1991: Reddit in Trouble?

I find online social networks a fascinating thing to observe and sometimes participate in. Twitter is the main one I’m a part of, and over my time using it I’ve been part of a number of different subcultures that make use of the site as a means of talking to one another about common interests, regardless of geographical location.

In this sense, social networks are a bit like real life; you tend to gravitate towards people with whom you have common interests, and you drift away from people you find objectionable or simply don’t mesh well with. It’s exactly the same online; I know exactly the sort of people I’m likely to get along with, and exactly the sort of people I want to avoid at all costs. The nice thing about online interactions is that you can — for the most part — take a lot more control over your experience than you can in reality. You can’t, for example, choose the people that you work alongside, so if you dislike, say, your manager or another member of your team, you can’t get away from them. You can, however, mute or block people you don’t gel with online; while there’s an argument that this can lead to an “echo chamber” effect in which people are unwilling to have their viewpoints and opinions truly challenged, for the most part I find this a good way of minimising the stress that social interactions (be they real or virtual) can sometimes cause me.

One social network that I’ve never quite managed to integrate myself into is Reddit, and that’s simply because Reddit as a whole is such a hugely sprawling entity that it’s difficult to know where to start. There are popular subreddits for pictures, jokes, games and all sorts of other things, as well as highly specialised subreddits for niche interests or simply running jokes. Effectively, each subreddit is like a forum with message threads and discussions that follow on from an original post, but there’s also a sort of “metagame” aspect to the site, where you earn points for posts and comments according to the community’s overall reaction to them. This metagame doubles as the site’s main means of automatic “curation” — high-rated content shifts to the top and becomes more visible, perhaps even hitting the front page of Reddit (which often describes itself as “The Front Page of the Internet”, though Facebook might like to believe differently) if it’s really popular and transcends its original context.

Reddit’s an interesting site to browse even if you don’t actively participate, though. It’s the birthplace of a number of now-commonplace Internet memes and jokes, and the community as a whole can usually be relied on for some highly entertaining, quick-witted responses as well as scathing takedowns of stupid, ignorant or bigoted people. Assuming the subreddit you’re in isn’t specifically designed for stupid, ignorant or bigoted people, of course.

Now, this latter aspect is where things have got a little bit interesting recently. Reddit has traditionally positioned itself as being a bastion of its interpretation of “free speech” online, trusting individual subreddit moderators to set the rules for their individual communities and enforce them accordingly, while at the same time ensuring that nothing actually outright illegal is posted, and if it is, that it is removed quickly. To date, it’s worked pretty well; while there are some subreddits that are the online equivalent of a notorious dark alley you probably wouldn’t wander into alone if you didn’t have a very good reason to be there, for the most part each individual community has kept itself to itself, content with its own little space of the Internet for its discussions, even when said discussions might not be welcome elsewhere on the Internet. (“Gamergate” subreddit “KotakuInAction” is a good example of this, and there are plenty of others along the same lines.)

But there have been Happenings recently. As someone who isn’t an active participant in Reddit, I haven’t really been following the whole drama, but so far as I can make out, Reddit brought on a new CEO recently known as Ellen Pao, and she has not been a popular “leader” for the site. The popular conspiracy theory is that she’s attempting to “clean up” Reddit prior to selling it off to the highest bidder — likely Facebook, who would doubtless very much like to get their hands on “the front page of the Internet” — and in the process is ruffling a whole lot of feathers of people who have traditionally found Reddit to be a good home for their discussions and activities.

Pao’s actions coupled with a widely-criticised lack of communication between the overall Reddit administrators (who run the site as a whole, and have the power to ban and “shadowban” users according to their behaviour) and the firing of a number of Reddit employees for seemingly questionable reasons have been causing rumblings of discontent for some time, but it seems that today, for whatever reason, was the tipping point; a number of popular subreddits, including front-page, “default” subreddits that are automatically included in a new Reddit user’s list of subreddits, have “gone dark” in protest against Pao’s management, the aforementioned lack of communication, a very inconsistent application of the “rules” for the site as a whole and, in some cases, a rather opaque sense of what the “rules” actually are. These subreddits have “gone dark” by setting themselves to “private” mode, meaning that only users who are already approved to post there (usually just subscribers to that particular subreddit) can see what is going on and being discussed; casual browsers, those who are not logged in or those who are not subscribed, meanwhile, are simply shown a default page explaining that the sub is private, and the reasons for it.

Over the course of the day, more and more subreddits have “gone dark” in protest, effectively crippling Reddit’s traffic as a result. It’s been absolutely fascinating to see, and while I don’t 100% understand the reasons for the protest at this time, I think it’s a potent reminder that when you create something as sprawling as a social network, as much as you’d like to think you can stay in complete control of it, ultimately the site it made or broken by its users. Without users, the site is completely useless, so if you piss off those users then you’re going to have a big problem.

It remains to be seen whether Reddit will pull through this debacle, or whether a young pretender like Reddit clone Voat is ready to pick up the baton and try not to make the same mistakes. (I mention Voat specifically because they have reported record amounts of traffic since the controversy really exploded today.) This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, after all; Reddit originally grew to prominence thanks to the once-popular Digg fucking itself up beyond all recognition, so while it may seem dramatic to contemplate that this might be The Beginning of the End for Reddit, it’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility.

Basically, the lesson from all this appears to be pretty simple: don’t think you know better than your users. Because you probably don’t.

1144: A Life Without Nerd-Rage

I haven’t even contemplated going back to Twitter yet, but not because I have no desire to run into the scumbuckets who drove me off it in the first place. No, my lack of desire to go back to Twitter stems from my dislike of irrational table-thumping arguments on the most ridiculous of subjects, usually video game-related.

Mr Craig Bamford said it best back in February:

CAN WE PLEASE STOP TRYING TO HAVE SERIOUS DEBATES ON TWITTER OF ALL THINGS?

See title.

No, really. See title. I’m enormously, impossibly tired of how everybody who writes about games seems to think that the best-or-only way to have debates on serious, often wrenchingly-personal issues is on Twitter.

Yes, I’m guilty of this myself. I know. But every single time it happens, I feel like I’ve made a mistake. I’m just reminded of how Twitter is an incredibly dumb way to handle these things. The posts are too short, there’s no proper threading, you can’t follow the discussion properly unless you follow everybody involved, expanding the size of the group makes it even worse, you can barely mention people without drawing them in…

…it’s just a gigantic dog’s breakfast that makes absolutely everybody involved look bad.

Worse, it elevates bad arguments. It seems custom-tailored for dumb appeals to authority/popularity and thrashing of strawmen and misquotation and pretty much everything OTHER than an actual grownup discussion of issues. It’s absolutely one-hundred-percent boosting the arguments that are “simple, straightforward, and wrong”, as the saying goes. That likely has a lot to do with why everybody seems to rush to the most extreme interpretation of arguments and positions. Extreme arguments tend to be straightforward ones.

Sure, there’s worse. Facebook, for example. But every day I’m more and more convinced that Twitter should really be used to link to arguments, instead of make arguments. It’s not working. So, please, stop.

I agree with him entirely. Too many times over the last year in particular have we seen game journalists and critics with disproportionately loud online “voices” telling us what to think. Usually these loudmouths are attempting to address the issues of sexism and misogyny in the industry — a noble goal, for sure, as few can deny that women still get treated like shit at times through no fault of their own — but more often than not they get so embroiled in beating their fists on their desk that they lose all track of their arguments and end up coming across as… well, a bit childish really. Often these rants come about when the full information on a given situation isn’t available, either — they’re a kneejerk response to things which often aren’t the “problem” they appear to be at first glance.

Let’s take the recently-released Tomb Raider reboot as an example. I haven’t played it yet, but I’ve been discussing it with a friend who has this evening. He’s an intelligent sort of chap with a keen critical eye, and he has found himself very impressed with the depiction of the young Lara Croft as a vulnerable young woman caught up in a situation that she isn’t entirely comfortable with, and having to do things that she finds difficult or scary. The tale of Tomb Raider is as much one of Lara overcoming her own difficulties at dealing with particular things as it is about… whatever the overarching plot of the new game is. (I’m intending to “go in blind” when I eventually play it, so I have no idea what the actual story is about.) My friend compared it to the movie The Descent, with which it sounds like it shares many of its themes and much of its tone. This means that Lara is frequently put in various types of danger — from the environment, from wild animals, and from other people. This also means that there are times when the wet-behind-the-ears young Lara is absolutely fucking terrified of what is happening to her, and justifiably so.

Is this sexist? No, not really; it’s a perfectly human response to shit your pants (not literally… I don’t think) at the prospect of having various forms of unpleasantness inflicted upon you, regardless of whether you’re male or female. Likewise, as much as we would like to forget it happens, violence and sexual assaults do happen to women — and men too, for that matter — because there are certain portions of human society who are complete scumbags who have no regard for human life, male or female.

Lara happens to be female, which means that the situations she is put in over the course of Tomb Raider have been under a disproportionately greater amount of scrutiny than if she was a male hero — regardless of whether or not said male hero is a realistically-rendered character (as Lara is intended to be in this reboot) or a muscle-bound caricature. Lara is put into some difficult situations over the course of the game, including at least one scene where she appears to be at risk of sexual assault. Much was made of this scene when it was first revealed — particularly comments from the development team that it would make players “want to protect Lara”. This was immediately interpreted by the aforementioned loudmouths as being misogynistic and in a sense they’re correct to say that — the characters in the game are misogynists who don’t care about Lara’s wellbeing. But — and here’s the thing — this doesn’t mean that the developers share these attitudes just because they put these characters in the game. You have to have conflict and tension for something to be exciting. Did it have to be the implied threat of sexual assault? No, of course it didn’t, but equally that doesn’t mean we should shy away from such subjects in our entertainment — to do so can actually be pretty harmful, as it makes genuine victims of this sort of thing feel like their suffering is something to be ashamed of. It’s also just plain insulting to grown-ups who want their entertainment to acknowledge that Sometimes Bad Shit Happens to Good People.

I don’t want to get too bogged down in Tomb Raider because it’s just one example of this sort of thing going on. I happened to sneak a glance at Twitter earlier out of curiosity and it seemed that the latest controversy to hit the Intertubes related to Sony’s new God of War game, which features an automatically-attained story-related Trophy awarded to the player the moment after the lead character Kratos stomps on the face of a Fury following what, I assume, is one of the series lengthy combat sequences. The trophy is called “Bros Before Hos”, which is arguably somewhat in bad taste, but we’re talking about a series full of a muscle-bound man ripping the eyeballs out of mythological creatures the size of your average Ikea while shouting incoherently, so I think we can agree that subtlety went out of the window a long time ago.

Because a Fury is a woman, this scene (and by extension the Trophy) is now misogynistic. Again, it might well be in the context of the game — I haven’t played any of them so I don’t know what sort of person Kratos is (besides “the angriest man in Greece”) and what his attitudes towards women are — but in the case of the game’s development, God of War is based on established mythology (or an interpretation thereof, anyway) in which the Furies were (are?) female, and not very nice things to encounter to boot. If you had the opportunity and the means, you would probably want to stamp on their face too, and that’s nothing to do with the fact they are women — it is, however, everything to do with the fact that they are infernal goddesses of much unpleasantness. Do we now have to disregard established mythology because of concerns over violence against women? No, that’s ridiculous; that’s wrapping the world in cotton wool, which helps no-one.

Note that in all of these cases I am not advocating for people to be free to promote things that are harmful to society. I would feel deeply uncomfortable playing a game in which you were somehow rewarded for inflicting domestic violence on someone, for example — although if tackled with sensitivity and care (which many triple-A developers lack, but which many smaller-scale or indie developers have proven themselves to possess in abundance) it could be possible to create an interesting, if distressing sort of interactive story about domestic violence. (In fact, it has sort of been done at least once, to an extent anyway: for a fascinating and challenging exploration of an abusive relationship through the use of allegory, play the game Magical Diary — which was written by a woman — and pursue the romance with Damien.)

What I am instead saying is that getting outraged any time a female character (or, for that matter, a non-white, young, elderly, homosexual, trans or other “non-white twentysomething cis male” character) is placed in peril, regardless of the circumstances, is counter-productive. It diminishes the value of the arguments as a whole, and distracts attention from content that genuinely is a problem. After the controversy over the Hitman trailer with all its leather-clad nuns and other assorted ridiculousness dreamed up by the 14-year olds in Square Enix’s marketing department, I confess I found myself blocking most of the people involved in the “discussions” around the issue on Twitter not because I wanted to deny there was a problem, but because I couldn’t deal with the way people were arguing about it. There was no debate, no discussion — nothing but “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” for day after day. And as soon as one controversy subsided, another appeared. And so it continued for month after month after month. It made me stop caring completely, which is the complete opposite of what these people presumably intended.

Rage like this doesn’t even have to be directed at a sociological issue, though; just recently everyone has been getting extremely angry at EA because of SimCity’s online requirement, just like they did with Diablo III. Again, very few people are considering all the facts at play here, which I won’t get into now, and instead resorting to kneejerk rage which, if you disagree with, you’re somehow an asshole. There always has to be something to be angry about. And it’s exhausting.

So, in summary, I am very happy to have now, for the most part, taken a step back from the seething masses — and while said masses are still seething I have very little intention of heading back in a Twitterly direction unless absolutely necessary.

I’ll let Irina sum up how I feel about all this with the Understatement of the Century.

Quite.

#oneaday Day 771: The Trouble With Kotaku Might Not Be Quite What You Think

Yesterday, Internet Rage focused the full power of it’s +5 Cannon of Ranting at Kotaku, and not for the first time. On this particular occasion, the problem was this article, by all accounts a rather obnoxious piece by comedian Kris Kail describing the fact that he supposedly managed to get laid several times in a room filled with Sonic the Hedgehog memorabilia.

The article drew heat for several reasons. Firstly, it was simply quite bad taste. Secondly, it was rather obnoxiously self-congratulatory, and a thinly-veiled attempt for Kail to sell more copies of his book Slacker’s Paradise. Thirdly, and this is the thing that Kotaku has most commonly taken flak for in the last few years, it was really only tangentially related to video games.

Editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo took to Twitter shortly after it became very clear that reaction to the article’s publication was almost universally negative. His response, though, was somewhat curious, as it seemed like he was apologising for something different to what everyone was upset about.

“The only person who has to apologize for stories on Kotaku is me,” he tweeted. “It was my call to run the Sonic story. I had expected it to come off as funnier. That was an error of judgment. But, more significantly, I owe our readers an apology for okaying a story that implies all gamers are straight men. I should’ve caught that. It’s no small thing. No article on Kotaku should make you feel that you don’t count as a gamer. If one does, that is my fault and inconsistent with Kotaku values. I must also add that humor and writing about sex isn’t off-limits at Kotaku. We just have to do it right and not forget our own standards.”

While it’s good that Totilo responded so quickly to criticism, certainly on my Twitter feed the fact that the article was supposedly assuming an all-straight male readership wasn’t really the issue — rather, it was the poor taste and seemingly rather pointless nature of the article on a site which is supposedly about video games.

But that got me to thinking. What is Kotaku really trying to do?

Then a theory hit me. It became obvious what Kotaku seemingly wants to do, despite its half-hearted attempts to be “inclusive” to everyone. It wants to be a “men’s magazine” a la FHM, Maxim et al, but one that focuses on games. Were the site to be branded as such and have the confidence in its content to say “yes, we are specifically aiming at a straight male demographic” then articles like the above actually wouldn’t be all that out of place. Those who didn’t fit into that core demographic might not enjoy that sort of content, sure — but if the site was obvious enough about its intentions, it wouldn’t provoke nearly as much ire.

There’s precedent for this sort of thing, too. A good few years back now, there was a short-lived magazine from PC Zone and Maxim UK publisher Dennis known as Escape. It focused on video games, Internet culture and the Web’s formative years alongside the usual scantily-clad ladies found in more “general interest” men’s mags like its stablemate Maxim. It’s a real shame it’s not around any more. There’s actually arguably a place for a publication like that on newsstands today.

Because you know what? It was pretty good. It brought together Things That Men Like under one convenient header. Games. The Web. Girls. Sports. “Alternative” culture. It took a few risks with its content, too; most memorable for me was the occasion when they quasi-scientifically attempted to test the theory that video games were better than sex by wiring up my brother to a heart monitor and then making him have sex, wank, talk to a stranger, play a video game and bungee jump. Surely a high point in his career. (Bungee jumping “won”, by the way.)

I can’t help but feel that the “blog/news aggregator” format for gaming sites has had its day, and that the way forward is for outlets to specialise both in their content and their core demographic. Video game culture is all-encompassing nowadays, covering men, women, kids, adults, straight, gay, trans, nerd, enthusiast, casual, PC, console, any combination of identifying characteristics you might name. As awesome as that is for the cultural penetration and acceptance of gaming as a mainstream medium, it does mean that you start to get to a stage where you can’t please everyone. So why not focus on a specific demographic? If you’re up-front and honest about being, say, a “men’s” site and focusing on content as such, those people who have no interest in straight male-focused content can move on to any of the bajillion other sites out there (it’s not as if we have a shortage, after all) while those who enjoy that sort of thing can stick around without feeling “guilt”.

Some sites are already wise to this. We have GayGamer.net specifically choosing to cater its audience towards (I quote) “boys who like boys who like joysticks and girls who like girls who like rumble pads”. We have Gamers With Jobs specifically catering towards the older gamer who doesn’t necessarily have the time to play everything but enjoys some mature discussion. We have Girl Gamer, specifically aimed at female players. And doubtless there are numerous others catering specifically to other markets, too.

So why doesn’t Kotaku bite the bullet and make a bold shift in editorial direction, specifically stating that it is going to court the straight gamer market above all else?

The answer is sadly probably the most simple one. Hits. By attempting to be “universally appealing” (and, as we’ve seen, often failing) Kotaku aims to get the largest possible audience of people who are just interested in “video games” as a general, amorphous concept. More hits means more advertising revenue means the site can continue to grow and be a household name in gamer culture. At the same time, controversies such as that which occurred yesterday over this article attract people to the site, in much the same way as the Daily Mail posts deliberately contentious headlines in order to direct outraged traffic their way. Any publicity is good publicity, as they say.

It’s a cynical view, perhaps, but it’s also not an unreasonable assumption to make given Kotaku’s recent history. Consider, however, something that Arthur Gies of Vox Games said on Twitter last night:

You know what brings people to content? Good writing. You know what else brings people to content? Outrage. Which would you rather support?

There is a place and a demographic for content such as the Sonic the Hedgehog piece we saw yesterday. But that place is not on a site which purports to be universally appealing to all gamers.

The solution to this is one of rebranding and targeting that specific audience without guilt or apology — but sadly, I can’t help but feel it’s a bit too late for Kotaku now.

#oneaday Day 745: Miss Catherine O’Gyny

I’ve been rather disappointed by the attitudes I’ve seen over the last couple of days, from people who, though in many cases I’ve not had the opportunity to speak to directly, I would consider to be my peers — those working in the game journalism business, and specifically those from the UK.

What I’m referring to here isn’t a blanket problem with all UK game journalists or the industry at large, but it is a relatively widespread one, and one which I don’t particularly want to get into direct finger-pointing about. I do, however, feel that it is worth mentioning.

Context: Last night there was a launch party for the impending UK release of Atlus’ excellent Catherine. If you’re not familiar with Catherine, it’s a bold, daring game that doesn’t shy away from adult themes, and explores the concepts of relationships, commitment, infidelity and the power of sex through well-written dialogue, well-realised characters and some very striking, surreal imagery. Despite its subject matter, it never oversteps the boundary into tastelessness, and the vast majority of the game’s sexuality is implied rather than made explicit.

So of course it would be an excellent idea to launch the game in a strip club. Of course that would be a sensible idea, particularly given that there is no strip club (or indeed any strippers) in the game, which handles sexuality in an understated, tasteful manner which respects the player’s maturity.

Some people on Twitter quite rightly spoke out and said that they felt this venue for the game’s launch was totally inappropriate. Some brought out facts and figures to back up their arguments. But surely even without facts and figures, anyone with half a brain could see that hosting a launch event for a game in a strip club is just a terrible, terrible idea.

Apparently not. The people who raised objections to the venue were told by some attendees that they were taking things too seriously, that they were trying to unfairly tar people with the “sexist” brush, that it wasn’t really anything to worry about. Arguments got heated in many instances. I kept well away from the whole thing and observed — usually the best choice in this sort of situation.

The issue that really bugged me, though, was that for many of those who were at the event — I wasn’t, I hasten to add — it seemed a simple matter to dismiss the inherent misogyny in hosting an event at such a venue. The objectors were accused of “overreacting”.

Fact is, the video games industry has always been male dominated and, despite the number of prominent women who are now involved, is still a male-dominated industry. Hosting events like this is not going to make women (and, indeed, some men) feel welcome to the industry, and from the outside it just looks sleazy — both for the industry at large, and for Catherine, too, which, as a genuinely thought-provoking, mature game for adults, it does not deserve. None of that is an overreaction. The industry needs to be more inclusive.

All this isn’t the first time the reaction of many UK media types has bugged me, however. Late last year, industry trade publication MCV held the Games Media Awards ceremony, during which people from across the industry were to be celebrated for their achievements. It should be a prestigious, high-profile ceremony — and to some extent, it is. However, all trace of credibility for the event was lost for me when I clapped eyes on its Twitter feed, which was encouraging attendees to get as drunk as possible and show up naked, and continually promised “industry boobs” — a supposedly hilarious joke whereby if the account got enough followers, they’d show a picture that actually turned out to be the flabby chest of one of the gentlemen had reviewed the UFC Personal Trainer product for Kinect. IT’S CLEVER BECAUSE IT’S NOT ACTUALLY SEXIST BUT LOOKS LIKE IT IS, DO YOU SEE?

I have always been of the attitude that an awards ceremony should be a professional affair — dinner suits, shiny shoes, that sort of thing. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have a bit of fun with it, but the babbling of the GMAs’ Twitter account really seemed to cross the line with its crass humour, so I happened to mention it one day on Twitter, noting how the behaviour of whoever was running the account had actually put me off wanting to find out more about the ceremony.

I was promptly retweeted and mocked for, again, “taking it too seriously”.

In my experience, “you’re taking it too seriously”, “I didn’t mean it” or “I was just having a laugh” are some of the weakest defences that there are. They show complete disregard for the other person’s feelings and put across the notion that it’s all right to do or say anything you want, so long as it’s “a joke” or not meant to be “taken seriously”. The other person should just lighten up, stop being such a stick-in-the-mud, take the pole out of their arse.

The Games Media Awards got their comeuppance when sponsors Grainger Games ended up acting like a bunch of dicks, however. The hypocrisy of some, who had previously been advocating the crass humour of the Twitter account, now lambasting Grainger Games for its inappropriate behaviour in person was almost amusing.

In the case of the Catherine event, I feel very disappointed in the way many UK journos have behaved. While I’m sure the event offered a great networking opportunity, the fact that it appears no-one saw fit to object to the venue and instead were more than happy to hoover up the free drinks is a bit sad. It’s highly likely that there were some people there — male and female — who would have felt very uncomfortable in that situation, but felt like they would be unable to mention it for fear of ruining the networking opportunity, or the relationship they might have with public relations representative. The fact that those who weren’t there who did object to the venue were promptly called out and, in some cases, ridiculed, is really sad, and the flimsy justifications and excuses offered by those who were in attendance are what I find particularly disappointing.

In order to fight the perception of the games industry as an all-boys’ club in which only twentysomething men can participate, events like this need to stop happening. There’s no good reason the launch couldn’t have taken place at any old bar — but I have a horrible, sleazy, sneaking suspicion that the strip club venue was chosen precisely because it has provoked the discussion it has. You know the saying… “any publicity is good publicity”, right? Would people be as aware of Catherine if all this hadn’t happened?

In short, I just think that the industry is better than this. And if this is the direction that members of the industry think it is appropriate to go in, then I’m more than happy that my current career sits on the sidelines and concentrates more on the analytical, business side of matters rather than flashy, over the top, exclusive events like this.

#oneaday, Day 18: Why Blog?

Mark Fraser wrote a great post earlier today on the nature of blogging—particularly daily blogging—and the reasons we do it. In this post, I thought I’d explain why I do it. It seems like a faintly topical thing to do, especially since tomorrow marks one year since I started writing daily. One year. 365 entries, most of which are around the 500-1,000 word mark. That’s a lot.

So why do it?

Because I enjoy it.

Shit, that sounds like far too simple an answer, and at the end of this sentence that’s only 93 words. That’s not enough for the arbitrary minimum I set myself back when I started.

But it’s the truth. The reason I write this blog is because I enjoy it. Sure, it’s great that some people come and read it. Some people are even subscribed to it (that’s dedication for you). Other readers have undoubtedly come and gone. Some are recent additions to my little family of readers (oh, you, I love you all) but, you know, the only reason I’m writing this is because I enjoy it. The fact that you lot out there in readerland seem to enjoy some of the things I write is a happy bonus that I wouldn’t exchange for anything.

I can tell when something I post is going to be a big hit, though. When I posted about Kevin Smith’s unfortunate experiences with Southwest Airlines, I saw a big spike in people reading. Similarly, when I bitched about that ridiculous campaign on Facebook where everyone changed their avatar to a childhood cartoon, I had, I think, the most daily hits I’ve ever had. Which, given that the daily cartoon for that particular post featured someone masturbating furiously, was something of a bittersweet success. So to speak.

The thing is, though, I don’t deliberately court readers. The notion of “hit-chasing” is seen as a necessary evil in the world of online journalism, which is why we get so many games sites lowering the tone with “OMG BEWBZ” articles, because that will get the clicks from the horny teenage boys who supposedly populate the Internet. Unfortunately, it seems to work, leading to something of a self-perpetuating cycle. Similarly, the Daily Mail undoubtedly enjoys a massive spike in traffic by posting something completely cuntish like they did the other day. Go find it yourself, I’m not linking to those bastards again.

But this site? No. This is for me. It’s selfish but it’s true. I’m very lucky to have some friends who enjoy reading my work and appreciate my stupid cack-handed cartoons—and occasionally some random strangers, too. Writing this blog every day is something fun to do that I look forward to. It’s helped me work my way through some difficult times. And it’s helped my writing as a result.

Basically, I don’t play the game in the same way Mark describes. At least not consciously. But one thing I do enjoy is being an active part of the One A Day Project community—one of the reasons I decided to step up and try and organise the whole thing this year was based on one of the most common complaints last year: there was no sense of community. There was no “centralised” place for people to come together, and some of the participants weren’t even aware of each others’ existence. This led to the situation where there were only six people left at the end of the year. (Ironically, of course, this led to us becoming friends, as six blogs are much easier to keep up with than 160.)

This year, though, we’re already seeing people posting some cool responses to each others’ posts as standalone entries in their own right, some discussion and banter on Twitter, and I know of at least a couple of awesome friendships that have already formed as a direct result of all this.

So while I primarily still write for my own amusement, catharsis and/or personal development, I feel it’s important to say that I do appreciate the community of other bloggers out there, some of whom might be reading this right now.

Kissy kissy. Wuv yooo.

#oneaday, Day 225: This Post is Controversial

Want to get your voice heard on the Internet? Then you’d better have something contentious to say, or at the very least something to say about something contentious.

I’ve seen it myself on this blog. The day I wrote about Kevin Smith’s experiences with Southwest Airlines (day 28, if you’re keeping score) was one of the highest-traffic days that I’ve ever seen. Granted, this being a personal blog which not that many people know about, that still wasn’t very many people. But it was enough to make a noticeable spike on that handy little pageviews graph that WordPress helpfully provides you with.

And today. I happened to tweet earlier that Xbox LIVE’s prices were going up by $10 a year. Thinking nothing of it at the time, I returned about an hour later to discover that this tweet, out of the other 16,740 that there are (I know, I know) was retweeted by something in the region of three billion people. All right, that’s an exaggeration. But you get my point.

And then, an article published by a colleague over on Kombo has seen one of our highest ever “temperature” ratings on gaming news aggregator N4G. The subject of the article? “Top Ten Most Overrated Games”. Compare this to an article I wrote on the subject of women in the games industry, which attracted ill-informed, stupid comments from people who obviously had read nothing more than the title, and you’ll see that at times, the Internet is not the place for reasoned discourse. Incidentally, this isn’t a slight against Lucas’ great article, which actually makes some fair points.

A friend and colleague described services such as Digg and N4G as “places where lazy people go to yell at each other over stories they didn’t read concerning topics they don’t understand”. It’s sad, but it’s true. It’s also an awesome quote. Thank you, Brad.

So it seems that in order to get people interested and reading what you have to say, it either has to be a contentious opinion, or an opinion on a contentious topic. It’s possibly a side-effect of the celebrity culture I discussed the other day, where apparently our own lives aren’t interesting enough and therefore we must go look for scandal, opportunities to accuse “the system” of screwing us and chances to argue and flame at every opportunity. Are our own lives really that boring, though? Do people really have that little to say about themselves? Should I turn this into a blog about what the latest celebrity idiots have been getting up to recently?

No. Because if everyone goes about doing that, it just makes the situation worse. I’m writing here for me. I write about what I want to write about, when I want to write about it… so long as it’s still one thing a day. The fact that other people read and enjoy it is a happy bonus. And it gives me some faith that the Internet isn’t solely populated by dribbling spastics.

Just mostly.