#oneaday Day 722: Entering the ATmosphere

I read yesterday that several blogging platforms are integrating the "AT protocol" or whatever it's called that powers services like Bluesky and the like, and one of those was WordPress. So today's post is primarily a big ol' test to see whether or not that functionality, implemented via the ATmosphere plugin, actually works, and whether or not it's something I actually want to use.

people holding different devices — Photo by fauxels on Pexels.com. These people are all enjoying my posts. You should, too.

I talked a bit about social media with my therapist yesterday. I discussed how conflicted I feel about existing online right now, what with the emphasis on short-form video and vapid content rather than longer-form, more meaningful material. I'm not saying that the stuff I post here isn't vapid nonsense, of course, but I have always said that I would far rather read someone's vapid nonsense than be delivered it as shouty-face-at-camera content, so this blog continues with that in mind. And if no-one is interested in my vapid nonsense, then at least I still have somewhere to bang out some words and express myself, which is what this has always been about.

Anyway, the kind-of-sort-of conclusion I came to was that at least a minimal presence on social media is somewhat desirable for me, because otherwise I just end up feeling completely isolated. While I enjoyed the total break from all social media, including Bluesky, that I took last year while I was on holiday, I found that I didn't want to maintain it afterwards, as it just left me feeling even more lonely than I already was. And I'm already feeling pretty damn lonely.

Still, the other thing that came to light in yesterday's session is that although I have always kind of feared social interactions and find myself overthinking conversations before I have them — sometimes to the extent that I never actually start the conversation in reality for the fear of coming across as boring or annoying — I am, in many respects, feeling kind of ready to challenge myself in at least attempting to make some new friends, to have some people that I can connect with and, basically, to stop feeling so danged lonely.

The challenge that I have found along the way is not so much initiating those interactions when the opportunity arises — although that is still a somewhat scary prospect for me — but rather finding those opportunities in the first place. I cited an example of when I first went to university and attended a pre-term music course, and I took the uncharacteristically bold step (for me) of introducing myself to someone I was in a lift with while we were transporting ourselves to our respective floors in the tower block where we were staying. That resulted in a longstanding friendship (albeit one that I will hold my hands up and say that I have been very poor at maintaining) and was proof that, as little as I think of myself at times, I can come across as someone that people actually do want to know and are not, in fact, actively repulsed by.

Those opportunities of being "trapped" in a lift with a stranger and the choice being either awkward silence or attempting to clunkily start a conversation just don't really seem to arise these days, though, because I'm never in that sort of situation. I work from home, I don't go out a great deal, I'm not a member of any "groups" or anything (and don't really know how one would go about finding a "group") and I do not have a publicly accessible elevator in my house.

What I am going to at least attempt to do a bit more, though, is to attend some in-person events where I know some people with whom I have at least a casual acquaintance will be attending. My trip to The Cave a few weeks back was a good example, and last year I went to the RetroFest show in Swindon — that is actually happening again this year, but I left it a bit late to organise a trip there. I mean, I could probably snag a ticket and go along tomorrow (today's tickets are sold out), but can I be bothered to do that?

Hmm, can I be bothered to do that…? I might have a think about that throughout the course of today. Swindon is a fairly long way to go, but it might actually be nice to go along and see some interesting things and clever people.

Hmmmmm.

Anyway, today we are going food shopping, so that's fun. Thank you for participating in this experiment of whether or not this thing actually posts correctly to Bluesky via the ATmosphere plugin. If it does, I'll likely hook up MoeGamer proper in the same way. Tatty-bye for now then.

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 719: Get out of here with your "streak freeze"

Yesterday, the following notification popped up for me:

Yesterday: You earned an activity streak freeze

I've already written at length about how the modern concept of "streaks" is inherently unhealthy and encourages people to just game the system rather than actually properly developing good habits, but this is a whole new level of stupid. I was curious as to exactly what a "streak freeze" entailed, so I clicked through on the notification and found the following explanation:

Activity Streak: You're on a 7-day activity streak. If you miss a day, your freeze will keep it alive -- keep posting, liking, commenting, or following.

See all your achievements.

So let me get this straight: WordPress (or Jetpack, I think, specifically) has a "streak" mechanic built in to encourage you to engage with… something every day. (Note that the explanation above counts "liking, commenting or following" as "activity", not just "posting something on your site".) But after 7 days, you can just go "ah, fuck this" for a day and still keep your "streak" intact?

Now, I've hopefully already made my feelings on "streaks" clear (and yes, I know it might seem a tad hypocritical given that I'm posting daily, counting how many days I have done that for and have even done extra posts some days to "catch up" on days I missed but… shut up) but to me the concept of a "streak freeze" just feels like… cheating? And, more to the point, it's a completely pointless form of cheating in which the only person you are actually cheating is yourself. (Yes, I am familiar with the copypasta.)

It's not just me seeing this, right? Given that your "streak" in WordPress or Jetpack or whatever is visible to no-one but you — there are no "Share" buttons on these stupid "achievements" it has apparently started giving you — there is absolutely no point whatsoever in cheating the system for any reason other than to deny to yourself, and no-one else, that you failed to do something as simple as click "Like" on a thing every day for [x] days.

As I say, I acknowledge completely that all of the above might be a bit rich coming from someone who has occasionally missed a day on his "daily" blog and then "caught up" the following day, but I do always acknowledge when I've done that, and I'm not giving myself any "awards" or anything besides counting how many days have elapsed between June 8, 2024 and today. (And yes, I did just use the opportunity to check that my post numbering is correct. It is.)

The way this is implemented as platform "achievements" just feels like they wanted to completely gamify the posting experience, then got cold feet partway through and thought but what about all the people who care about their streak and just don't have time to click Like on something every day?! — as if they were afraid that they would get complaints from people who thought it was "unfair" that they broke their streak just for not… maintaining that streak.

I dunno. I am very aware that this is all a completely pointless thing to get riled up about, but it is very hot, I am very tired and stressed, and just wanted something easy to write about today. So that's what you're getting. Now I'm off to go and swallow an entire iceberg or something. And not the kind that freezes streaks.

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#oneaday Day 713: Portal charm

Apparently Google is attempting to wind down its search feature. You know, the thing that they once did so well that their name became a verb for doing that thing. But we live in 2026, possibly the stupidest year in human existence, so they've decided that they want to stop doing the thing that they've always been well regarded for doing better than anyone else — although they have been enshittifying it for years at this point. Instead they're going to force on us the thing that C-suites the world over think everyone wants, and no-one except bootlicking cunts actually wants: the chatbot! Hooray!

person pulling a sack of garbage — Photo by Mumtahina Tanni on Pexels.com. The Internet, 2026

This is, obviously, garbage news, and anyone with any sense will already be looking for a new search engine to set as default on every device they own — even though I don't think there's a single one of them that has no AI whatsoever at this point — but there are interesting possibilities that present themselves as a result of this stupidity.

Firstly, if there's no Google search, that might finally mean we'll be free of search engine optimisation, which by extension means we might also end up free of clickbait and ragebait. Of course, the latter two options are driven as much by social media than search results — probably more so, if we're honest — but honestly, I can't say I'd be sorry to see the back of SEO. Ten Blue Links are no fun if all of them are jostling for position with articles titled "what time is Eurovision on?" or whatever.

Of course, another ugly possibility then presents itself: search engine optimisation will become chatbot optimisation, and I suspect that will be even worse. SEO can already be manipulated by bad actors to present confidently incorrect information as gospel — sometimes with nefarious intent — and chatbots are already renowned for picking up people saying obvious falsehoods as a throwaway comment in a Reddit thread, and then reporting those things as the truth. Remember glue on pizza? Yeah. Incidents like that are chatbot optimisation in its earliest incarnation.

So that brings us to the second point: what if this is what gets us to admit that the "World Wide" part of the "Web" has, in fact, been something of a failure. I think we can probably all agree that the US has dominated the Web for a significant portion of its lifespan, and it's US-based companies that are trying to reshape it in a fashion that will, they reckon, make billions for US-based billionaires who already have too many billions.

Of course, all of the businesses attempting to do this are failing miserably at that. Despite billions of imaginary dollars being thrown around on a seemingly daily basis, profitability appears to be something that continues to elude the generative AI space, and it only appears to be getting worse, with many providers switching to considerably more expensive token-based billing options for users who have, up until now, been costing these companies astronomical amounts of money.

But even if the entire generative AI space were to go tits-up tomorrow — and oh, gosh, I would love it if it did — I think a lot of damage has already been done to the original plan of the World Wide Web. The Internet is no longer a cool and exciting place to hang out and explore. It's become a sleazy, shitty inner city area where you shouldn't walk around after dark, and where you certainly shouldn't get your phone out on the street. So much of it is just there to if not outright scam you, then at least extract money from you in increasingly ridiculous ways.

I see it a lot, running a blog. I'll install a plugin that sounds like it performs a function that I would find helpful, only to find that the exact function I want to use is "only available in Premium", and of course you can't just buy Premium because it's 2026, you have to sign up for a subscription. And you can't pay monthly for that subscription because it's 2026, you can only pay for a year at a time, despite them quoting a "monthly" price on their order page. The Web in general is full of shitty, dark patterns like this designed to trick people into spending money they didn't need to spend. I have no objection to paying people for good, useful pieces of software, but not when the process of doing so is a minefield of potentially getting locked into having to shell out several hundred quid a year because you didn't see the tiny "*billed annually" at the bottom of the "BEST OFFER!" thrust in your face.

Anyway, I got a bit off the point. The main point was: the current implementation of "the World Wide Web" is shit, so what if this meant that we go back to the concept of "portals"? Portals, if you're unfamiliar, are how sites like Yahoo got started: they were designed to act as the first page you saw when you logged on to the Internet, and thus provided quick, categorised, curated sets of links that helped you to 1) find stuff that you were looking for and 2) discover interesting new stuff. Search engines developed out of portals; indeed, many former portal sites became search engines; Google itself was a bit of an outlier in this regard in that it launched as nothing more than a search engine; its intention to do one thing, really well.

I often think back to our early days of "going online" back home. After the BBS days, which we occasionally indulged in on both the Atari 8-bit and ST, we had a CompuServe subscription. And CompuServe was a ton of fun! It was a complete walled garden to begin with, and took a while to catch on to this whole "broader Internet" thing, but in many ways, retrospectively, I think that its curated way of doing things was very good. People rag on AOL for the bajillion free trial coaste… sorry, CDs that made their way around the world in the late '90s and early '00s, but they had a similar idea: present information in an interesting, clear, curated way for people to enjoy and engage with as they see fit.

Of course, this approach brings with it its own considerations: who is responsible for the curation? How does one get "noticed" with a personal project like a blog? Are these portal providers obliged to be "neutral" in terms of things like politics and suchlike? If not, how does one distinguish between a portal provider that places an emphasis on curating information that is actively harmful, and one that aligns with your own values? Probably the same way you pick a news source today, I guess.

Anyway, I don't really have an answer, but if Google is insistent on going the way of the chatbot, this is probably something we're going to have to grapple with in the next few years. The way the Internet is today just… isn't really working, at least not with the original intent of the technology in mind, so we should probably start thinking about how we can do something a bit different… a bit better.

Or we could just continue to moan on social media and never actually get anything done, I guess.

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#oneaday Day 712: Cognitive surrender

I wouldn't say I check in on Penny Arcade regularly, but when I do, I am always entertained — and I always find myself scrolling through quite a few comics and blog posts. Today, my attention was captured by this post from Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, and particularly this paragraph:

Sometimes I don't know how to feel about something because my moral superiors have not yet made a super long video. They don't always make a video about the thing I need, though. Like, I don't know if someone is still bad or if they've been exonerated. Since we don't trust any structure that would provide exoneration, and objectivity is illusory, since the law is merely another arena to sift power dynamics anyway, my guess is that their good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. Speaking of power dynamics, It must be neat to have the reins of a parallel legal system whose norms kaleidoscopically shift at a rate of one million shibboleths per second. The main issue is that it's not clear which games I'm allowed to buy. All I can do – all anyone can do – is spin very quickly in place while refreshing YouTube for the next sermon. I'm currently ablur.

man in blue crew neck shirt wearing black framed eyeglasses — Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com. I choose to believe this guy's hair only does this when he shouts.

Tycho is specifically referring to the hoohah over Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, the recent new game from ZA/UM, the company behind the exceedingly brilliant Disco Elysium, and a company mired in controversy for the way it subsequently treated the actual people who made Disco Elysium. I don't really know much more about it than that, and to be perfectly honest, I don't really give enough of a shit to look into it further. I'm sorry, I just don't.

You see, as you might expect in such a situation, moral grandstanding over the way ZA/UM has behaved in the past has been overshadowing any meaningful discussion of Zero Parades itself, with the reviewers who took it on its own terms and gave it a positive assessment — apparently it's very good! — getting lambasted by people who think they are The Most Correct Person in the Room.

The phenomenon Tycho is talking about is the disconnect one eventually starts to feel when constantly confronted by this: the situation where you want to talk about how much you like something that you have taken on its own terms, divorced from "context" — regardless of whether this was a deliberate move, or just because your particular life and social circumstances meant you had never come into contact with any "controversy" — but find yourself having to bite your tongue, because you know it's not "acceptable" to like the thing for one reason or another.

I'm not even talking about particularly controversial material here — like, even the most perverted hentai connoisseur knows when not to bring up his collection of Rias Gremory boob bouncing gifs — but rather, situations like we have here, where an entity that is tangentially connected to the thing in question is deemed to have done something so unconscionably unacceptable that it taints anything and everything associated with itself, regardless of whether the thing itself is any good or not, and regardless of whether the people who actually made the thing had anything to do with the controversy.

A lot of this stuff spreads via social media and, as Tycho says, via video platforms like YouTube and TikTok. A lot of people look to "influencers" (ugh) as opinion leaders, and wait to learn whether it's "acceptable" in the eyes of someone they believe in before even considering engaging with it. Essentially it's a form of cognitive surrender; they willingly give up their own ability to make their mind up about something in favour of blindly following everything their opinion leader of choice says and does. And this sort of person tends to hold a grudge for a very long time indeed; as Tycho says, it's exceedingly rare for anyone branded with a scarlet letter to be exonerated, while the reverse is also true: someone who has been a beloved figure for years can be quickly turned on, torn to shreds and then left to rot, never to be forgiven and never to regain their former regard, regardless of whether or not they clearly make an effort to make amends for past wrongs.

Honestly, at this point it's exceedingly tiresome. There are certain people on Bluesky I've had to mute just because their constant response to people Just Enjoying The Thing is to bring up the controversy du jour and, in many cases, cast exceedingly unflattering and negative aspersions on the people who continue to Just Enjoy The Thing. In just the last week it's happened not only with Zero Parades, but also with Forza Horizon 6, and I'm sure there will be plenty more. There have certainly been plenty of prior examples, including numerous instances of the "we will never forgive them" situation.

Look, I get it. In this revolting, shitty world we live in, it's nice to think that you have some principles and that you're willing to stand up for them. Everyone should have at least a few issues that they're willing to stand up and be counted on. But there comes a point where you're just being a tedious scold at people who are simply trying to derive some joy out of existence, and who really do not have the time or energy to give a shit about every single little issue in the world, particularly when the issues that you supposedly care about are in the extreme periphery of the thing they are trying to enjoy — and seemingly not even directly connected at all, to the average person who is not huffing Internet fumes 25 hours a day.

I'm sorry, but it is just like that. If you do try and give a shit about every single little issue in the world, you will quickly end up driving yourself insane, driving everyone who might have once been your friend away, and never, ever experiencing a day of happiness in your life ever again.

On top of that, if your idea of Being A Good Person is scolding random strangers on Bluesky rather than actually getting out into the world and making some sort of meaningful difference to the lives of people who need it, then you might not actually be A Good Person. You just want people to believe that you are.

Life is too short for that. So if you want to play Zero Parades, I don't care. If you want to play Forza Horizon 6, I don't care. If you want to boycott everything ZA/UM and Microsoft ever put out, I don't really care, either. But if you start actively getting in the way of people who simply want an escape from the shittiness of life in 2026 — or to build a warm, kind community of people who want a collective escape from the shittiness of life in 2026 — then I'm sorry, but I don't really want to know you.

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#oneaday Day 705: Resist mediocre anti-intellectualism

Every few months, it seems, the collective community of the social media platform Bluesky suffers from a minor existential crisis, usually relating to some commentator or other not having found an audience on the platform and thus writing what they probably believe to be a withering putdown, but which more often than not ends up coming across as a bit sad, desperate and pathetic.

The most recent case comes in the form of someone who posits that Bluesky, as a whole, has been bad for American political discourse, because it has effectively siloed off pretty much the entire "Left" into their own little bubble. This isn't an entirely inaccurate view of the situation, but you also have to bear in mind that this largely occurred because Twitter, under Elon Musk, made a specific effort to silo off pretty much the entire "Right" into their own little bubble. Consequently, Twitter is more of a shithole than it's ever been in the past, and Bluesky… well, it's occasionally all right, occasionally prone to the sorts of behaviour that made me sour on Twitter in the first place. At least for the most part you don't have to put up with Nazis and "grok what is this" underneath every post.

I'm not here to talk about the relative merits of Bluesky itself though; rather, I want to focus on a post from Ars Technica's Kyle Orland, itself a response to a post from journalist Faine Greenwood, semi-seriously commenting on what people really need to do if they want to use social media to get a political message out:

Kyle Orland: This is true in cultural criticism too, I'd argue. Writing in general (and longform writing in particular) is just an increasingly niche part of how people in general are consuming media and getting info.

I'm still proudly focused on that niche, but I'm under no illusions about my relative reach.

Quoting Faine Greenwood: I will reiterate the point made by Jamelle Bouie: if you really wanted online political influence, you'd be making vertical video. You'd be learning how to do little booty dances while talking about political theory. You'd be mastering doing BTS fan-cams while talking about anti-capitalism.

I see this viewpoint expressed a lot these days, and while it is disappointingly not entirely wrong about the situation, it does, to me, reflect a defeatist attitude to culture: the assumption that there can be only one dominant form of media, and that in this case, it is lowest-common-denominator, vapid, attention-deficit short-form video with karaoke-style captions updating one word at a time.

I, as I have made pretty clear on numerous occasions in the past, fucking hate lowest-common-denominator, vapid, attention-deficit short-form video with karaoke-style captions updating one word at a time. I find it actively insulting to my intelligence, and incredibly offputting when someone posts, like, say, "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:" followed by a video of their face pressed up against the camera yelling whatever their important announcement is. I never find out, because I am actively repulsed by that kind of video.

Aside: in a Discord I frequent, one poster continually reposts this guy's stuff, and dear Lord I find it the most offputting thing imaginable. Nothing to do with the guy's appearance; I just don't want that many faces yelling at me.

A screenshot of "Randy Johnson's" YouTube channel, which consists entirely of vertical video clips of an elderly man talking about various topics.

Anyway, the thing I find frustrating about all this is: who the fuck decided that the only thing we're allowed to do now is lowest-common-denominator, vapid, attention-deficit short-form video with karaoke-style captions updating one word at a time? Who the fuck decided that writing is out, particularly long-form writing? Because I certainly fucking didn't.

I like reading! I like reading long things! I like writing! I like writing long things! As far as I'm concerned, a good piece of writing is much more likely to stand the test of time than vertical video of someone's grandpa wittering on about The Super Mario Galaxy Movie! And I find it near-impossible to believe that I am alone in this!

I am part of a generation who grew up with books, magazines, and websites that posted long-form writing. As far as I am aware, my entire generation hasn't suddenly dropped dead overnight, so why the fuck can't we have at least a basic bit of respect for our tastes rather than this content slurry that is shat out at great force and speed every day?

"Oh, but Pete, people are still serving your niche," you might say. Are they? Are they actually though? Because last time I checked, games media sites were being shut down or turned into thinly-veiled gambling advertisements at a frightening rate. I used to have magazines and websites that I read on a regular basis; today, even people who I used to respect as people who always seemed that they'd keep blogging, come rain or shine, have all but vanished from the Internet, leaving us with little more than the garbage left behind.

Perhaps those are the people who have the right idea. Give up on trying to "find an audience" on the Internet, and just retreat into a world where these issues don't exist. There are still a few magazines out there — although gaming-specific ones are thin on the ground. There are folks making fanzines and suchlike. New books continue to be written — some of them even without being AI-generated! So perhaps the answer is just to retreat, quietly, and continue to enjoy the few good things that do, apparently against all odds, still exist.

It just feels like giving up a space where I always felt like I could "be myself" and express myself freely has been taken over, completely, by the supposedly "cool kids" who are actually vapid fuckheads with nothing of any real substance to contribute to culture. And that really sucks. "The Internet" used to be somewhere that felt like I was home, where I was among my people. I haven't felt that for a long time now.

I don't feel like we should have just rolled over and let this happen — but that is what happened, and there doesn't appear to be any way to turn back from it now. And no-one appears to be in any great hurry to correct this situation.

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#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.

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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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