his answer is simple:

No. The Classic Game Room video game review series is permanently discontinued. There are no plans to bring the video series back in any way on any platform.

He expands on the reasons thus:

After the YouTube channel was largely demonetized, people stopped watching in favour of influencers and short-form videos. No other formats seemed to work. After a few different format changes, the show is now discontinued.

The cynics would say that this was just Bussler failing to adapt to the changing media landscape online, and that's not an incorrect statement to make, but the thing that makes me so sad about all this is that there is demand for stuff that isn't influencer-led short-form content. Just not enough to be commercially viable, unfortunately; not enough for one of the OG online video creators to want to continue with the thing that made him famous — and which, I suspect, is at this point completely unknown to a couple of generations of people.

Bussler worked hard on Classic Game Room and his other projects, and it must have been so frustrating for him to continually feel his efforts knocked back — particularly when he tried all manner of different things after it seemed that Classic Game Room had, for one reason or another, fallen out of favour.

So I'm sad for him. I'm sad that he has felt the need to, in his words, "permanently retire from filmmaking, game journalism and animation". At the same time, I completely understand why he has taken that decision. Again, in his own words:

Mark spends his free time reading and biking instead of using garbage social media apps. He has no patience for algorithms and prefers looking at old-fashioned paper.

I completely understand why one would want to retire from the Internet in this age of relentless, pointless, disposable short-form content. I often feel like I want to do so, too. I've spent many years carving out a little corner of the Internet that I can feel proud of with places like this blog, MoeGamer and my YouTube channel, but sometimes it all feels incredibly pointless.

I'm sad to see someone whose work I enjoyed, and that I respected immensely, be so completely and utterly defeated by what passes for "culture" online today. I'm sad because I know how he feels. I understand why he's so frustrated. And I don't know how we fix this — or if it's even possible at this point.

Perhaps it's all part of getting old. You pass beyond a point of relevance, and the world feels like it isn't "yours" any more. Perhaps we all reach this point. But that seems like a bit of an inefficient way for everyone to live their lives. Surely there's a way for different types of "stuff" to coexist, without everything having to be dominated by whatever the latest "viral" bullshit is?

Apparently not. But oh well. I'm not going anywhere just yet. Even if no-one's reading, watching or listening, I still enjoy the act of creating something. It gives me some satisfaction — and it's perhaps for the best that I've never got to a point where I'd be tempted to try and use online content creation (ugh) as my main source of income.

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#oneaday Day 619: My kingdom for some new ideas

I watch a few YouTube channels that I would describe as "generic semi-mainstream entertainment". These include Good Mythical Morning, its spinoff Mythical Kitchen, and the Game Grumps spinoff, The Grumps (which primarily consists of their show, 10 Minute Power Hour). I enjoy all of these channels and generally watch most of the stuff they put out, but I can't help but notice a lot of channels like this seem to be stuck in a bit of a holding pattern of the same few ideas, over and over.

"We ate EVERYTHING by [brand]!" "We try VIRAL TikTok [trend]!" "We cook STRUGGLE MEALS!" The strength of the channels I've mentioned by name above is that they generally manage to put their own distinctive twist on things — Good Mythical Morning is heavily formulaic, but has a warmth to it that is very appealing to feel like you're included in; Mythical Kitchen's chaotic energy combined with genuine cooking skills and a willingness to experiment with unconventional concoctions is always enjoyable to watch; and The Grumps is always anarchic chaos — but I won't deny that I feel my heart sink just a little when I see those same old "content" trends being recycled over and over and over.

I think my least favourite of them is anything to do with TikTok, because that inevitably devolves into a significant part of the episode being watching people watching vertical videos of other people yelling at their camera, and I already find that format of video to be uncomfortable and annoying to watch. I also tend to dislike it when one creator's work is dependent on providing commentary on another creator's work; while none of the above-mentioned channels go about this in the "wrong" way, it absolutely can be a vector for abuse and exploitation, as veteran YouTuber Jacksfilms' spinoff channel JJJacksfilms highlights regularly.

My one exception to generally disliking "reaction" videos is when it's the Grumps reacting to their own stuff. A particular highlight in this regard is always any time the musicians "Sbassbear" get involved, remixing some of the more stupid moments from the Grumps' video game show into some real toe-tappers. Not only are the remixes brilliant in their own right, but the Grumps' reactions to them are always entertaining; it's a real "laugh along with them" moment in the same way as watching out-takes in which actors completely lose the plot and get the uncontrollable giggles is appealing.

Conversely, the one instance of the things above that I do tend to feel has legs is the "We tried everything by [brand]", because there's so many different types of things out there that you can explore, and each will result in quite a different video. Consider one video trying out every type of Oreo, and another trying every variety of Buldak noodles. Very different. The trouble is, even within this particular niche, you tend to see the same brands coming up all the time — with Oreos and Buldak being two of the prime offenders in this regard. It's one reason I'm quite fond of the CheapShow podcast's "Off-Brand Brand-Off" segment, in which they try own-brand and branded varieties of a single thing in order to determine which one, if any, is the "best".

I guess there are only a finite number of ideas in the world, and if you're making YouTube your career, you have to go where both the trends and "the algorithm" take you. And I guess that means making endless "We try VIRAL TikTok recipes!" videos. Which is a bit of a shame, because we, as humans, are capable of a lot more.

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