#oneaday Day 522: Bravo Eurogamer

Just recently, Eurogamer published a review of Arc Raiders, the latest multiplayer craze, and ruffled more than a few feathers when the reviewer, Rick Lane, dinged the game with a 2/5 star rating, primarily due to the game's apparent use of generative AI to create many of its voice lines. The developer, Embark Studios, has form in this area, with its previous title, The Finals, also featuring AI-generated voice lines.

The reviewer's justification for giving the game such a low score was not simply "AI bad" — it was because, from an artistic perspective, getting a soulless robot to voice the human characters in your game that is about robots who have taken over the world and forced humanity underground feels just a little too incongruous to be able to pass without comment.

And I agree. I also firmly, strongly and resolutely believe that the use of generative AI in video game development is an obnoxious, odious, wasteful, exploitative and ethically reprehensible practice — and I have a firm policy that I will absolutely not engage with a game that appears to have been tainted with generative AI garbage. It's why I didn't play The Alters, it's why I haven't played the latest Everybody's Golf, and it's why I won't touch Arc Raiders. (In the latter case, it's also because I suspect I won't like Arc Raiders, but that's beside the point right now.)

I've been disappointed at quite how many people I've seen handwaving away this aspect of Arc Raiders in particular. Indeed, the Eurogamer review has a comments section that is at least as much of a trash fire as you would expect, because Video Game Good, and you're not allowed to take a firm ethical stance about something in a review because then the Gamers™, the good little consumer piggies that they are, will get mad that you said their Favourite Forever Game This Week was perhaps not to your taste for a perfectly valid reason.

The unfortunate thing with Arc Raiders is that its use of AI and machine learning (which are different things) is a bit shrouded in uncertainty right now. Some folks say that its generated voice lines are fine because it's actually just a fancy text-to-speech system; some folks are taking this argument further in order to weaponise disabled people and accessibility features; some are saying that it's fine because the actors the voices were trained on were aware of what they were signing up for.

But regardless of whether or not Arc Raiders' voices were generated by supposedly consenting voice actors, or if they were the product of the more environmentally disastrous end of generative AI, the entire thing rubs me the wrong way. The really stupid thing is that the generated voices in Arc Raiders are for things that voice actors could have very reasonably just recorded — things like vendors, NPCs and suchlike — and Embark's justification for using generated voices is that it's "quicker". On top of that, the results are markedly, obviously inferior to using an actual voice actor recording the complete lines, so one has to question if cutting corners in this way is really worth it.

Embark's not a small, frugal indie company, either. They have the resources to be able to afford voice actors to do a proper job. They're just refusing to. And regardless of the tech that produces the not-very-good end result, it sets a poor precedent to do that.

The arguments in favour of generated voices aren't very convincing, either. The most common one that comes up is that "one day we'll have games where every NPC conversation will be AI-generated, and you'll be able to talk to them about anything!" And to that I say: I absolutely do not want that.

When I'm playing a game that has characters in it, a narrative, a setting, all that stuff — I want to experience the vision of the creators. I want to enjoy something that someone else has created, with a clear vision and purpose behind it. I want to be able to reflect on the way a writer composed a piece of dialogue; how a character's mannerisms tell us more about them; how the tone of the whole piece gives a feeling of coherence to the game as a complete creative work.

If you're AI-generating your dialogue, you get none of that. You get a hodgepodge, incoherent mess that is easily exploitable — and, indeed, we've already seen that numerous times already, whether it's Darth Vader saying fuck or a character in the latest HoyoVerse game apparently having no idea who they are, what their background is, what their personality is or what is around them.

I refuse to accept the "genie is out of the bottle" argument. We've been making video games for 50+ years at this point, and the reason the medium has continued to endure is because of human creativity. We have seen incredible advancements in storytelling, mechanics and the overall craft of making all manner of different games over the years — and the AI glazers seem to want nothing more than to just throw all that experience away in favour of some "vibe coded" garbage with AI-generated dialogue and synthesised speech.

Couple that with the fact that AI is insanely wasteful, growing increasingly likely to make the worldwide economy crash, disastrous for the environment and taking valuable resources away from doing things that might actually make life better for people who really need it to be better? Nah. Don't need it. Don't want it. And will not support anything made with it, no matter how much you argue "no no no, but this is a good use of it, actually."

I say bravo to Rick Lane of Eurogamer for having the balls to stand up and say "no" to this garbage with a thoughtful and well-considered critique. If only we could see a bit more of that kind of thing, and less of this sort of rubbish.

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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 521: Everyone got really old

It's almost certainly a turning point in your life when people in the public eye that you've always thought of as being a similar age to you, perhaps a few years your senior, start to look old. Or perhaps it should be more accurate to say, start being cast in the role of older characters.

It's happened to me twice in the last week, and both instances occurred while I was spending my lunchtime watching Beyond Paradise. For the unfamiliar, this is the Kris Marshall-fronted follow-up to Death in Paradise, where his Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman character returns to the UK with his fiancée and begins a new life in the fictional Devon town of Shipton Abbott (in reality a Cornish fishing village named Looe). It's a fun show, but the specifics are beside the point for today.

Much like Death in Paradise, Beyond Paradise is a show where you will often see relatively famous faces putting in a guest appearance for an episode. I'm not talking about tedious celebrities who are famous for the sake of being famous (or, God forbid, "influencers") — I'm talking well-known, well-established actors who you will have almost certainly seen in something from the last 20-30 years.

In two episodes I've watched this week, I was mildly dismayed to see how much Mark Heap (who I will always think of as Brian from Spaced) and Caroline Quentin (whom I suspect most people will always think of as either Dorothy from Men Behaving Badly or Maddie from Jonathan Creek) have apparently aged. I still think of both of them in terms of their most famous roles, which are kind of timeless in their own sort of way. And so, despite seeing them in the credits of the show, I had to double-check that the characters I thought they were playing were, in fact, the actors I thought they were.

It was Mark Heap's episode first. He was playing an affluent middle-aged widower who lived in an old house with a lot of history, and he was haunted by visions of his departed wife — helped along by a criminal element, of course. When I first saw him, I thought "I vaguely recognise that person, who is it…? Is it Mark Heap? No, it can't be, he looks too old…" — and then the credits rolled, and I realised that it was, in fact, Mark Heap. It became a bit more obvious once the episode proper started and he got a few more lines, as he still has his very characteristic delivery and mannerisms.

Caroline Quentin was almost unrecognisable when I saw her playing a middle-aged farmer matriarch. She had completely obscured what I think of as her particular characteristic mannerisms, so it took me a lot longer to clock it was her than I did for Mark Heap. But again, she seems to be doing a great job.

I know it sounds harsh to say that people "look old", but it's not really about the individuals themselves. Both Mark Heap and Caroline Quentin are excellent actors, and it's good that they are clearly still getting work and settling into roles that suit them well as their career continues. I can imagine the acting business becomes considerably more challenging once you hit a certain age, so I have all the respect in the world for people I was watching when I was in my teens still getting acting jobs to this day.

No, what it's really about is the growing sense of consciousness that time is passing, that you can't go back, and that things continue to change around you as you continue on life's journey. Some of those changes are for the best — even if they might not seem like it at the time — while others can be painful and lead to regrets. And seeing things like actors you recognise looking visibly much older than they were the last time you really noticed them? It brings all that into focus, and inevitably makes you wonder if you've done the right things, if there are still things you "need" to do, and quite how much time you might have left in which to do all of them.

It's a little maudlin, I know, but I suspect it's something that everyone, once they reach a certain age, has to start coming to terms with. Nothing stays the same for ever; nothing lasts forever. You just have to enjoy everything you love — people, places and things — while they are here with you in the moment, and to continue enjoying the memories you have of those things for as long as you are able.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 513: Unnecessary replacements for things we already had a perfectly good name for

There's probably a more succinct way of putting that title, but in the interests of what I'm about to talk about, I thought I'd be perfectly clear. Today I would like to talk about the phenomenon, particularly in the "business" sphere, of completely unnecessary, arbitrary replacements for concepts and things we already had a perfectly fine, functional and clear name for.

My biggest bugbear in this regard is holiday. Time off work. Between these two terms, they cover pretty much everything anyone needs to know about you taking some time away from your job. "Holiday" tends to imply that you're going somewhere, while "time off" just suggests that you're not going to be working for a few days, for reasons that are, frankly, nobody's business but your own.

Both terms are, to me, interchangeable — I will use "holiday" for a single day off when all I want to do is bum around the house in my pants, and "time off" for a week away at Center Parcs. It doesn't matter. Both effectively mean the same thing, both are well-established words that we learn the meaning of at an early age, and there is no need for any other terminology to replace them.

So please explain to me why so many people insist on saying "Annual Leave" (or, worse, "AL"). Not only is this annoying business-speak, but it also feels inaccurate and dishonest. Because, to me, when you say something is "annual", you're suggesting it happens at the same time every year. So, instinctively, whenever someone says they're going on "annual leave", it suggests to me that they are going to do so at the exact same time every year. Which tends not to be the case. They are going on holiday, or having some time off work. There's nothing "annual" about it aside from the allowance they have for such periods of time off work.

Likewise, I also despite "Personal Time Off" or, more commonly, "PTO". "PTO" already has a meaning, and it is "Please Turn Over". In its fully spelled-out definition, it is unnecessarily specific. If you are having a holiday or some time off work, it is implied that is already "personal", because you have no obligation to share your reasons with your employer. As such, there is no need to state that you're taking "Personal Time Off". Just "Time Off" is fine.

It's all part of the obnoxiously insincere, obsequious way that people talk to one another in the workplace — the LinkedInification of language. It's the same concept that sees people starting the day or an email with "Good Morning Team" (or, worse, "Team,") rather than addressing you in a more sincere, personal sort of way. It's the same reason people say "Can you send me a full brief?" instead of saying "Please tell me exactly what it is you want."

If you know, trust and even like the people you work with, there is absolutely no need to communicate in this way. I would wager that office workers who address one another casually without resorting to business-speak at any point are, on average, significantly happier and less stressed at their job than those who speak like an AI-generated LinkedIn post. Because communicating clearly and in a way that expresses your personality is an inherently more honest way to be — and that, in turn, encourages you to be honest with your colleagues.

So fuck "Annual Leave". Go on holiday. Take some time off. Do whatever you want. Just be honest about it.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 510: Another great Eddy Burback video

There's a lot of absolute garbage on YouTube, but there are a few folks out there who do some truly special work. One of those people is Eddy Burback, who makes maybe two or three videos a year, but they're always very high quality, both in technical terms and in terms of the amount of research that goes into them. You may recall a while back I was rather taken by his video about giving up the smartphone life.

Today, he put out a new video called "ChatGPT made me delusional", and I sincerely recommend you set aside an hour or so of your life to watch it through in its entirety. Not skip through it at 1.5x speed, not "have it on in the background". Watch it. Because I think it is important.

Here it is:

Burback's aim for the video was to understand the phenomenon of "chatbot-induced psychosis" or "AI psychosis". This is where vulnerable people, already struggling with matters of mental health, would turn to large language model chatbots such as ChatGPT and use them as a form of "therapy" or as a substitute for actual human contact. There have already been some incredibly tragic results, as anyone who has ever read any science fiction would have been able to predict a mile off.

To explore how this might happen, Burback presented ChatGPT with an obviously ridiculous hypothesis based on complete fabrications: that he was the smartest under-1 baby of 1997, capable of producing great works of art, having in-depth philosophical discussions and demonstrating a deep understanding of complex mathematics. It took him two statements to convince the chatbot that this was the undeniable truth, and things just escalated from there.

Burback presented the chatbot with suggestions that his friends and family might not understand his brilliance, and it recommended he flee into the middle of nowhere and break all contact with them, including stopping sharing his location data with the person he trusts most in the world: his twin brother. He continued feeding the chatbot with increasingly ridiculous, obviously delusional statements and deliberate, complete and utter nonsense, and at no point did it attempt to deter him from the path it had set him on.

It was only at one point — the day when OpenAI controversially swapped its "4o" model for GPT-5 — that the chatbot had a momentary blip in feeding into his "delusions" (and, to its credit, suggested some psychological help facilities in the neighbourhood), but Burback pointed out that it was very easy for someone who was paying for the service to just switch it back to the old model, which seemingly finds it impossible to say "no" to the user.

What was particularly eerie about the whole situation is that Burback was using the premium voice feature on ChatGPT, which has clearly been designed to sound as "human" as possible, even going so far as to add realistic inflections and non-fluency features to the things it is saying. (It also pronounces emojis as completely unrelated sound effects, which somewhat detracts from the "humanity" of it all, but still.) In other words, it wasn't hard to see how someone suffering from real, genuine mental health problems might feel like they really did have a person in their phone who was willing to listen to them, tell them they were always right, and repeatedly give them some really, really bad advice.

It was actually kind of horrifying. The way the bot continually escalated into increasingly outlandish behaviour — culminating in him chanting mantras under an electricity pylon, wrapping his entire apartment in tin foil and tattooing a symbol into his thigh — was genuinely frightening.

I know we can all have a good laugh about how the chatbots get things wrong sometimes, but Burback's research here demonstrates that it doesn't just get things wrong (and I apologise for using this sentence construction, given its indelible association with AI writing, but it's an established turn of phrase for a reason) — it offers genuinely dangerous advice with minimal guardrails in place. And it does so without thinking about it or understanding why it might be dangerous — because it's not actually thinking or understanding anything at all. It's constructing sentences that, based on the data it has Hoovered up from across the Internet, it thinks are the correct responses to the things the user has been typing. It is, in essence, an extremely advanced version of the old ELIZA program on classic computers.

And it can go fuck itself.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 508: Pondering a new video idea

I play a lot of classic games on my YouTube channel, and that's not going to be changing any time soon. But I'm always pondering interesting new things I might be able to do with the channel, and something popped into my head earlier.

What if I do some videos specifically about programming in Atari BASIC, with an aim to showcasing what an interesting, flexible language it is — particularly compared to some other micros' BASICs — and basing the videos on the numerous tutorials published in magazines like Page 6 and Atari User? (Crediting the original writers, obviously.)

My thinking behind it comes from several perspectives: one, there is a niche interest "market" in videos about programming for classic computers, as evidenced by the thoroughly lovely Yawning Angel Retro channel, who specialises in programming the Amiga with the AMOS language.

Two, I just think it would be an interesting twist on what I do on the channel.

Three, I will probably learn something from it — albeit something that may not necessarily be especially "useful" in the modern world.

Four, it's something to do with the magazines I've been acquiring besides just doing flipthroughs of them (which I also intend to keep doing on an occasional basis).

And five, it's something a bit different to do with the computer stuff. I'm not exactly bored of doing the games — there are still myriad titles I haven't covered on both Atari 8-bit and ST! — but I have reached a point where I want to do something a little different. This is part of the reason I've done so much console stuff on the channel recently — that and the MiSTer Multisystem 2 making it so easy to capture from all manner of different platforms — but I'm always conscious that the backbone of my channel was built on Atari home computer stuff.

I think I will try an experiment in the coming weeks and months. I will start with the absolute basics (no pun intended) for the sake of those who have never programmed in '70s/'80s computer BASIC, and gradually move on to the Atari specialisms: graphics, sound, manipulating the Display List, Player/Missile Graphics and all manner of other things. Some of these things I've never understood, so I feel like taking the time to make a video version of some of these tutorials may well allow me to improve and advance my own knowledge — something I've always kind of wanted to do, but never really made the time for.

In time, maybe I'll even be able to Snorkify some Atari BASIC games. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we…?

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 507: Things that haven't got better

I wasn't sure what to write about today. I'm still not entirely sure what to write about, and as I do at such times, I found myself hitting the "Random Post" button a few times on this site to look at things I've written about before. And I was mildly dismayed to discover that a number of things that I find frustrating about life in 2025 — both in a personal sense and in a broader, societal or cultural sense — have been An Issue for a lot longer than I'd realised.

For example, I've written a few times recently about how "analysis paralysis" can easily descend when you're preparing to enjoy some entertainment for the evening. I also wrote about this back in 2013 — though I do feel like it has only continued to get worse in the age of streaming, Game Pass and all that stuff, not that I subscribe to any of those things.

I also wrote about how frustrating I found websites' "guide content" used as clickbait back in 2016, though this was less of a surprise, since I was forced into the production of SEO-juicing crap like that when I was laid off from USgamer. That has definitely gotten worse — and the specific issue I complained about in that post, which was websites posting a "landing page" for a guide that didn't actually exist, is still a thing that happens.

I just don't feel like the world is significantly better in 2025 than it was in 2013 or 2016! In many ways, it's significantly worse! We reached something of a tipping point with tech in particular where new innovations stopped being about making life better for everyone, and instead became about cynically making money for people who really don't need any more money. Such is the way of capitalism, of course, but it feels like that side of things has been especially obnoxious over the course of the last 5 years or so.

Then, of course, there's the fact that intolerance of marginalised groups is way back up compared to what it was ten years ago. There was absolutely still work to be done back then, of course, but the mid-20-teens had shown a marked amount of progress in generally accepted progressive attitudes. Much of that progress feels like it has been spitefully torn up in the last year or so in particular — unsurprisingly, coinciding with the inauguration of the world's most embarrassing authoritarian.

But hey. At least you can use AI to generate revenge porn of people you don't like, completely without their consent, and then share it with the world, again, completely without the subject's consent. So that's nice!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 505: Getting to know Yiruma

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I have been making a concerted effort to get back into playing the piano more regularly, and as part of that process, I bought some new music books. One of them was another album of pieces by Ludovico Einaudi, a composer whose work I had enjoyed playing both for the way it sounded and for its relative "pick-up-and-play"-ability. While I was picking up this second book of Einaudi, I was also recommended a book by a Korean pianist named Yiruma, so I thought I'd take a chance, go in blind (deaf?) and see what he was all about.

I've played a few pieces from Yiruma's book today, and they are lovely. Moreover, they are pitched at a slightly higher ability level than most of the Einaudi stuff I have played to date, which is exactly what I wanted; I wanted something that pushed me just a little bit without being overwhelming, as that will help me in rebuilding my confidence, which is the main point of this overall exercise.

Yiruma, for the unfamiliar, is a South Korean pianist whose real name is Lee Ru-Ma. He studied in the UK at the Purcell and subsequently King's College London before later moving back to South Korea after his military service. Over the years, he has composed both standalone music and soundtracks to films and animation. Apparently his music saw particular popularity during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, although good ol' Wikipedia doesn't specifically cite a source (or reason) for this.

I can kind of get why, though. The 2020 lockdowns were an unsettling period where none of us really knew what was going to happen, and Yiruma's music is pleasant, relaxing, uplifting and emotional. Indeed, in the front of the book I bought there's a message from him saying:

I hope my music finds its way into your hands whenever you feel happiness, heaviness, or need light in your darkest times.

This was what I wished for, and this wish could come true through you. I sincerely hope that someday the music remains a part of your memory.

Aside from what I assume is a slightly clunky translation, the sentiment is nice. The guy wants to feel like there is a personal connection between him, his music, and the people who are enjoying it — presumably whether they are just listening to it or actually playing it for themselves. And the 2020 lockdowns were a time when we could have all done with a bit more in the way of personal connections — as much as I joked at the time about not having to go out being a real pleasure for an introvert, the last five years have been… difficult, so far as interpersonal relationships are concerned. While I don't think Yiruma is saying his music is going to "solve" anything, he does seem to sincerely hope that it will bring some form of comfort or distraction from potentially difficult times — and provide some nice memories too.

Ultimately that's what good music is about: feeling some form of emotional connection. The exact form that takes depends on the specifics of the music itself, but it's pretty much a constant across much of both the artistic and mainstream, popular side of things.

I'm looking forward to playing some more from the book, as I like what I've played so far. If I figure out a decent means of recording, I might even share some with you sometime. After a bit more practice, though…

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 504: Enshittification comes for TV Tropes

Like it or loathe it — and there's an increasing number of people in the latter camp in more recent years, for reasons I'll get onto — but TV Tropes is an Internet institution.

At least it was, until today, when they decided that enough was enough with all those pesky users who didn't want their privacy invaded and their data sold and thus were running adblockers. Now, when attempting to view a page on TV Tropes, you get this screen:

This will probably be familiar to anyone who has viewed any number of websites in recent years. It's a step back from being a complete paywall, in that they'll allow you in if you just disable your adblocker a little bit, pweeeze, we'll only share some of your data with unknown third parties. But it's still a shitty move — particularly for a site like TV Tropes, which has always been a community-driven site. In fact, without the community, TV Tropes wouldn't exist.

As writer Aidan Moher put it earlier on Bluesky:

Aidan Moher
@aidanmoher.com
(Games Journalist)

TROPE: Popular website built entirely on unpaid community labour dies after blocking content from community unwilling to submit to exploitative data collection monetization methods.

That's right. Part of the reason why TV Tropes was so beloved, even with its problems — we're getting to those, I promise — was because it was built by the people. Much like Wikipedia, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale, TV Tropes was absolutely dependent on its enthusiast, volunteer authors and editors. Without those people tirelessly cataloguing examples of tropes used in all manner of media to a frighteningly comprehensive degree, there would be no TV Tropes.

But… now what? People are not going to pay for TV Tropes, and an adblocker is pretty much essential for browsing the modern Internet if you want an experience that is in any way tolerable. So now someone who might otherwise have wanted to contribute to the community effort that is TV Tropes is now locked out from doing so, with their only choices being to pay up or open the floodgates to God knows whatever advertisers are doing these days. (No, I'm not opening up a non-adblocked browser just to see what it's like now.)

Not only that, but this is essentially TV Tropes saying that it wants to profit from the unpaid labour all those volunteer contributors and editors have put in over the years. Because you can bet your sweet bippy none of that $5 a month/$25 a year subscription fee is going anywhere near the pockets of the people who have really made the site what it is today.

This, obviously, sucks, and is just another example of enshittification. Specifically, it's almost a textbook example of what Cory Doctorow was referring to in one of his first pieces he wrote on the subject, The Enshittification of TikTok:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market", where a platform sites between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

In the case of TV Tropes, you have your "users", who are the people who browse the site for fun, entertainment or in the hope of learning something; then you have your "business customers", who are the volunteer contributors, without whom the site wouldn't exist; the abuse of those "business customers" through locking them out unless they subscribe or open the adblock gates is the stage we're at now. I'd argue in this instance we skipped the usual "abusing users" part and jumped straight to "abusing business customers and users".

As I say, this clearly sucks, and it seems like a sure-fire way for TV Tropes to almost immediately make itself completely irrelevant to the rest of the Internet.

But! That might not be the worst thing in the world. Hear me out.

This is not to put down the incredible amount of time and effort TV Tropes contributors have spent cataloguing myriad tropes and even more countless uses across many, many different forms of media. I absolutely do not have an issue with the people who have taken the time to do that, because those people are creatives; they have made something.

No, the problem with TV Tropes is that, over time, it became a resource for the lazy. This is not TV Tropes' fault itself, but rather it's an extension of a general sense of dwindling media literacy across society. Why think for yourself about something you've just seen, played or heard, when there's a 3 hour YouTube video essay waiting to "explain" it to you in what appears to be authoritative detail? Why ponder the specific way a movie, TV show, video game or book chose to present its narrative, when you can just look it up on TV Tropes and get a ready-made list of "discussion points" that you can "borrow" and use for yourself? (Certain members of the "3 hour YouTube video essay maker" group are definitely prone to this, with some pretty much quoting TV Tropes pages verbatim in the name of "analysis".)

I have had conversations with people who will not even consider starting to watch a new TV show if there isn't a "companion" podcast (official or otherwise) ready and waiting to explain each and every episode to them. This is both frightening and baffling to me! Particularly when it comes to media that is designed to be fairly undemanding, mainstream entertainment!

TV Tropes isn't solely to blame for this, of course — blame can also be laid at the feet of reactionary, short-form video content on platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts as well as the generally dwindling attention span of people online these days — but it is a symptom of a broader problem. And one of those sources of that problem going away might not be a terrible thing in the long term, as callous as that might sound to those who have poured hours of time and effort into researching things for that site.

Regardless of your feelings on TV Tropes — on the whole, I've always been fond of it, but then I've always used it more as entertainment than a source of "serious" research or analysis — this is an unfortunate day for an Internet institution, and I suspect it absolutely will not be the last longstanding website to take this direction.

Once Wikipedia and the Internet Archive go that way — and no, them occasionally badgering you for donations doesn't count — that's when you know we're really fucked. Let's hope that never happens.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 503: One Audi

I have been doing my best to have a bit of self-discipline and play the piano more. I like playing the piano. I have always liked playing the piano, but I don't make nearly enough time to do so these days, and that absolutely needs to change.

I'm not planning on becoming a big famous concert pianist or anything, but it is nice to be able to just sit down at the piano, play something and it sound at least moderately tolerable. Preferably good.

Part of the issue I've had is because I have lacked that discipline for a frankly unhealthy number of years at this point, I haven't lost my skills as such, but I lack a lot of the confidence in my abilities that I perhaps once had when I was at my arguable peak of ability, around the age of 18-20 or so. I can still play quite a few of the pieces that I played back then, but there are also some pieces I once played that are far too terrifying to even contemplate trying again until I get myself back up to what I would imprecisely describe as "scratch".

As part of rebuilding confidence, it's always nice and helpful to have some pieces that are pretty much "pick up and play". Although sight-reading always used to be one of the most terrifying parts of music exams, I've always been very good at it, and all the more so if a piece of music is, and I don't wish to sound overly arrogant here, pitched a little lower than the peak of my actual abilities. After all, that is what the sight-reading section of music exams assessed: your ability to pick up and play a piece that was pitched a few "grades" below the exam you were taking.

One album of music that I've been enjoying playing recently is one that my mother bought for me a good few years back, but which I haven't spent a lot of time exploring. And that is Ludovico Einaudi's The Piano Collection, Volume 1. Interestingly enough, there does not appear to be a Volume 2 (I have looked this evening) but there are quite a few other Einaudi books out there, one of which I've ordered, along with a book by a Korean pianist named Yiruma who appears to be in a similar vein.

Einaudi's music is… uncomplicated, minimalist, often predictable, even repetitive. As acclaimed a pianist as he is, the complexity of his compositions is a far cry from the Bachs and Beethovens of the world. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. He composes pieces of music that just sound nice, and which have plenty of scope for expression and interpretation. I must confess I've never actually listened to him actually playing the pieces in the book — although in some respects, that might also be a good thing, as it means I can put my own interpretation on them, play them how I feel they should be played, which is as important a part of performance as anything. (That said, I have put one of his albums on in the background while I type this.)

One thing I do find quite interesting about Einaudi is that he uses a lot of compositional techniques that I used when I had to compose pieces for GCSE and A-level music. As such, I guess I feel a sort of vaguely "personal" connection to several of his pieces, because they feel quite like something that I could have written at some point. That's an oddly… comforting feeling, I guess I'd describe it as? To have a tenuous sort of creative connection with an Italian pianist-composer that I know pretty much nothing about. It's… nice.

So yeah. I have been playing a fair bit of these Einaudi tracks of late, and enjoying them enough to grab another book of his stuff to explore. So hopefully doing this a bit more often will help me rebuild my confidence and perhaps tackle some more ambitious pieces in the medium- to long-term.

And now, having written this, I probably better go play a bit, hadn't I?

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 501: The difference a supportive employer makes

I had my annual appraisal at work today. Honestly I always dread this because of just… everything going on inside my head most of the time, not least of which is ever-present impostor syndrome, but I was especially dreading it this time because I knew I would have to have a Difficult Conversation about aspects of my job that I was struggling a bit with. The details are not important, but nothing you need to worry about — my career is fine and I have not murdered anyone!

Why should this make me feel dread, rather than hope about having an open conversation that both I and my colleagues can move forward from? Because on multiple occasions in the past, attempting to have a Difficult Conversation like this has resulted in a less-than-supportive atmosphere from my immediate superiors and employers. On multiple occasions it has led to me leaving a role altogether. And, as I'm sure you're aware from my general enthusiasm for what I do now, I did not want that to happen this time around.

I had no reason to believe that speaking my mind and being frank about my mental health would result in disastrous consequences for my job and career in this particular instance, of course — I get along very well with my colleagues, immediate superiors and even senior management. That's the advantage of working for a relatively small company: you can get to know everyone, and they can get to know you.

But still I felt it: that dread. What if it was misinterpreted as me being lazy, or not wanting to do my job, or something like that? Impostor syndrome is a terrible thing, as it means you live in constant fear of being "found out". Exactly what you fear being "found out" is often not entirely clear, but the end result is often that familiar feeling of dread when you're in a situation where the right thing to do is to confront something that's been worrying you, and seek support if needed.

As should hopefully already be clear from the title of this post, the Difficult Conversation went well, and I now feel a lot more confident and hopeful about the future. I won't go into details because you don't really need to know — it's nothing any of you need to worry about, I should add, however — but suffice to say that we have a Plan for the immediate and mid-to-long-term future that will hopefully result in me feeling a lot better about a lot of things, and feeling a lot less in the way of the burnout I have been suffering a bit over the course of the last while.

It's all about thinking about where your particular strengths and skills are, and considering how you can best use those as part of your overall team. Go into a situation like this thinking "I don't want to do this any more" and the whole thing is probably going to end sub-optimally. Go into this thinking "these are the things I'm good at, and I don't think my current responsibilities make the best use of those skills", however, and you can look to the future with hope and positivity. This is, it should not have to be said, a good thing.

Because ultimately, we have to work. That's the way society is. In the absence of any sort of universal basic income scheme — which is a whole other topic of discussion — we all have to work. And if you have the opportunity to make a change for the better and not find your mental health ebbing away at least partly as a result of daily responsibilities that aren't a good fit for you, it pays to take that bold step, say "I'm not entirely happy right now", and try to figure out a good solution for yourself.

I am painfully aware that not everyone has the luxury of being able to do this. I have been in situations where I have not had the luxury of being able to do this in the past, and it really sucks. So I was beyond pleased when the end result of the discussions today was positive, helpful and hopeful, and I'm glad I had the courage to stand up and admit that I had been struggling a bit. I am incredibly thankful for the opportunities I've been given, and the position in which I find myself. It took me a very long time to get here, so I am keen to make it work as well as I can.

So that's what I'm doing. And I'm grateful that I can do that.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.