1601: On Not Assuming the Worst is the Most Representative

I had an interesting conversation with my friend Calin the other day. Calin is someone I’ve known for quite a while, have shared lots of interesting and enjoyable gaming stories with over the years — mainly through the Squadron of Shame — and even managed to meet face-to-face on one occasion at PAX East in 2010, an event which, as a whole, I regard as the last great thing in my life before everything came crumbling down shortly afterwards. (I have since largely rebuilt my existence, but there’s still some work to do after that chaos.)

Anyway, the point is: Calin is, if you must put a label on such things, a “gamer”. And yet he confessed to me that he’s not entirely comfortable admitting that any more, for fear of being lumped in with what he regards as “gamers”. His definition of gamers, it transpires, are those who are the most vocal on the Internet, and often the worst examples of the gaming community. They who shout loudest get the most attention and all that.

This is, of course, a gross generalisation about the entire community of people who enjoy computer and video games, and I said as much in our conversation. The IGN and Gamespot comments sections are not representative of the entirety of humanity who enjoy computer and video games, in other words; there are plenty of other people out there who don’t rage and swear at one another, who don’t tell writers to kill themselves over reviews they disagree with, who don’t act like spoiled children when things that they, personally, aren’t interested in show up.

And yet I can understand Calin’s position somewhat. As I noted above, those who shout loudest get the most attention, and it’s entirely natural to start believing “gamers” as a whole are the scum of the Earth if the representatives of the community you seem to hear the most from are the ones who are acting like complete tools.

In vaguely related news, earlier today I observed a Twitter exchange between the members of Witch Beam, developers of the excellent upcoming arcade-style shoot ’em up for PC, PS4, Vita and Wii U, Assault Android Cactus. They were feeling disheartened by a tweet from a member of the Gamespot community who made some disparaging remarks about Sony “only” having titles like Assault Android Cactus — smaller-scale, lower-budget but no less interesting or enjoyable games — to show at E3, while Microsoft was promising that its Xbox One-centric E3 presentation would focus on games, presumably triple-A by implication. I commented to them that it’s not worth worrying about the opinion of people who believe that triple-A is all there is to video games. In a way, those people are also judging something in its entirety by a small subsection of it — in this case, that anything outside the big budget triple-A space is somehow unworthy.

The important thing in all this is to remember that not everyone agrees on everything, and not everyone behaves in the same way. For some people, trash talk and being a jackass online is just part and parcel of the way the modern Internet-connected world works. For others, they prefer to spend their time actually playing games rather than typing comments or tweets to each other online. And for others still, they prefer to engage in intelligent, lengthy discussion about things some people may not have heard of. (I kind of straddle the latter two categories.)

Of those groups, the people acting like jackasses are but a small part of the whole. They’re a problem, for sure, and it’s difficult to know what — if anything — it’s possible to do about their behaviour. (Hint: It’s not posting lengthy social justice-themed editorials on the sites they frequent; that just makes them defensive and even more inclined to be obnoxious.) But here’s the important thing: they are not everyone. They do not represent an entire medium. They do not represent the entirety of people around the world who are interested in games. Chances are, in my experience, there’s a considerable amount of crossover with those people who believe in nothing but triple-A.

Fuck those guys. If you enjoy games — however you enjoy them — enjoy them in your own way, and never, ever feel ashamed of something you enjoy because of the behaviour of people you probably have nothing to do with on a regular basis. In an extreme case, simply think back to how it all was before the Internet came along and ruined rational discourse for a lot of people; everyone could enjoy video games without feeling ashamed, guilty or disgusted then, because you never, ever came into contact with the more objectionable parts of humanity. Simply stay out of comments sections and only talk about games with your friends, just like things used to be. Works out pretty well for me, personally.

And if you’re one of the jackasses I’ve mentioned in this post? If you’ve ever told a writer to kill themselves over giving a game an 8 when you thought it deserved a 9? (For those who don’t frequent gaming sites, this actually happens on occasion, though it’s usually over more extreme differences of opinion.) If you believe there is only one “true” way to game, and that everyone else’s interests and passions in one of the most diverse creative mediums in the world is somehow invalid? Take a good, long, hard look at yourself and decide whether or not that’s the person you really want to be.

1569: Life Gets In the Way

I was chatting with my friend Lynette earlier about various things, and the subject turned, as it often does, to anime. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn into a lengthy spiel on how emotional the ending of Angel Beats! was — though I did watch the last episode today, so expect some thoughts on that shortly. No, instead, it’s going to be about the frustrating feeling of discovering things that you really like when it feels like it’s almost “too late”.

I don’t mean that I’m too old for anime or related media, of course — I really hope the day never comes when I feel like I’ve “grown out” of the things I love today — but rather I feel like the opportunity to enjoy and share these things with friends has been, to a large degree, mostly lost.

I mention this because of my aforementioned conversation with Lynette. Aside from this blog — where, as we all know, I’m pissing in the wind — Lynette is one of the few people I have the opportunity to enthuse about anime with on a fairly regular basis. And it’s somewhat frustrating to both of us that we’re several thousand miles apart and consequently unable to get together regularly for cocktails, popcorn and a few episodes of some favourite anime series, perhaps educating one another on recent discoveries that we want to share. It’s something we’d both really like to be able to do — indeed, we have done it before, on the occasions when I’ve had the opportunity to visit her and her husband Mark (also a close personal friend, and also someone with whom I can enthuse about anime) in Toronto.

This is one unfortunate side-effect of the whole “global village” (hah, bet you haven’t heard that term since a ’90s issue of PC Format) thing the Internet has brought about. It’s never been easier to find like-minded friends who share the same interests and passions as you, but the thing people don’t mention about that seemingly great development in socialisation is how frustrating it is to not be able to get together with those friends on at least a semi-regular basis. (Unless you’re loaded enough to be able to simply hop on a trans-Atlantic flight at a moment’s notice whenever you fancy it, in which case I think I hate you a little bit.) I have friends literally all over the world — America, Canada, the Middle East, Japan, Australia — who I would love to hang out with and do all sorts of mutually enjoyable things with (no, not that sort of thing, pervert) but am unable to do so. I’m fortunate enough to have these friends in the first place, of course, but by gosh, I sometimes wish they were just around the corner so I could drop them a text, invite them over for an anime evening and subsequently have an enjoyable time.

Why not ask your local friends, you might wonder. Because my local friends all have their own passions and interests — and, with us being the age we are (we’re not in university any more!) a lot of them are doing distinctly “grown-up” things like grouting their bathrooms (whatever that means) or having children. I certainly don’t begrudge them any of those things, but it can be sad and frustrating when it’s difficult to get people together for anything more than the most cursory of social occasions. Life gets in the way, in other words.

So, uh, anyone local want to hang out and watch some anime? We have popcorn.

1507: Why I Went Back, and The Fear

I was going to write about something else today, but after Mr Russ Pitts kindly linked to a piece I wrote this time last year in an excellent article regarding online abuse and trolling, I felt I should probably elaborate on some things that have happened since then.

Firstly, despite what I said in that piece, it transpires that I did eventually go back to Twitter. Why? Because, to be frank, I was lonely; I have a lot of friends on that social network, and it was difficult to stay in touch with them via other means. It’s also a particularly convenient means of reaching out to people for my current profession.

So I went back. However, I did so under a new username and a new email address — and being much more mindful of what I shared in my 140-character bio.

This is in itself kind of silly, really; I have to effectively “silence” an aspect of my personality based on my previous experience, and cannot be fully open about the things I enjoy or love, because it might attract organised bile and vitriol not just towards me, but towards people close to me, too. Thankfully, on the few occasions I have happened to mention ponies recently, things have passed without incident — I suspect the charmers at the “GNAA” have moved on to new victims by now.

Thinking of all this brings up an important consideration that I don’t believe a lot of Internet commenters stop to think about before spraying vitriol over an article they disagree with: the fact that the words you read on the Internet are, for the most part, written by an actual person with a brain, a heart, a soul and, you know, feelings. People disagreeing over various things is a fact of life — the world would be a boring place if everyone felt the same way about everything, as The Lego Movie suggested in a somewhat hamfisted way — but it’s the way you go about those disagreements that is important to consider, because arguing your case in the wrong way — or wilfully misreading or misunderstanding something someone has said — can have a severe impact on their mental health.

I’ve been fairly open on this blog about my own self-esteem issues and occasional feelings of “imposter syndrome” — the feeling that one day, you might be “found out” and have everything taken away from you. I consider myself hugely lucky to have the job I have, working alongside people I have respected enormously for many years — since childhood in at least one case. There are days when I feel like I’m even quite good at what I do — but there are also days when I seriously consider throwing in the towel and going to do something “invisible” with the rest of the drones in the daily workforce.

The difference between those two types of day can often be just a single comment. Just one, regardless of how many otherwise positive or supportive comments you might have that day — one single, unpleasant, negative or abusive comment can completely ruin the day of someone like me.

I’m not saying all games journalists are like me — though from some conversation during the establishment of TakeThis.org, which Russ mentioned in his post, mental health issues of various descriptions are alarmingly widespread in our profession — but it’s surely just basic human decency to not, in effect, walk up to someone and start hurling abuse at them. And yet it happens. And not just from inconsiderate gamers angry about the score you gave Titanfall, either; sometimes even people who claim to be fighting for worthy causes can be needlessly aggressive, confrontational or even abusive, too. It’s a plague across the whole Internet.

This leads to what I call The Fear, which in turn leads to what Russ talks about in his post: the assumption that “do not engage” is the only way to deal with bullying, abuse or even just plain unreasonable comments. There are days when I write things and I’m genuinely afraid to look at the comment section — it’s an irrational fear, I know, but it’s what this age of anonymous abuse has wrought.

And what a ridiculous situation that is, when you think about it. People who write for a living — many of whom are considerably more talented than I am — are subject to The Fear on a daily basis. You never can tell what it is that’s going to attract the next batch of abuse, or death threats, or defamation, or simple spitefulness. It’s a horrible feeling.

And yet we still stick around, for the most part. Why? Because even amid all this, we love what we do, and we love engaging with those people who like to have a reasonable discussion about things without necessarily agreeing on everything — those people who, if we’re honest, make up the majority of our feedback. Sometimes we even become friends with those people.

But as I say, it only takes one nasty comment to undo all the good those people do for us. Just one.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could live in a world where we could just love what we do without having to worry about The Fear ever again?

One day, perhaps. But there’s a long road ahead before we get there.

1494: Another Pledge for Positivity

Earlier today, my friend (and former copy editor) Keri posted this Pledge for Positivity. And it’s something I applaud; there is too much negativity around right now, for a variety of reasons. Things being taken out of context and branded as offensive; groups of fans berating each other for the most ridiculous of reasons; those who enjoy niche interest entertainment branded with less than complimentary names; those who enjoy mainstream entertainment branded with less than complimentary names.

I’m not going to say “this has to stop” because that causes people with a stick up their arse to start bleating about “tone policing”. Instead, I’m going to try and follow Keri’s example and remain focused on the positive things in life: the things I enjoy, the things I feel passionately about, the things I want to share with people. Things I don’t like? Fuck ’em; I’ve got better things to do with my time than waste on discussing things I have no interest in or attempting to have rational debates with people who have no interest whatsoever in being rational. Such is the way of the Internet.

As it happens, making such a pledge for positivity isn’t all that far removed from what I generally try and do day in, day out on the Internet anyway. I steer well clear of whatever issue-du-jour people are angry about on Twitter today, and instead focus on talking with the people who share similar interests, but not necessarily identical tastes. Enjoyable discussions inevitably result; just the other day I had a lengthy discussion with someone who didn’t like Final Fantasy XIII as much as I did, in which we remained rational, civil and articulate throughout. Neither of us changed the other’s mind, but that’s not what it was about — we both came away from the interaction feeling like we’d learned a little about the other’s position. And that is a far more valuable result of communication than coming away understanding that, say, someone is angry but not really knowing what they want you to do about it.

As such, you can expect the things I talk about to continue much in the same mould as they have been previously — positively. On here, I’ll continue to talk about things I am enjoying and having fun with, or things that I am excited about. In my professional capacity, I tend to concentrate on things that are interesting or noteworthy rather than deliberately controversial — the most controversial thing I wrote recently was a positive piece noting that Final Fantasy XIII perhaps wasn’t all that bad and people should maybe give it another chance (note: NOT “anyone who doesn’t like Final Fantasy XIII is a douchebag who should probably be killed” or something similar) — and I’d much rather write something praising the interesting things that have been done well than tearing something a new arsehole for one reason or another.

Of course, the latter part sometimes comes with the territory — some stuff is genuinely simply unmitigated crap, though it’s significantly less likely to come across something with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever today than it once way — but even then I tend to try and look for the positive where I can. Take my review of Time and Eternity, a game that was reviled by most of the games press, but which I had a good time with despite its flaws. Rather than focusing on its flawed aspects, I chose instead to concentrate on what I did like about it, and as a result produced a review that I’m still pretty pleased with today.

Why am I talking about this? Well, aside from Keri’s post, I was also pointed in the direction of this excellent article about the upcoming Senran Kagura Burst for 3DS — a game branded “damaging to the industry” by people who haven’t played it. The Tiny Cartridge post was something I found particularly admirable and all too rare in the modern business — it was someone returning to an issue and proving willing to educate themselves, and being pleasantly surprised in the process. In this case, it was taking another look at Senran Kagura Burst and discovering that no, it’s not just about boobs and fanservice; it’s actually about some well-defined characters with realistic, human flaws — something which I’ve argued in the past in relation to similarly misunderstood games, too — titles such as Ar Tonelico that people are all too willing to dismiss for nothing more than their art style.

Looking for the positive is a much more pleasant way to approach life. I can’t imagine how utterly miserable the lives of these people who seem to spend all their time being angry must be. In some cases, they may well have valid reasons for their ire, and that’s fine; others are angry for the sake of bandwagon-jumping. Both groups would benefit from a step back and some time alone with the things or people they genuinely do love. Works for me. Chill the fuck out and enjoy yourself for a change.

1379: Press Pause

The assertion that “video is the future” of online media is probably more hyperbole than anything else — much like the argument that “free-to-play is the future” of gaming — but it still concerns and frustrates me somewhat.

This isn’t to put down any of the hard work that genuinely talented video producers, editors and performers do, of course. It just makes me worried — particularly given my occupation — and also frustrates me as someone who still likes to, you know, read things.

You see, I don’t like video as a generic means of consuming information. It’s intrusive, it’s noisy, it’s disruptive and it demands your full attention for a fixed period of time. This is fine if what you are specifically doing is sitting down to watch a video, but when you want to get a piece of information quickly, video quite simply can’t compare to a simple piece of text and possibly a Find function.

Video is not particularly portable, either. While mobile phone data networks — and the devices with which to access them — have improved considerably over the last few years, there’s still a significant chance that if you’re out and about on the go, you may not be able to watch a video link, and even if you do, there’s the risk of running afoul of your mobile provider’s data limits and/or fair use policies. A simple text link, meanwhile, is something that is quick to download and, perhaps more importantly, easy and discreet to browse in public or while doing other things.

It also makes me a little sad to see people well-known for their entertaining writing skills stepping back from penmanship in favour of video content. Let’s take Jim Sterling, for example. This isn’t specifically to “pick on” Sterling; he’s just a good example of what I’m talking about.

Sterling’s work around the Web has historically been somewhat provocative, but to an entertaining degree rather than any attempt to deliberately cause offence. He’s mellowed somewhat from his quasi-“shock jock” nature of a few years back and become someone who can bellow well-informed vitriol without alienating people — or at least, without alienating people who don’t deserve to be alienated. His reviews and opinion pieces over on sites like Destructoid were always a good read — he wrote in a distinctive voice, but from a well-informed perspective, and even if you didn’t agree with his points, he usually made a convincing argument.

Now, Sterling is primarily doing video content, in which he does much the same thing. No bad thing, you might think, and indeed I’ve specifically sat down and watched a good few Jimquisition episodes when I wanted to have a giggle at the game industry’s expense. But I’m significantly less likely to watch a Jimquisition video than I am to read an article simply because of the time involved — and now he’s taken to variations on Let’s Play videos I now have even less interest in his content whatsoever. It’s a bit sad, though I also recognise that I am but one person and he is simply doing what there is apparently demand for.

I’ve made my thoughts on Let’s Plays reasonably clear in previous posts, but I’ll reiterate and perhaps reinforce them, since I’ve had a while to think about them as the format has grown in popularity: I’m not a fan. At all. Particularly Let’s Plays of story-based games, which, to me, completely defeat the object of a story-based game. People already get pissy at the slightest hint of a spoiler about games, movies and other media, and yet there are people out there doing nothing but spoiling games… in more ways than one. This is baffling to me; I understand the basic concept of a Let’s Play as an opportunity to see how a game plays and get some commentary about it, but to watch a story-based game with someone babbling over the top of it rather than playing it is just, frankly, the absolute last thing I want to do with my time. Again, though, I recognise that the format has popularity and there’s apparently demand for it.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t want traditional media to go away. I don’t want to see the death of long-form articles about games — or even short, snappy news pieces, though I wouldn’t mind seeing the back of two-sentence placeholder pieces. I want to see talented writers continue to have the opportunity to express themselves in a medium that they’re comfortable with; I don’t want to be forced to watch a video just to find out what a voice I trust thinks about a particular game or issue in the industry, particularly when I’m out and perhaps want to share it with friends.

By all means, then, video content producers and consumers, keep doing what you’re doing; just don’t forget that the way you do things is not the only way to do things.

1306: Mark Book

My brain occasionally lapses into childhood when I contemplate looking at comment sections, because, as full of cretins as they sometimes are, comment sections are the modern-day equivalent of the red (sorry, green — red’s too aggressive) pen scribblings your teachers would scrawl after your assignments at school.

Imagine if the two scenarios were reversed, though. That’d be weird, wouldn’t it? Get your maths homework back with “lol fake and gay” written after it; read a New Statesman article and discover the entire comment section is nothing but people writing variations on “You have the beginnings of a good argument here, but your overuse of the word ‘problematic’ displays a disappointing lack of creativity that ultimately hurts the piece’s credibility. See me to discuss.”

Actually, I think in the latter case, that’d probably be preferable, to be honest.

I joke, but I do genuinely feel like I’m being “marked” when I see that there are comments on things that I’ve posted. In some senses, when you put something up for public perusal — particularly on something with a wider audience than this teeny-tiny personal blog — you are being marked, particularly if you’ve written something contentious.

A lot of writing on the Web is designed to persuade people of something or other, whether that’s that the reader should go and buy Gone Home (you probably should) or that the art in Dragon’s Crown is going to bring about the downfall of society as we know it (it’s probably not), and as such when someone feels compelled to leave a comment, they’re going to be going through your arguments, deciding whether or not they agree with them and then leaving their “judgement” on the piece. If someone agrees with you, it’s like getting a nice big tick, a “Good.” and a gold star; if someone disagrees with you — particularly if they do so aggressively — it’s like not only having a lengthy teacher comment that you hope your parents don’t catch a glimpse of, but it’s like having that comment publicly read out to the rest of the class.

Except there’s one key difference between comments and marks — comments are (theoretically, anyway) a dialogue; marks from your teacher are a one-way thing. (At least they were when I was at school; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if modern education invited pupils to “respond” to their teacher’s comments and/or “appeal” if they didn’t feel they’d been treated fairly.)

That’s a pretty big difference. Even if someone gives you a “bad grade” through a negative comment or a complete disagreement/dismissal of your opinion, you can attempt to engage with that person and start a conversation. Sometimes interesting discussions can arise; other times, utterly pointless shouting matches can result, leaving you wishing you’d never written the fucking thing in the first place.

Are comments valuable? There’s no easy answer to that question. I don’t think they’re valuable in all circumstances — it’s extremely rare to find a helpful YouTube comment, for example, and comments left on Facebook are 95% pointless, regardless of whether they’re left on personal posts or adverts — but at other times they can be the source of thought-provoking discussion and even the fostering of friendships. (Comments on this site have certainly fallen into that latter category, which I’m happy about, and over on USgamer we’ve mostly enjoyed respectful, well-considered discussion and debate from our commenters so far, which is immensely encouraging to see.)

Would the Internet be a better place without comment sections? Quite possibly; but it would also remove a lot of the ability to converse and engage with things that we take for granted today. So, for better or worse, they’re clearly here to stay.

Just remember to give your favourite writers a good mark every now and then!

1214: Inner Sanctum

Mark and I played a bunch of a recently-released indie game today. That game is Coffee Stain Studios’ Sanctum 2, which I purchased a copy of for Mark as a thank-you present for putting us up for the last couple of weeks, and which I was also interested in playing. I enjoyed the original game’s interesting fusion of tower defense and first-person shooter mechanics as well as its distinctive presentation and excellent music, so I was actually quite interested to try the second game, and purchased a copy without a second thought.

Then the game was released, and I decided to take a peep at the Steam Community page to see what the rest of the world thought of it.

Big mistake.

It seems that Sanctum 2 is the latest victim of elitist players expecting one thing from a game and getting something slightly different, then throwing all their toys out of the pram, demanding refunds and hurling abuse at the developers. Because Sanctum 2 is not the same game as the original Sanctum, it seems, it is worthy of scorn and vilification. Because Sanctum 2 incorporates a number of features that not only make it workable on console — it’s also being released on Xbox Live Arcade — but change the game balance significantly from the original, apparently it is worthy of review-bombing on Metacritic and endless, endless whining on forums.

You know what, though? I’ve played a good 4 or 5 hours of Sanctum 2 today in total, and it’s great. It isn’t the original game, no, but why would you want it to be? Sanctum is still available for download, so if you like that, go play that. Sanctum 2 is a distinctive experience that, while in possession of a couple of strange design decisions, is a lot of fun to play both solo and cooperatively with other people. It is both strategic and action-packed; challenging and fun; and it offers a significantly greater amount of content and depth than the original game did when it came out of the gates.

The complainers’ biggest issues with the new game seem to be the fact that resources to build towers are now delivered as “drops” that have to be picked up manually, and that there is a hard limit of ten towers per level. The “drop” system means that everyone playing has to either agree on who is going to be in charge of building what — or charge off and race to be the first to pick up the resources. If you’re playing with friends or people with whom you can communicate well, no problem. If you’re playing with griefers and trolls, potential problem, but not insurmountable. (For what it’s worth, I always prefer playing cooperative games with people I actually know anyway, and I’m sure I’m not the only one — and as such I probably won’t run into this problem personally.)

The ten-tower limit also simply isn’t an issue in practical terms. I am yet to hit said limit, because plonking down “tower base” blocks to create a maze to hold up enemies does not count towards this limit, and the limited quantity of resources on hand means that it’s only really practical to build a few towers per level anyway — you have to support your towers with your own gunplay in order to succeed. It’s a true hybrid, in other words; you can’t win without your towers, and your towers can’t win without you.

Some complainers have also whinged about the fact that you supposedly can’t make complex mazes in this new game. To those people, I would invite them to have a go at the level Mark and I were playing before we wrapped up for the evening, in which we were defending two cores simultaneously from assault, and built impressive mazes on both sides of the level in order to keep the enemies away from our precious charges as long as possible. Careful tower placement and resource management was a must, and the nature of many of the enemies that came along made it necessary to cooperate, communicate and use skill and tactics to take them down rather than simply firing blindly at anything moving.

In short, Sanctum 2 is a very good game if you enjoy both first-person shooters and tower defense games that demand a slightly heavier degree of thought and strategy than normal. It’s an excellent fusion of two fairly disparate game genres, and while there are a few things that could be tweaked here and there, it’s perfectly enjoyable as it is. Not only that, Coffee Stain Studios have demonstrated that they are open to constructive feedback, too, and will likely continue to improve the game after its release. Given the abuse and vitriol that has been hurled their way today, they would be perfectly within their rights to just say “fuck you” to all the ungrateful gamers who are bitching about their new release, to be honest, so I have to admire them for their self-restraint in dealing with these people.

It is, essentially, yet another case of a not-insignificant number of people suffering under the assumption that Their Way is the Right Way, and that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow an awful person. These people preferred the original Sanctum to its sequel and that’s absolutely fine; their behaviour towards Coffee Stain Studios and anyone who has expressed a liking for the new game is not.

1139: Just Shut Up

I think I’m “over” social media. Allow me to clarify that bold statement, however, as it’s perhaps not entirely accurate as is. I think I am over social media as it exists today — a sprawling, disorganised mess of ill-defined concepts that contribute very little to the people’s understanding of one another, and more often than not is about vanity rather than actual socialisation.

In other words, I yearn for the days when social media was simple and straightforward — when its sole intended purpose was to allow people to stay in touch with each other and perhaps, occasionally, share a photograph or two with them.

Looking back on this blog, I see I have written about this subject at least twice in the past, and my disillusionment with it has only grown over the last year or so — perhaps due in part to the fact that as part of my job I come into contact with some of the most utterly pointless examples of social media that I’ve ever seen.

These days, there are social media apps to share anything you can think of. I mean, there are literally (YES LITERALLY) apps and services that allow you to share anything you can think of. There are also more specialised ones with questionable usefulness to society as a whole. I reviewed one recently where the entire purpose was to share what your current mood was — you couldn’t add any text explaining said mood, only an emoticon — and another where you could share the weather in your local area, then “like” or comment on the weather in other places. Another still allowed you to send a video or photo to someone, but they were only allowed to look at it for ten seconds, after which it locked itself and became useless (I swear I’m not making this up).

The trouble with these things is that despite their pretensions towards being “social media,” they’re not actually all that social at all in terms of the way in which people use them. They’re a means of broadcasting things and seeking approval of other people rather than a means of actually engaging in conversation with anyone. Take a look at the average comments thread on an Instagram picture of a moderately-attractive person (usually a woman) and you’ll see what I mean. No-one’s actually talking to each other — everyone’s just dropping an asinine opinion bomb and then never coming back. The poster of the selfie is seeking approval from commenters telling them how attractive they are; meanwhile, the commenters are seeking approval from the poster and hoping that their specific compliment is the one that will get them some specific attention.

This isn’t the case universally, obviously. There are still some actual conversations that go on on Facebook, for example, but these can easily be lost in the torrent of people resharing crap from pages like “I fucking love science” (do you? Then go do some rather than recycling endless fucking memes) and “LIKE AND SHARE!!” (NO!!). Twitter is a reasonable platform for discussion at times, but conversations are easily derailed and, as has been proven hundreds of times in the past year alone, 140 characters is really not enough to make a coherent argument about a complex issue. It’s also incredibly easy to be taken out of context on Twitter.

Google+ perhaps fares the best out of all of these services in my experience, though even that’s variable. Join a good, small community that has a clear focus and whose moderators keep a tight leash on discussion and you’ll have a good experience chewing the fat with people who may well become good friends. Follow Felicia Day or Wil Wheaton and you might see some interesting content, but the quality of discussion goes out of the window. Follow Google+’s own page and all you get are blithering idiots making ill-informed political rants any time the team behind the page even dare to mention the President.

I think the thing that’s been striking me most heavily recently is “do I really need to share this? Do people really need to know this?” And more often than not, the answer is “no”. I don’t feel the need to collect an arbitrary set of “Likes” with services like CircleMe or GetGlue. I don’t feel the need to “check in” to places with Foursquare. I don’t even really need to use stuff like Raptr to broadcast my gaming activity, but that has, on occasion, sparked some good discussions — as, I’m sure, the other services do in some cases. Just not mine. Not any more. Perhaps once in the past — I met some good friends through Foursquare’s now-defunct competitor Gowalla — but not now.

Consequently, since quitting Twitter a while back (and not really missing it, to be honest — though I do miss some of the people) I’ve been paring back my personal social media use hugely. I’ve closed my Tumblr account — I never really understood the point of that site, and these days all it seems to be used for is white people shouting about how guilty they are about being white and how we should all stop being such racists/misogynists/fedora-wearing perverts — and I’ve unistalled the vast majority of social apps from my phone, including Twitter and Instagram. Facebook made the cut, because as much as I dislike it at times, it’s still a good way of staying in touch with a lot of people, and Google+ also survived, as it’s the new home of the Squadron of Shame and serving our needs well.

Obviously this blog is still going, too (and will be for a long time to come, hopefully!) and I still comment on friends’ blogs — but I don’t really count that as “social media” in the same way, particularly as the discussions had tend to be (for the most part, anyway) wordy and thought-provoking rather than inspiring little more than a knee-jerk “lol”.

Everything else, though? Out the window. And life is much calmer and more pleasant as a result.

1125: Low Ebb

After the events of the last few days, which I won’t go into right now, I feel compelled to write a few words about bullying in general. I’ve already written a considerable number of words on the time I suffered workplace bullying towards the end of my time working at an Apple Store (check it out here) but I wanted to talk a little more about the subject in general.

The word “bullying” is an incredibly loaded one that brings to mind images of schoolkids taking the piss out of each other for the most ridiculous reasons. When I was a young child at primary school, it was my ears. They stuck out and looked quite large, so naturally I was picked on and ridiculed for that — not just occasionally, but pretty much daily. The experience left me with mental scars that are yet to heal, and which manifest themselves in my cripplingly low sense of self-esteem.

But bullying isn’t just something that children suffer from. Adults can suffer bullying, too, in a variety of forms. It could be workplace bullying such as that described in my previous post, where those in a position of “power” or “authority” use their influence to negative, unfair ends; it could be one group of people taking an irrational dislike to another group and expressing that dislike through verbal or physical abuse; it could be organised campaigns of hatred using the Internet.

The latter is an option that didn’t exist when I was a youngster. The Internet wasn’t a widespread thing until I was well into my teenage years, and social media certainly was nowhere to be seen. As such, any instances of bullying tended to confine themselves to the “real world” where they could normally be dealt with relatively easily, since there was usually an identifiable perpetrator to pin the blame on. It wasn’t always easy for the victim to come forward and report the perpetrator, of course, for fear of reprisals — that “knowing them in real life” thing worked both ways — but if they could muster up the courage to do so, then the situation could often be dealt with.

With online bullying, though, it’s a much more difficult proposition. There isn’t always a visible perpetrator, because they often choose to hide behind a veil of anonymity. Some particularly arrogant online bullies do so under their real name because they’ve also taken steps to ensure that they will never get caught, and herein lies part of the problem: the very nature of online crime makes it extremely difficult to police, meaning that more often than not the groups responsible for making some people feel really, really shitty go completely unpunished and thus receive the message loud and clear that what they are doing is Okay.

The worst thing about bullying in all its forms is the degree of self-doubt it can instill in its victim. Am I worthless? they’ll think. Do I deserve this? Are those things they’re saying actually true? Do people really think that about me? Is that how other people see me? These are, of course, all things that I’ve found myself thinking at various points in my life.

It’s useless and irrational to think that way, of course, but sadly, often the sort of people who are affected the worst by the actions of bullies are those who, like me, turn irrational when they have to deal with a difficult situation like this. Because it’s not easy to stay rational in the face of totally irrational, unprovoked hatred, either, for in many cases these instances of bullying are born from little more than boredom rather than feeling particularly strongly about the person or group in question. It becomes a sport for the bullies, more about the chase and the observation of the victim’s behaviour than specifically trying to hurt a person. This is particularly apparent when it comes to online bullying, where it’s very easy to conveniently forget that the target of your vitriol is actually a real person with real feelings, and that any hurtful things you send off into the ether after you click that “Send” button may have a very real impact on that person’s emotional, mental and, in some cases, physical wellbeing.

There’s no easy solution, either. And that’s sad. What’s even more sad is the fact that we seem to have got to a stage as a society where we just accept that this sort of thing happens, and we don’t do anything about it. I don’t have any suggestions or solutions, either, mind you, but surely by the year 2013 you’d think humanity might have gotten over irrational hatred by now.

But apparently not.

(Sorry for the lack of comic today. I’m emotionally exhausted and there’s no real way I can make all this shit funny.)

1058: Badvertising Revisited

[Preamble: I know I said comics would be back, but I realise this was a rather foolish promise to make given that I am in the process of moving house and my Mac (which holds the Comic Life software I use to produce them) is now packed up. So you can live without them for a little while, I’m sure — at least until the chaos of the next couple of weeks is resolved!]

As I grow older, I find myself less and less tolerant to the tactics of marketing people. I can’t quite work out if this is simply my own intolerance building up as a result of my advancing years, or if adverts really are significantly more annoying than they were in the past. I have a feeling there’s a touch of both, because there’s a whole lot of new technology to make advertising more annoying these days.

Specifically, let’s consider Internet-based advertising. Now, the vast majority of content on the Internet is available for free (connection charges notwithstanding) so it has to make its money somehow — and it just so happens that advertising is a reasonable way to do that. (Whether or not it’s a “good” way is a matter of some debate, as traditional advertising models seem to be becoming less and less effective among savvy Internet users, many of whom use ad-blocking software to make their life considerably less intruded-upon by marketing people.)

I have no real problem with advertising being used as a means of keeping content free. I’ll sit through a couple of pre-roll adverts when watching, say, 4OD on YouTube. I’d have to sit through adverts on TV, and there are actually fewer adverts on YouTube than when it’s broadcast live on TV. No problem there.

What I do have an issue with is when adverts start to get too big for their boots and start engaging in any of the following behaviour:

Making noise without me telling them to
Monopolising my web browser and/or actively getting in the way of what I’m trying to do
Urging me to “interact” with them
Urging me to share them on Facebook.

All of these things are monumentally irritating, albeit for different reasons.

In the case of noisy adverts, they are a pain simply because they make noise and it’s usually difficult to shut them off. And there tends to only be a couple of them available at once, meaning that it’s entirely possible that several times in a session you’ll hear that stupid woman from the air freshener advert whingeing about being “stuck in bad odours” or something. You can stay there, love.

Monopolising my web browser is something that really pisses me off because it ruins the experience of the site. The most recent example I’ve seen is on GameFAQs’ mobile site, which occasionally gets completely taken over by a Samsung advert. You’ll be looking at the page, trying to tap on a link when suddenly these stupid arrows appear, inviting you to “swipe”. “Fuck off,” you’ll say — possibly out loud — until you realise that you can’t do anything on this page until you do as it says, and then you’re stuck in a stupid interactive “experience” about a phone you probably don’t give a shit about. (Alternatively, you refresh the page until it goes away.)

This brings me on to another point: interactive adverts. Why? Why would I want to play your stupid game where I get to actually clean the grime off the filthy worktop? Why would I want to pick which one of your vapid Z-list celebrities tells me about your awful product? “Get ready to interact!” they’ll say. “Get ready to fuck off!” I’ll say, particularly if, as they so frequently are, are also browser-monopolising and noisy ads.

Finally is the seemingly-obligatory necessity to connect everything to Facebook and Twitter. I’ve lost count of the number of adverts I’ve seen recently that include hashtags, Facebook pages or even, in some cases, buttons to share the advert on Twitter or Facebook directly. Pro-Tip: if you click either of those buttons, you are a dickhead. And if you don’t know why, well, I don’t think I can help you.

Advertising serves a purpose, and if it keeps out of my way I’m happy to let it sit there to help pay the bills for a particular site — I don’t use an ad-blocker and will probably keep it that way for the moment. But the moment advertising starts actively obstructing what I’m trying to do, that’s when I start thinking about installing one. And that’s not going to make me think positively about your product; it means I’m not going to see it at all.