Tag: boredom

#oneaday Day 72: A life less ordinary

I can’t shake the feeling that life just used to be… more interesting. When I look back on the last time I did this #oneaday thing and consider all the things that happened back then, and I look at today, I can’t help but feel that while there were things that happened back then I’d rather not go through again, things were certainly more interesting and exciting.

Part of this is self-inflicted, of course. I’m not the same person I was ten years ago for a variety of reasons: physically, mentally and emotionally. I’m older, so of course the day-to-day nature of one’s life changes as you age. But in the middle of all that there was COVID, and that, for me, is where a lot of the dissatisfaction I’m feeling right now started from.

Sure, it was easy to joke about the COVID lockdowns as being government-sanctioned “not having to go out and interact with three-dimensional people”. And that was fun for a bit. Plus I certainly don’t want to go back to a full-time office job, because working from home is just way more convenient. Any bosses who are attempting to get their workforce back into the office full time are just trying to exert control over them: simple as that. And, frankly, fuck that.

But the COVID lockdowns also brought with them the inability to see friends and family, and that lack of socialisation has persisted long after the lockdowns ended. My “IRL” friends were already reaching a point where they rarely wanted to do anything together due to them starting families and whatnot, but things haven’t picked up at all ever since their children grew up a bit and the restrictions on us doing things together lifted. Even trying to get any of them to play something online occasionally is like pulling teeth from a particularly bloodless stone.

And daily life feels increasingly dominated by “online” and social media. I’ve doubtless spoken before about how odious I find TikTok and short-video culture, but every time I inadvertently come into contact with a vertical video of someone yelling at their phone camera, I’m reminded that the world moved on and kind of left me behind a bit.

To be perfectly honest, I’m pretty sure the world left me behind 20+ years ago. I’m pretty sure I was at my happiest and most content between 1997 and 2002 — the years from sixth form to the end of university. I had friends, I had hobbies, I had things I could go out and do, and I never felt the same sense of indefinable “pressure” on my mental health that I do today. Sure, there were things I wish I had done differently and regrets I have, but I was happy and satisfied with my lot in life.

Today? I feel like I’m being ungrateful when I say that I’m dissatisfied with existence, because I have a lot that I should be thankful for — a wonderful wife, two gorgeous cats, a nice house, a video game collection that would blow the mind of my teenage self — but life in general just feels so empty. And I don’t really know what to do about it other than wallow in nostalgia and think about how nice things used to be.

Oh well. I don’t have any solutions for that right now, so I think I’m just going to go upstairs and watch another episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

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.

#oneaday, Day 337: Internet Games #2: TinyURLette

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when browsing the web, visiting the same few sites over and over and over again in a vain attempt to find something new to waste your ultimately meaningless existence with. Facebook is usually the timesink of choice for many people, closely followed by Twitter, TVTropes, Wikipedia and a few others.

As such, it’s easy to forget that there’s a wider web out there, filled with sites that you may not have ever come across during your daily browsing routine. Some sites you would never have wanted to discover, ever. And some are real gems that you’ll be happy you came across.

So what better way to explore the web than to make it into a little game? There used to be a website devoted to this very philosophy. Called ShuffleTime, it allowed players to jump around the web seemingly at random, answering trivia questions about the pages they were seeing. Correctly answering the questions allowed the players to collect cards and coins and purchase rewards and entries into prize draws. Sadly, it didn’t last very long, but I thought it was a great idea.

So here’s a variation on it. I can’t promise any kind of reward (short of discovering something horrendous/wonderful) but it’s a good time waster. Probably not safe for work, but if you’re reading this at work then you’re probably not concerned about that, either. Here is a picture of Rise from Persona 4 in a bikini to make you feel uncomfortable about reading this at work.

Well, it serves you right. Get on with what you’re supposed to be doing and I won’t have to embarrass you again.

Alternatively, you could embarrass yourself further by playing TinyURLette, a game of discovery. The rules are very similar to The TwitPic Game which I informed you all of a few days ago (and no-one participated, boo) except this time we’re dealing with websites.

So here’s what to do. Visit your link-shortening service of choice and simply add whatever you like after the URL. I will attempt this with both TinyURL and bit.ly links to demonstrate.

So first up, we have http://bit.ly/blargh, which takes us to a page of YouTube comments for this video. It is a Scottish guy who has obviously been studying phonetics recently. He also says hello to a lot of people. And goes off on a rant against one of the members of his channel. He also does that irritating “quick-editing” thing that people are doing all the time on YouTube. “Hello! I am [edit] a person [edit] who is [edit] talking [edit] to you about [edit] rubbish.” Enough of him.

http://tinyurl.com/ihateyou, conversely, is appropriately named and takes you to a picture you really don’t want to see. Especially if you’re at work. You have been warned. It’s not porn or gore.

http://bit.ly/arse takes us to BioEthics Bytes, a blog about multimedia resources for teaching bioethics. An unfortunate URL for a page that looks quite interesting.

http://tinyurl.com/what takes us to an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about the death of Margaret Singer, an expert on brainwashing and cult activity. The obituary is an interesting read, actually, with some quotes from Singer herself.

By extension, http://tinyurl.com/whatisthisidonteven takes you to a page clearly intended to RickRoll you. Unfortunately for them, the video they have been using for RickRolling purposes is a broken link, meaning that this page is, in fact, a failed RickRoll. A RickStumbleAndFallOnYourAss, if you will.

http://bit.ly/yourface features a news headline from Twitter very literally about your face.

http://tinyurl.com/stopit gives us a blog post in Russian about Lifespring, the now-defunct “human potential training” company. Or, as Google Translate puts it, “Layfspringe”, which is a much better name.

Finally, http://bit.ly/borednow takes us to a page from McCarthy Psychology Services from Australia about care provision for the elderly.

I’m a little disappointed. Out of 8 different pages, only one of them is the slightest bit inappropriate. You are not doing your job properly, Internet.

Found any entertaining TinyURL or bit.ly shortlinks through playing this stupid game? Let me know in the comments.