2344: Life without Social

Well, it's been a few days since I stepped away from Twitter, Facebook and social media in general (that includes my very, very occasional visits to Reddit) and I'm actually feeling pretty good about it. I'm not feeling especially isolated, since I 1) have other outlets through which I can talk about the things I want to talk about, and 2) have other means of talking to the people I actually want to talk to.

One experiment that I'm pleased with the progress of so far is my new Pile of Shame website. Here I'm using WordPress' P2 theme to basically fulfil one of the things I did still enjoy using Twitter for: sharing my thoughts and reactions on games that I'm playing, perhaps in the hope of convincing other people to check out said games after having seen a screenshot that piqued their interest or a description they found intriguing.

I guess what I'm essentially doing is microblogging a "Let's Play" of the games I'm playing, though I still far, far prefer the written/blog format for such things, even though video or streaming is probably a much more practical solution for doing it. When I think about what I'd be interested in seeing, though, should I ever find myself wanting to see what someone else's thoughts on a game are, video is very low down the list, particularly when it comes to looking at things on mobile. I'd much rather read something — even if it's bite-sized nuggets at irregular intervals — than watch a video and suffer through some idiot YouTuber's attempts to be a comedy god. (This is unfair, of course; I know plenty of people who make YouTube videos and stream who aren't immensely irritating, but sadly the ones who tend to get really popular are the ones who are immensely irritating. It's just like TV or other forms of popular media in that regard, I guess.)

But anyway. Check out the Pile of Shame site if you're interested in following what I've been playing — currently Ys Seven and VA-11 HALL-A — and feel free to leave comments.

Speaking more broadly, I'm not missing social media because it means no opportunity for me to get annoyed at all the things that are annoying on social media. These things differ from platform to platform: on Facebook it's the sheer amount of links I don't want to read that are shared by people I don't want to talk to — along with people thinking that they're suddenly God's gift to politics/economics/racism — while on Twitter it's the seemingly daily occurrence of one group or another getting upset, offended and/or angry about something or other. I don't care about any of it any more. I just want to exist in my own world, surrounded by people I actually care about and enjoy the things I enjoy without people crying about, by turns, censorship, misogyny, sexism, racism, People of Colour, Nintendo, Activision, EA, Japanese games, Western games, Gamergate, Call of Duty and whatever else has got people's respective goats this week.

The other positive feeling I have when not checking Twitter and/or Facebook every five minutes is the time and inclination to check out other sites on the Web. As any social addict will tell you, it's very easy to fall into the trap of feeling like Twitter and Facebook (and perhaps Reddit and its ilk) are the only sites on the Internet. Cut them out of your life, and there's a rich vein of interesting stuff you suddenly have time to explore; most notably, recently, I've finally been exploring the wonderful Hardcore Gaming 101, an admirably comprehensive site that covers hundreds of games in a delightful level of detail, including games from my youth that I don't think I've seen written about anywhere else on the Internet. Just last night I was reading a detailed rundown of the Dunjonquest series, for example, which I knew during the Atari 8-bit era through the games Gateway to Apshai and Temple of Apshai Trilogy. Tonight I'm reading about all the Asterix games that have been released over the years, and the site has also made for some interesting reading as I have been going through the Ys series for the first time.

There's a pleasantly wide world out there, and ditching the various virtual rooms full of people screaming at you for one reason or another makes it all the easier to see it. I'm very much enjoying the quiet.

(Note: My Twitter account is still live, sharing articles from both here and the Pile of Shame site, but it is not monitored. Please don't try and send me messages on Twitter because I won't see them! Instead, see this post for other ways to get hold of me. Or just leave a comment here.)

2203: Pete Reacts to Growing Older

A significant proportion of the Internet has been up in arms over a recent copyright kerfuffle on YouTube recently, where a collective I've never heard of called the Fine Bros had apparently attempted to trademark the word "react". Digging deeper, it seems that the Fine Bros had done this ostensibly as a means of trademarking the concept of "reaction videos" and allowing others to make videos in the same format — one which the group have had plenty of success with in the past — while allowing themselves an opportunity to profit from licensing fees.

Leaving aside the whole ethical implications of attempting to trademark a common word such as "react" — one of several different "brands" that Fine Bros had attempted to trademark, theoretically as a catch-all term to encompass any specific series they might concoct in the near future — this whole debacle brought one thing into sharp focus for me, and that is that there are certain aspects of modern popular culture that I simply don't understand the appeal of whatsoever.

The concept of a reaction video is simple. You show some people — preferably from a specific demographic such as "teenagers" or "the elderly" — a thing that is Shocking in some way, then you film what they do while they're watching or looking at the thing that is Shocking. Early examples of reaction videos included various instances of people seeing the notorious "2 Girls 1 Cup" video (for heaven's sake, don't Google that if you've never heard of it) as well as well-known shocking scenes from TV or online videos such as Game of Thrones' "Red Wedding" scene.

Trouble is, in the few reaction videos I've managed to stomach, it all feels so painfully forced as to not be entertaining. No-one I know whoops and hollers at the television, bellowing "OH MY GOD!" as something shocking happens. The most I do when seeing something shocking is flinch and wince at something gory, particularly if it involves eyes, but I don't shout and scream or anything. (That said, given the general difficulty I have with expressing emotions clearly when I'm "in person", I may not be the most representative example, but none of the people I know are like this either.) In other words, it doesn't seem believable, with the whole situation being so contrived as to seem utterly pointless.

And aside from the implausibility of some reactions, I simply don't see the appeal whatsoever. Why on Earth would I want to watch a group of people gathered around a TV that I can't see all screeching and gesturing at something I may or may not already be familiar with? And, by extension, why on Earth would anyone want to trademark such an utterly inane concept on the arrogant assumption that other people would want to pay them for the dubious privilege of churning out more culturally bankrupt tat like this?

I guess you can just add reaction videos to the ever-lengthening list of things that I just don't "get" in modern online life. It joins the illustrious ranks of Twitch chat, Twitch in general (unless you're hanging out with an actual friend), MOBAs, unboxing videos and doubtless a whole bunch of other things I'm not even familiar with yet.

I'm 34 years of age. Some days I feel like I'm still 16. Today, however, I'm feeling every one of those years. Now get off my fucking lawn.

2197: Putting the New WordPress App Through its Paces

I was helpfully informed by my WordPress dashboard that there's a new WordPress app available for the desktop, so I figured I'd put it through its paces. I've used the mobile app for both iOS and Android a fair bit, so I was interested to see what benefit — if any — making use of a desktop app would have over just loading the site up in Chrome and making use of it.

Well… frankly, there's not a huge number of benefits, at least not for those who primarily make use of blogs hosted on WordPress.com. The main benefit is that the app contains the whole of the main "new-style" WordPress dashboard in local format, meaning that you can theoretically 1) use it offline and 2) write without the distractions of other browser tabs. It's also responsive to the window size, so you can scale the display according to what, exactly, you want to do with it: do you want to keep an eye on notifications, or do you want to write a full-on post?

You'll notice I pointed out that it makes use of the "new-style" WordPress dashboard, and that's an important distinction to make, because the new-style WordPress dashboard is emphatically not the same as the traditional wp-admin view. It's a lot simpler and cleaner, sure, and you can do most of the things you can do in wp-admin in the new dashboard, but there are, frankly, a number of issues that WordPress so far hasn't fixed with the main site that remain — and arguably are even more prominent — in the app.

Most notably, there are a significant number of flaws in what WordPress refers to as the "improved posting experience". Having been using this a fair amount since my initial reactions to it, I've noticed that there have been a fair few improvements and additional functions added so that now it is, roughly speaking, in line with the wp-admin-based editor. There are still some irritating factors, however, chief among them (for me) being the fact that even with the window at 1920×1080, the word counter is scrolled off the bottom of the screen so I have to manually scroll down to view it — sometimes even if my post is longer than a screen in height. This is just plain bad design, and seems to have been fixed in the Web-based editor through the use of a floating word count window in the lower right of the viewport. Apparently the locally stored version of the editor page used in the app hasn't taken this particular update on board, however; as I type this, my word count is once again disappearing out of the bottom of the viewport.

Another big flaw that requires less discussion is the fact that the Insert Hyperlink option does not include the option that the wp-admin-based editor does to search through your previous posts and link to them without having to look up the URL yourself. The absence of this from the "improved" posting experience is mildly irritating, and I have to wonder exactly why it was removed, since this is the exact opposite of an "improvement".

A few things do seem to work a little better in the standalone app, mind; when using the editor in Chrome, I've found that sometimes the cursor keys and modifiers behave in somewhat strange and unpredictable manners: sometimes attempting to move to the previous character or word with keyboard shortcuts inexplicably jumps to the end of the paragraph or somewhere completely unexpected, particularly if there a few different items of formatting (such as links or italics) used in a paragraph. So far, at the time of writing, as I type this, I've encountered no such issues — that doesn't necessarily mean that they're not there, but they shouldn't really be in there in the first place, so I've tended to assume they're a Chrome issue rather than a WordPress issue.

Since I originally looked at the "improved posting experience", too, I was pleased to discover that drag-and-drop images now work as they should: in other words, you can drag an image directly into the editor window and have it appear where the cursor was, rather than this simply being a shortcut to opening the "Add Media" window. So good job there!

Elsewhere in the app, you have access to the other features the WordPress dashboard offers, most notably site statistics and insights, allowing you to see at a glance how your most recent posts have been performing, which days you've been posting on and suchlike. The WordPress Reader system is also integrated into the app, allowing you to catch up on WordPress blogs you've subscribed to all in one place rather than having to remember to visit a bunch of sites. This is a helpful feature, but like everything else in the app, I'm not entirely convinced of the benefit of having it in a standalone app rather than just visiting the WordPress site in my browser.

All in all, then, the main benefit of the new desktop app appears to be little more than speed and a slightly more stable experience than the website under Chrome appears to offer. I suppose offline use is a benefit to those who are composing blog posts on the go using a laptop — or, indeed, catching up on downloaded Reader posts — but for me, this is some minor, not especially useful functionality, since I tend to compose my blog posts immediately before publishing them, which tends to mean that I have a stable Internet connection wherever I happen to be at the time.

I'll continue using the app for a while and see how I get on with it. If nothing else, its "distraction-free" nature due to its lack of browser tabs is quite pleasant, so it may prove to be a helpful way to concentrate, whether it's on my daily blogging "duties" or more substantial projects.

You can find out more about the app and download it for free here.

2044: No, Thank You

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "No, Thank You."

"If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?"

I'm going to cheat a little here and not talk about a specific word, but more a general style of communication. There are numerous words that could be used to represent this style of communication, but not one that particularly stands out more than others, so I'm going to talk in more general terms.

As most of you know, the rise of the Internet over the course of the last few decades has made it easier than ever for people to communicate with one another. And with that ease of communication has come a relaxation of the rules of formality when communicating. In some ways, this is a bit of a shame, because the distinction between formal and informal use of language can often send implicit signals to the people in an interaction as to what is and is not appropriate to talk about. But in others, I'm actually very much relieved about this, because formal language is so mind-numbingly impersonal it's borderline offensive to be confronted with.

I'm thinking particularly in terms of "professional" email messages here, and I'll give you an example of the distinction. I've been doing some freelance work for a company for a while. When I started, the company was very much in its infancy, with relatively few employees and a single point of contact for the work I was doing. Said point of contact was a delightful young woman who was always chatty, helpful and charming whenever we spoke to one another. It was a pleasure to interact with her, even though for the most part we were only ever exchanging standard pleasantries and details of work assignments. But just little things like her squealing enthusiasm for me when I told her I was getting married, or chats about the extremes of weather we've seen this summer — all of those things were nice, and gave me a feeling of being "connected" to her and, by extension, a feeling of "belonging" to the company as a whole, despite simply being an outside contractor.

A few weeks ago, my former contact was replaced as she (presumably) moved on to other duties in the company as it has started to grow. She's still with the company and tends to get copied in on email messages, but I haven't heard a peep out of her since. Her replacements are like robots. And I mean that pretty much literally — every message I get from them absolutely stinks of copy-and-paste, email-by-template communication… largely because they clearly are copy-and-paste emails-by-template, and it's easy to tell this due to the fact that there are the exact same words in each one.

There's a good reason for this sort of thing, of course; as companies grow and have to communicate and collaborate with more and more people, it's not considered to be particularly efficient to manually type out each and every message. So in come the templates, the form letters, the copy-and-paste boilerplate text.

Efficient it may be, but that feeling of "connection" is gone as a result. I don't know these people, and even having sent messages to them in the same tone as I spoke with my previous contact, they've made no effort to engage with me in any way; I may as well be downloading assignments from an automated message board.

This is frustrating enough by itself, but combine it with the passive-aggressive tone that business communications tend to take — all "gentle reminders" and "looking forward" to something you haven't done yet — and it's not something that I feel is particularly conducive to a good working relationship.

It doesn't really bother me all that much, to be honest; the company in question is a means to an end (said end being "getting money") for me right now, and ultimately a personal connection with it isn't all that important to me. I just find it a little sad that what was once friendly, personal interactions between two people now feels like sending commands and requests to an automated system. You're human beings; act like it!

So, to (sort of) answer the original question, then: I would ban business-speak, form letters and email templates from general usage and insist that everyone communicate with everyone else as an individual. It would help make the world just a little bit friendlier as a result, and I feel that would work wonders for making people feel more positive about all sorts of things.

2014: Making Connections

Although I'm not pretending to have any real understanding of social interactions in general — in fact, as I often mention, I go through life feeling like I really do't know what to do in a lot of "everyday" social situations — I find the way little communities and cliques develop to be fascinating, both to observe from the outside, and to be a part of from within.

I have a few examples in mind. First, and most prominent, is Twitter. I've drifted from group to group a bit since I originally joined Twitter a number of years back. Originally, my use of Twitter was primarily to have a means of talking to my online friends with whom I used to interact on 1up.com. After "The Great Exodus", when 1up's specialised forums were mashed together into a NeoGAF-style monstrosity of just "Games" and "Not Games", a significant proportion of the community left the site's forums, and many of them found themselves on Twitter. Over time, people changed, moved and became involved in different things. Some gave up on Twitter altogether; others started using it for professional purposes; others still "rebranded" themselves.

I fell somewhat into the latter category. After suffering a fairly serious instance of doxxing and harassment back in 2013 — see, it's not just women it happens to, contrary to what the media would have you believe — I left Twitter, initially intending not to return, but after realising what a pile of crap Facebook is for actually interacting with people in a meaningful manner, I returned. After realising that the interminable social justice yelling on Twitter was setting off my depression and anxiety, I left again. This time when I came back (they always come back) I decided to "reinvent" myself a bit, and follow fewer of the people I felt I "should" be following, and instead focused on people who posted things I found interesting or enjoyable to interact with. Consequently, these days I find myself on the fringes of "anitwitter", a subculture on the social network that discusses, posts screencaps and generally enthuses about anime and games. I, as you might expect, fit right in.

Elsewhere on the Internet, the Discord server I mentioned the other day (which, dear reader, you're still welcome to come and join) has been developing slowly but surely, but it's our Final Fantasy XIV Free Company server that is perhaps the more interesting example. Taking cues from the in-game friend who introduced me to Discord in the first place, I added an "NSFW" (Not Safe for Work) channel to the server. It immediately became the most active channel in the place, though initially people weren't quite sure what to post in there, i.e. whether or not it was okay to post filth. (It was, though someone stumbled accidentally into it and complained a bit at being confronted with a wall of hentai, so we've since made it invite-only — community management at work!)

What's interesting about the NSFW channel is that the usual boundaries of "politeness" that are up when interacting with other people online in real time — in my experience, anyway; I tend not to hang around with the sort of people who hurl insults and abuse at one another — are nowhere to be seen. I don't mean that people are rude to one another; quite the opposite, in fact. The NSFW channel is a place where everyone can be open and honest about the things that they like, and where no-one judges one another for the things they talk about and post. (Or, if they do, they keep that to themselves.) It's pretty refreshing and liberating, actually, and makes it abundantly clear that there should probably be more places for people — particularly, it has to be said, men — to be able to talk about things like sex, fetishes and all that sort of thing without fear of judgement or anything like that. I shan't go into any further details than that, but suffice to say we're all having a jolly old time in there.

Anyway, yeah. Online communities. Just as interesting as real communities, I think you'll agree…

2011: Let's Talk!

A little while ago, I wrote about chat app Discord and how I thought it was a jolly fine piece of software that had all but replaced Skype and various other solutions for, among other things, in-game voice chat.

Besides high-quality voice chat, Discord is also pretty great for creating text chat servers with custom channels (each of which can have their own permissions set if you so desire) and various other bits and pieces here and there. The app is clearly largely designed with the Final Fantasy XIV community in mind, given its built-in commands to search sites like XIVDB and Gamerescape, but it's also a flexible, lightweight, easy-to-use and cross-platform chat app that is super-easy to get signed up for and really easy to use.

So I'd like to invite you along to come and chat! I created a server named after my other website MoeGamer, along with a bunch of channels. The server is primarily intended for people to talk about Japanese video games, anime, manga and the like, but there are a selection of other channels for people to talk about what they might be interested in. I've had a few people sign up over the course of the day, but not really much participation as yet; understandable, really, since no-one wants to be the first person to say something!

A request, then, dear reader. If you'd like to have a chat with me and hopefully some other like-minded individuals, please do two things for me.

Firstly, join the server here. (You can use Discord via the Web, but I recommend downloading the standalone app for the best and most flexible experience.)

Secondly, participate! Jump into a channel you like the sound of — the invite link I've provided will take you to a "welcome" channel that gives you a summary of what all the other channels are all about — and start talking. Even if no-one seems to be saying much to begin with, people who join the server and channels will see the conversation history when they come along for the first time, so if there are some comments, thoughts and even pictures for people to respond to when they sign up, new members will be more inclined to start participating themselves.

I'd love to build this server into a nice little community where we can chat, share stories, share pics and share our thoughts on all things anime, gaming, manga and whatnot. Discord is a great means of doing just that, and I'd love to see more people making use of it and supporting the great work the developers are doing — it's currently only in alpha, and is already a really well put together piece of software. And who knows? You might even make a few new friends or discover a few new interests in the process.

See you there!

1972: Togetherness

You know, I really shouldn't be surprised about this any more, what with us living in the Information Age or whatever it is we're in, with the Internet an omnipresent, omniscient collective of intelligences (in most circumstances) that, as a whole, never sleeps. But it does.

What, I hear you ask? The fact that someone, somewhere in the world, is probably doing the same thing you are at the exact same time as you.

I don't often think about this, but it occurs to me when I fire up a multiplayer game that isn't the current "flavour of the month" or Call of Duty. For example, I downloaded Tetris for my PlayStation 4, as it's a long time since I seriously played Tetris and I fancied something that I could play together with Andie. The PS4 version of Tetris has an online mode where you can play any of the game modes with up to three other people playing at the same time as you. In the case of the "Battle" modes, you can directly interfere with one another, as is the tradition in Tetris multiplayer, but there are also a number of modes where you're pretty much just playing alongside other people, perhaps to compare performance or pick up tips.

Now, Tetris is one of the most well-known, loved and respected games in the world, but I still find it surprising that there are people out there who make time to sit down and compete online. I'd ask "why?" but then I'd be forced to ask myself why I had chosen to play it online, too — and their answer would probably be the same as mine: to have some sort of "connection" with another person, even if it's a non-verbal one that is as simple as a shared interest. (Aside: Online Tetris players are frighteningly good.)

It's not just Tetris, either; I can sit down and play a mobile game like Brave Frontier, Love Live! School Idol Festival or Drift Girls and jump into one of the online modes in those and still find a live opponent to compete against. Again, in most cases, communication isn't direct — most of these games don't have a chat facility due to the impracticality of it in a mobile game — but it's oddly heartwarming to be sharing an experience with other people, even if it's only for a few short minutes as you attempt to full-combo Snow Halation or raise your ranking in the Drift Girls world tour mode.

Anyway. It's kind of cool to occasionally connect with people in passing like this; with gaming often being a relatively solitary pursuit, it is sometimes nice to feel like there are other people out there who are into the same things as you — and perhaps even to share an experience with them.

Now I've probably got time for a quick Love Live! score match…

1971: don't bully!!

Here's a curious paradox for you: how much of the supposed epidemic of "bullying" and "harassment" going on on the Internet these days is down to people bringing it upon themselves?

This isn't a question of "victim blaming", as the buzzword has it, but it's an actual phenomenon that I've observed — and, in my younger days, even engaged in myself. I can't explain why I did such a thing, but I know I did it, I know that I was aware I was doing it even at the time, and yet I simply couldn't stop myself.

I suffered dreadfully at the hands of bullies in primary school. I'm not sure what it was about me — my hair, my accent, the fact my ears appeared quite large in comparison to my head (I've since "grown into" them, I think) or some combination of all of the above and a few other things besides — but I was a regular target for some of the schools more notorious troublemakers. And it wasn't to do with my friendship group, either, as on a number of occasions my supposed "friends" actually sided against me in an attempt to win favour points with the bullies (who, inevitably, were the "cool" kids). Perhaps it was self-preservation, perhaps they'd really had enough of me; either way, it was a betrayal, and it hurt.

But I know that I was partly to blame for some of the incidents that happened. I recall deliberately goading the bullies on more than one occasion — swearing at them, insulting them, trying to attack them — and inevitably being knocked to the ground, winded and crying. The teachers on duty would do their usual "come over and look concerned" bit, but then nothing would ever happen to the people who had assaulted me. And so the cycle would repeat, over and over again.

Perhaps it was an attempt to claw my own little bit of "power" on the playground, because I was very much at the bottom of the food chain. Perhaps it was an attempt to let out my frustration about what I now recognise as social anxiety and difficulty interacting with some people. Perhaps I was just a little cunt. I honestly don't know the reason. But what I do know is that despite the fact I was the "victim", I was also genuinely to blame for a goodly proportion of those incidents — not all of them, mind, but a fair few of them.

And I'm reminded of this as I watch interactions on social media today. Mr Brandon Orselli, the chap who runs NicheGamer, an independent games site that I've become quite fond of, regularly has to fend off people who start attacking him, his work and his staff without any sort of provocation. Their reasoning? His site has, at times, been sympathetic to the consumer revolt known as "GamerGate", which has now been raging for some ten months and, despite a considerable amount of evidence to the contrary, is still regarded as a "hate group" of "misogynists".

Now, I'm not here to talk about GamerGate and whether or not it's right (largely because I know it's a topic of discussion that tends to become irrational very quickly — both "sides" are very much at fault in this regard, and frankly I want nothing to do with the perpetual arguments and finger-pointing) but one glance at the front page of NicheGamer will tell you that it's absolutely not any sort of GamerGate propaganda rag. Rather, it's an up-and-coming independent site with a clear focus, a staff that is obviously passionate about their work — including some highly knowledgeable specialist writers — and an editor-in-chief who is not afraid to stand up for himself, his work and his site.

Orselli does admittedly, at times, come across as a little arrogant on social media — but you know what? I understand the pride he takes in his work, and the pleasure he feels when things go well for his site. And I very much respect his choice to take the bull by the horns and engage these "critics" in an attempt at conversation even as they are, at times, spreading information that simply isn't true.

Why am I reminded of my own playground experiences? Well, the sort of people who are attacking Orselli and his staff remind me of the young me. They poke and they poke and they poke and they goad and they goad and they goad… and then they call foul (or, more accurately, "harassment") when the person they've been poking and goading bites back. (It has to be said, mind you, that it's not quite the same situation: Orselli is not a "bully", has shown admirable self-restraint and civility in these interactions, and has been a lot more calm and collected about them than I probably would be!) In other words, observing from the outside and recognising this behaviour as something I once did (as a child!) makes it seem very much like those attacking Orselli, his site and others like them are specifically going out and looking for trouble so they can further their "harassment" narrative.

Certainly nothing I've seen of NicheGamer's output — and since I've pretty much stopped following big games sites as they don't cover many of the games I'm interested in these days, it's one of the few sites I do check in on semi-regularly — warrants the sort of unpleasantness I've seen hurled at Orselli and his team on a seemingly daily basis, whatever your feelings on GamerGate (which, as previously noted, is not the same thing as NicheGamer). If anything, NicheGamer should be applauded for trying something different in a world of identikit big magazine-style or blog-type games sites, and catering to a specific audience rather than casting a very wide but very shallow net.

But anyway. It hopefully goes without saying that this isn't any attempt to diminish any instances of genuine harassment that actually goes on on social media — after all, I've dealt with it myself, so I know how shitty it is. But this sort of behaviour — deliberate provocation — just rubs me up the wrong way, particularly as I've suffered at the hands of bullies many times over the years, both by bringing it on myself and through no fault of my own. So in the words of Twitter's favourite anti-bully ranger:

https://twitter.com/antibullyranger/status/609751052125016064

Or, to put it another way, don't be a cunt.

1966: Yes, Please Kill Clickbait

I read an interesting piece earlier on the subject of clickbait. I won't quote it extensively here as I recommend you read it yourself, but I will provide a handy link for you to do just that. Here. Go on, I'll wait.

The article makes a lot of good points, but the one which stood out most strikingly to me was the suggestion that "via clickbait, many companies believe they can do away with the concept of demographic". And it's absolutely true: the concept of a "target demographic" when it comes to Internet-based publications is fast becoming a thing of the past in favour of casting a wide net in the hopes of snagging as many people as possible.

It feels like it's getting more and more transparent, too; I don't know if this is simply because I'm aware of it from the inside — during my latter days at USgamer, I spent a lot of time publishing walkthroughs for new games to draw in the clicks, so believe me, I know clickbait — or whether outlets really are getting more and more transparent. But when, for example, sites like Forbes Games (games, note) are publishing articles about something that happened in last night's Game of Thrones (a TV show), or sites like Polygon and Kotaku are trying their level best to relate real-world events to video games in as ham-fisted a manner as possible, something is very, very wrong.

I've mentioned before that I very much miss the "golden age" of magazines in the mid-to-late '90s. Magazines each had a distinctive voice, style and target audience. Some, like the Official Nintendo Magazine, were aimed at kids, and used layout, language and presentation to match. Others, like Zero, were aimed at slightly older people who enjoyed a bit of irreverent humour. Others still, like ACE, were aimed at the general games enthusiast, not someone loyal to a particular platform. And others still, like Page 6/New Atari User, which my father, my brother and I all used to contribute to, had a tightly focused target audience of platform enthusiasts who were into more than just games.

While certain sites do still have "voices" to an extent thanks to well-known writers, there's less and less to distinguish between them, particularly as the default "thing to care about" for these publications these days appears to be Social Issues like sexism and racism. But I find it hard to take these articles seriously when they clearly very much fall into the clickbait category — Polygon's recent piece on The Witcher 3 maybe possibly probably being racist was a double whammy, in fact, combining two pieces of bait: the name of a popular current release, and an accusation that said popular current release is, in some way, bad and wrong. Whether or not it's "right" to read the piece in that way — or in a manner which suggests If You Like The Witcher You're Okay With Racism — is kind of besides the point; people do read it that way, and they quite understandably take umbrage with the implications suggested by articles like this. Same with Kollar's piece on Dungeon Travelers 2 from a while back, though in that case the game was largely unknown and it was the publisher Atlus that was the "household name" to draw people in and then slap people around the face with a bit of This Is Problematic bullshit.

I remember before this dark period of games journalism started when a lot of people were attacking Kotaku for different reasons to today. In fact, there's a relevant entry on this very blog from that very period, in which I explored the possibility that Kotaku might have actually been doing what I'm arguing for here: pursuing a specific demographic.

Targeting a specific demographic isn't a negative thing, and we need to stop thinking that it is, because if you spread yourself too thin, you don't serve any of your audience to their satisfaction. One size does not fit all, and not everyone wants to read about the same things. And that's fine! What we need is more diversity of opinion and more places for people to go and get different viewpoints. And that's something we're not getting at the moment — at least not from the commercial sites. It's pretty telling that the small, independent sites out there are doing a far better job of this than the big names — and it's absolutely criminal that sites like this are, at present, unable to make money thanks to the business' continued reliance on the clickbait model rather than something more fair and less manipulative.

Ultimately it's best to find places you enjoy reading that you feel "speak" to you, but if I may give a recommendation to those of you who are into similar sorts of games to me: do check out Digitally Downloaded; editor-in-chief Matt Sainsbury and his team work hard to provide interesting, thought-provoking and well-written pieces of criticism about a diverse array of games as well as anime, manga, film and literature. They manage to produce pieces of relevant social and cultural commentary and criticism and relate them to games without pointing fingers or pandering to anyone; its writers are passionate and believe in the things they write, and the result is a site I continue to enjoy and respect even as I've switched off from reading most of the mainstream games media these days. It'd be great to see sites like this grow, and the industry as a whole evolve.

Will it happen? Well, that's partly up to you, isn't it?

1876: Connecting Flight

Good morning from Dublin! Today has been a very long day. Technically it's already "tomorrow" but I haven't yet made it home from Boston (my connecting flight leaves in a couple of hours) so I thought I'd take the opportunity to scribble a quick post.

This PAX weekend has been pretty much everything I hoped it would be. I had a great time with my friends, I saw some cool stuff at the show and I picked up some fun swag.

Most importantly, we successfully carried a number of formerly Internet-only relationships into the offline realm. Doing this is always a nerve-wracking experience — regardless of whether said relationship is platonic, romantic or anything else — and so it's always a pleasure when things come together and we all get along.

I actually wasn't too worried this time around, though. Something brought us all together in the world of Final Fantasy XIV and the fact most of us have been together for nigh on two years now says something positive about us and what we mean to one another. There have been tough times, as with any relationship, and people have come and gone over time, but the people with whom I spent my weekend represent a core group that I have always very much enjoyed spending virtual time with — and it turns out I enjoy spending real time with, too. It's just a pity we're all so scattered.

"I'm glad everyone is exactly how they seem to be," said one of our number last night, possibly slightly fuelled by a beer or two. "It means that everyone's genuine. And that we're all as fucked up as each other."

That latter point is key, and not necessarily a bad thing. Almost without exception, we've all had Shit to Deal With to varying degrees over the years, and our adventures in Eorzea have provided not only some much-needed escape at times, but also an outlet through which we can talk about the things that have been bothering us with like-minded individuals.

And that is immeasurably valuable; in an age where it seems people are drifting further and further apart from one another for various reasons, it's comforting to have a group that is pretty much always there for you. I know I'm grateful for these friends, and I'm sure they are too.

Now coffee is calling, closely followed by a connecting flight, a taxi ride back home and then almost straight back out (hopefully with time for a shower first!) to go and teach clarinet to kids. It's all go, huh. I shall sleep well tonight, for sure.