#oneaday Day 721: Sippy cup

I have finally joined the ranks of the Grown Adults Who Have a Sippy Cup, after my wife picked one up and said she liked it. Specifically, she got herself the catchily named YETI Rambler C Straw Bottle, Stainless Steel Vacuum Insulated Bottle with Leakproof Straw Cap, Tropical Pink, 18 oz (532 ml). She said it was very good for making a whole lot of drink and keeping it nice and cold for the whole day, which is something I found quite appealing.

Not my wife. Or my kid. Or indeed the right colour bottle. Or at all representative of our typical activities. But it serves its illustrative purpose.

As such, I ordered myself a YETI Rambler Straw Mug, Stainless Steel Vacuum Insulated Mug with Stronghold Lid, Rescue Red, 42 oz (1.2 l). You will notice that mine is considerably larger than hers. I thought I might as well get a big 'un because the fewer times you have to fill it up, the more likely you are to drink all of it and, by extension, have what is supposedly "enough fluids" for the day — something which a bit of casual research last night (not using AI) suggested there is actually no real scientific or medical consensus on.

£45 felt like a lot to spend on a mug, but then I figured everything is fucking expensive right now, so I might as well buy a nice thing that I'll get some use out of. I went to the shop the other evening to get some drinks and snacks and it somehow came out to more than £70. By those standards, video games seem like quite a bargain right now.

I like the mug! It's big and hefty and satisfying to use, the reusable straw seems to work just fine, and it is indeed nice and convenient to be able to carry around over a litre of drink in a receptacle that keeps it nice and cool. Or indeed to just have it on my desk, to be consumed bit by bit over the course of several hours.

The whole meme about "staying hydrated" honestly annoys me quite a bit, because it seems to be just one of those things that people say without really thinking about it. And yes, it is a meme. Because the population of the Internet is completely incapable of doing anything with any sort of sincerity and seriousness, the whole thing started as a big joke. Sure, over the long term, it may well have got people drinking more fluids throughout the day — and thus can we really call it a bad thing? — but to me, the people who always bang on about "staying hydrated" always come across as performative, like they want to appear superior to everyone else because they drink a bit more water than you do.

I realise it's a bit of a silly thing to get annoyed about — why get annoyed at good advice? — but like I say, it's the whole insincerity of it that grates somewhat. Because some people do just say it, not out of a desire to see their friends be healthy, but just because it's a funny haha meme that they've seen their favourite streamers say. Hell, there's even a bot on Twitch designed to "remind" people to drink water.

I also think it comes across as somewhat infantilising, and that's a real problem that the younger generations in particular appear to be suffering with right now. Just yesterday, some of us were chatting on Discord about an encounter one of us had had where a 21-year old was proving very difficult to deal with because they seemingly wanted to be treated like an incompetent child. (It was to get out of financial obligations.) Any time some streamer tells their audience to "stay hydrated", I get that same energy.

But anyway. There are worse things that people could be saying — and, of course, do elsewhere on the Internet. So I probably shouldn't let myself get too wound up by this sort of thing. After all, since I, too, now have a big-ass sippy cup, I am officially equipped to be smug about Being Hydrated.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 658: A random selection of pieces of music that make me smile

It's getting late and I haven't thought of anything to write and I'm full of curry, so let's do a MULTIMEDIA POST, shall we?

I'm partly inspired by a discussion I had earlier in a Discord that I'm a member of, in which we talked about things we liked from creators who clearly just made things for the joy of creating them — not in the hope of "going viral" or making a living out of them. I'm talking about stuff like Badgers, Badgers, Badgers and its ilk — although as it happened, a lot of those works did end up going viral and doubtless making their creators a fair amount of money. The point is that they weren't created with that in mind from the outset.

Funny, silly comedy songs and animations aren't the only thing I want to talk about today, though. More broadly, I just want to share a few things that always make me smile. Not always because they're funny, but because I just find them uplifting in some way. And where better to begin than with the irrepressible Hatsune Miku?

I'm not sure what exactly caused me to hyperfixate on this piece of music from Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S so much, but make no mistake; I most certainly did hyperfixate on it, as for a significant portion of my time playing the Picross-esque puzzles in Logic Paint S, I had set the in-game playlist to be nothing but this track.

I think I like this just because it's undeniably cheerful, bouncy and upbeat. It feels like it fits Miku nicely, and it's a good accompaniment to doing some puzzles — or just for when you need a bit of a pick-me-up.

My first encounter with Cave's classic bullet hell shoot 'em up series Dodonpachi was on iOS devices, where there was an excellent version of Dodonpachi Resurrection. One thing which still stands out about the mobile version of this game is that it features an exclusive game mode that not only has its own mechanics, it has a completely different soundtrack to the game's regular, rather more moody score.

People like the standard Dodonpachi Resurrection music a lot, and to be sure, it's good. But there's something I really like about these completely new tracks from the mobile version — and particularly this one, which accompanies the opening level. It's got that real adventurous "we're setting off on a brave, bold mission!" feel to it that I really like; it's full of hope for the future, rather than a bleak sense of submission to the endless horrors that await. And I think we could all do with a bit of that right now.

I maintain that Inti Creates' Gal*Gun games are some of the best games that no-one will admit to playing because they're about making girls collapse in euphoric ecstasy by pointing at them. All three of them are really solid rail shooters, each with their own distinctive mechanics and story to follow, and they all have great soundtracks, too.

This track, used for a lot of the regular levels in Gal*Gun 2, is a short but sweet track that really sums up the game's energy. There's not a trace of maliciousness anywhere in any of the Gal*Gun games, and their music never fails to make me smile.

Right, time we had a silly one. I remember coming across this one for the first time and absolutely pissing myself laughing. It still always makes me chuckle now… particularly the "Cock!" break in the second verse.

This sort of thing is very representative of what was going on in the Badgers, Badgers, Badgers-adjacent space on sites like rathergood.com, b3ta.com and Weebl's Stuff back in the mid '00s to the early '10s. The thing I like is that although endearingly lo-fi, particularly in the vocal samples, the whole thing is very well put together and works as a standalone song. It's just better with the animation.

Regrettably, the original animation for this piece is no longer available. It used to be that you could type in "2204355" into Google Search, hit "I'm Feeling Lucky" and it would take you to a technicolour Flash animation featuring a pixelated dancing guy from an old KFC advert and this delightful chiptune remix of the theme from ALF. Thankfully, the person behind the music came forward and published the music in its full glory on YouTube some 15 years ago, so even though the Google trick doesn't work any more, we can, at least, still enjoy the tune.

Side note: this blog is old enough that I blogged about when I first found this. It was, it has to be said, a particularly dark period in my life, when I had just split from my first wife and was at the lowest I've ever been. I happened to stumble across this one evening and found that it drove the darkness away for a few minutes at a time, so I watched that stupid animation over and over for hours. Thank you, mystery 2204355 creator, and thank you, Zalza, for helping me in my hour of need, even if you have no idea that you did so.

I wrote a bit about Sbassbear the other day, but I can't not mention their most recently published Game Grumps remix, as it's one of their best yet. Once again, this is a video I just keep returning to because it makes me smile.

Actually, to hell with it, there's another Sbassbear one I love also, and I can't pick between these two, so you're getting both:

I love BEANS because it's just so chaotic and ridiculous. But I love Shnigedy Ding Dong because it encapsulates the feeling you get when playing Tetris Effect Connected — and specifically, the wonderful mode where three people team up against another player, every so often bringing their independent wells together into one giant superwell, accompanied by a massive crescendo in the music and… as Dan says in the video, "ohhh, I love it so much!"

Right, that's enough. Off to bed with me now.

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2296: Games Called "Simulator" That Aren't Simulators: A Joke That's Run its Course

Back in the Good Old Days, my Dad played a whole lot of Flight Simulator, both in its SubLOGIC days and subsequently when it became a Microsoft product. (He still does, though perhaps not quite as much as he used to.)

One recurring joke we had in our family was taunting my Dad by saying that Flight Simulator was a game (which it is), which he would inevitably respond to by vociferously declaring that "it is not a game", because he didn't play games. (He has relaxed this policy in recent years, largely due to the advent of iOS.)

While I didn't agree with his assessment of what a game was, I did, however, understand where his argument came from. Proper noun Flight Simulator was a cut above even other lower-case flight simulators in terms of realism and depth, and noteworthy at the time for being one of the only civil aviation flight sims. It was also noteworthy for being one of the first ever open-world sandbox games, in that there were no goals whatsoever besides those that you set for yourself; there wasn't even really a "fail" state, since if you crashed, you could just respawn and start again.

By far the most noteworthy thing about Flight Simulator was the fact that it did exactly what its title suggested: it provided an accurate simulation of what it was actually like to fly a plane. That means no simplified controls; that means no throwing your plane around the sky; that means the need for at least a basic understanding of physics (including lift, thrust and drag) in order to even get off the ground. And even outside of the more obvious realism aspects such as the flight model, even navigation was simulated accurately; you had to tune navigation radios, follow the needle and so forth. Many real-life honest-to-goodness pilots actually trained to fly on instruments using Flight Simulator, such was its level of realism and detail when it came to this side of things, even if the graphics weren't particularly impressive in the early days.

As a result of all this, I came to associate the word "simulator" with… well, simulations. Virtual depictions of something real — and a depiction that errs more on the side of realism than providing a thrilling gaming experience.

This morning I received an unsolicited Steam invite to a group promoting an upcoming game called Pregnancy with Your Mom Simulator 2016. This is what Pregnancy with Your Mom Simulator 2016 looks like.

If you have never encountered the modern use of the word "simulator", Pregnancy with Your Mom Simulator 2016 pretty much sums it up. These days, although Flight Simulator still exists, the word "simulator" is much more frequently used in a "hilariously" ironic manner to describe something ridiculous, obviously unrealistic and filled with puerile humour.

I generally have nothing against puerile humour for the most part, but the use of the word "simulator" for this kind of thing is just getting a bit beyond a joke now. In just the last few years we've had Surgeon Simulator, Goat Simulator, Shower with Your Dad Simulator, Zombie Training Simulator, Corporate Lifestyle Simulator, Domestic Dog Simulator… and, well, literally hundreds of others. While there are a few genuine simulators in among the dross — the most noteworthy being titles like Euro Truck Simulator and its ilk, which follow the Flight Simulator mould of actually providing a realistic simulation of a real-life activity — the vast majority of these games are designed to be stupid visual jokes for YouTubers and streamers to whoop and holler over on videos with headlines like "CRAZY game from HELL?! SHOWER with YOUR MOM!!"

More than anything, I find it a bit frustrating to see the word "simulator" thrown around so casually these days because sometimes you just want to actually indulge in a genuine simulation of something — you want to see what it's like to drive a truck, use heavy construction machinery, fly a plane, launch a rocket, whatever — and this nonsense's use of the word completely devalues the word "simulator" to such a degree that it's now meaningless. Moreover, it's actively difficult to find real simulators — which, in the past, have had pretty functional, self-explanatory titles, such as Flight Simulator — among all this shit.

Ultimately this sort of thing is just another side-effect of the attention deficit disorder that the Internet seems to collectively suffer from. The population of the Internet staggers drunkenly from meme to meme, desperately searching for the next joke they can milk until it becomes the opposite of funny, then all the people who only use Facebook can start posting about it and it officially becomes dead, at which point a new meme shall rise and everyone shall become sick of it once more.

Perhaps I'm just old and cynical. Or perhaps I'm just tired of Steam and the mobile app stores getting flooded with "joke" games like Pregnancy with Your Mom Simulator 2016. People complained about the Wii being laden with shovelware, but that was nothing compared to the shit we see on Steam and mobile in 2016 — shit that distracts attention away from stuff that is actually noteworthy and interesting.

1200: It Was Just a Joke

Playing Robot Unicorn Attack 2 on the toilet earlier, a question came to me. It's been lingering in my mind for a few days, actually, but as I was there attempting to better my score and ensure supremacy for Team Rainbow in the twilight hours of the second of May, 2013 — Team Inferno probably have it in the bag, sadly — it struck me that perhaps Robot Unicorn Attack 2 is taking itself a bit too seriously.

And then this, naturally, led my mind on to ponder "how far is too far?" for things that are, essentially, jokes, memes, gags, whatever you want to call them. Because that's what the original Robot Unicorn Attack was — a joke. An immensely popular joke, yes — one million plays within a week of its release, apparently, and plenty more since then — but still a joke. This much is probably self-evident from its title. It is a game called Robot Unicorn Attack. No-one has called a video game something quite so literal and ridiculous and meant it since the 1980s.

And yet here we are in 2013 with Robot Unicorn Attack 2, a surprisingly well fleshed-out expansion of the original's "endless runner" gameplay that features online asynchronous cooperative "community" goals, an upgradeable unicorn, a levelling system, downloadable content, a bonus level unlockable if you either progress far enough in the game or stump up enough in-game currency, and all manner of other things. It's not the deepest game in the world, but it is a mobile phone game — and, more to the point, it is a mobile phone game that understands the sort of experience that is sensible and practical to put on a mobile phone. (It's also one of the less offensive examples of the "freemium" model I've seen recently, though the pop-up adverts are a bit gross.)

It's hard to explain, but it just feels a bit "wrong". It feels like it's not a joke any more. I hesitate to use the words "sold out" but… well, yes, it's sold out. It's Robot Unicorn Attack, but monetised out the wazoo to be profitable, whereas the original was a freeware Flash game that anyone could play without having to pay a penny.

I think that "monetisation" part is the key defining characteristic that determines "how far is too far" when it comes to jokes — particularly ones which started on the Internet. By the time money gets involved — i.e. it gets incorporated into something which is sold, or used to advertise something else for profit — it is probably already well past its sell-by date.

I can think of a number of examples where this has happened in advertising in particular. Take the advertisements for the price comparison website Go Compare, for example. For quite a while, these featured an irritating moustachio'd arsehole singing the service's jingle over and over again in various different styles. Everyone got immensely irritated with it. So, naturally, what the "clever" marketers did was leverage the fact that everyone was irritated with the "Go Compare Man" and put out some ads in which he was subjected to various indignities. But by that point, everyone had already pretty much just moved on to wanting to fire everyone involved with Go Compare into the sun and never hearing of their stupid company ever again. (Any time I need insurance, I will not go to their stupid site on principle any more.)

See also: the number of pointless mobile apps that have attempted to incorporate any combination of Nyan Cat, Gangnam Style, the Harlem Shake or any other "viral" sensation out there. Viral sensations are a marketer's dream — they provide a ready-made audience, so long as you can inextricably link one annoying thing with a specific brand. The audience doesn't even have to like the annoying thing — they just have to start thinking of these things not as "Gangnam Style" but as "that music off the [Brand X] advert".

I often wonder how a lot of marketers sleep at night knowing that their career is, essentially, to irritate people as much as possible. It surely can't be satisfying to flick on the TV, see a Go Compare advert and think "I did that."

Still, I guess they'd probably say the same about a games journalist's output. Oh well. Each to their own, I guess.

#oneaday Day 753: I Love You, Katawa Shoujo

This is the sixth (and definitely final… for now) of several posts regarding the notorious amateur-developed visual novel Katawa Shoujo. If you are intending to play this game and would like to avoid spoilers, this post is somewhat less spoilery than the recent character-specific ones, but might still spoil a few bits and pieces. All spoilery discussion is below the break.

If you’re still reading this, it’s highly likely you already know what Katawa Shoujo is but just in case you aren’t and/or you haven’t read the previous posts where I included this exact same paragraph, it’s a visual novel developed by 4 Leaf Studios, made up of members of the much- (and usually justifiably-) maligned 4chan community along with other itinerant creative types from around the Internet. It was developed following extended discussion over a sketch by Japanese doujinshi artist Raita, and is the very definition of a “labour of love”, having come from discussions on 4chan all the way to a full-fledged, professional-quality game between the years of 2007 and 2012. It’s been described by some as “eroge” or an erotic game, but I feel this does it an injustice; there are sexual scenes in the game, yes, but the point of the game is not to get to these scenes — rather, they are part of the plot, and not necessarily a “victory” for the player. They are also not terribly frequent compared to the rest of the game, which focuses on interpersonal interactions and psychological issues.

If you want to check out Katawa Shoujo for yourself, take a peek at the official website. My previous post regarding Emi’s path can be found here, and if you’re too lazy to scroll down, yesterday’s post on Rin can be found here, the previous day's post on Shizune can be found here, the previous previous day’s post on Hanako can be found here, and the day before that’s post on Lilly can be found here. I've now finished the game 100%, so perhaps I'll shut up about it now.

Continue reading "#oneaday Day 753: I Love You, Katawa Shoujo" →

#oneaday Day 522: Addressing the Audience's Demands

So in an attempt to better understand my audience, such as you are, I've been delving once again into the top search terms for my blog. I'm going to take the top ten search terms from the last year and address each and every one of them individually so that hopefully if you've been in attendance on this page at some point in the past and found it to be wanting for further information on the topic you searched for, you'll feel better and more satisfied in your choice of Google links that you clicked on.

Divine Divinity (303 hits)

Divine Divinity is an action-RPG from Larian Studios which bears more than a passing resemblance to Blizzard's Diablo series. The difference is that the world is not randomly generated and there is a more robust quest and interaction system more akin to something like the Baldur's Gate series. The entire world is available to explore from the get-go and aside from some appalling voice acting of the very worst kind, it's a great game. Pity its sequels aren't up to much. You can grab it from Good Old Games.

I'm Not Doctor Who (81 hits)

That's the name of this site, because my name is Peter Davison, though I usually go by "Pete" because I prefer it. Peter Davison, as you may know, was the stage name for Peter Moffett, who played the Doctor in Doctor Who between 1982 and 1984. I am not him, therefore I am not Doctor Who.

Offensive GIFs (73 hits)

Here's one.

Teaching Sucks (65 hits)

Teaching does indeed suck. I've worked as a classroom teacher on two separate occasions in my life and on both occasions it nearly killed me. In the first instance, I stuck it out for three years in the secondary school music classroom — my first year in a run-down school half a million quid in the red where I was threatened with being knifed on a regular basis, and my second in an ostensibly "nicer" area but which still reduced me to a literally gibbering wreck by the end of my time there.

The reasons why it sucks? Poor behaviour and teachers' lack of power to do anything about it. Ridiculous amounts of bureaucracy. The fact that one person is expected to do what, in any other job, a team of at least four or five people would take on between them.

If you can stick it out, fair play to you. It's not for me.

"Mandatory Sex Party" (35 hits)

This was a term coined by Allie Brosh, who at one point wasn't sure whether or not it was an actual thing that happened. I'm still not sure, but there's certainly a lot more than one Google hit for it now.

Persona 4 (35 hits)

Persona 4 is one of my favourite games of all time. Featuring a hugely lengthy quest, genuinely loveable characters, a gripping (if crazy) plot and a love-it-or-hate-it catchy soundtrack, Persona 4 is one of the greatest JRPGs of all time and I will fight you if you disagree.

Fatal Labyrinth (34 hits)

Fatal Labyrinth is a graphical roguelike for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. You can play it as part of the Sega Mega Drive Collection on the Xbox 360 and PS3, but I bet you haven't.

"Get Rich or Die Gaming" (27 hits)

Get Rich or Die Gaming is an absolutely terrible Xbox Live Indie Game with artwork that looks like it was put together in Microsoft Paint, voice acting that would make a school play's director blush and designs on being a point-and-click adventure. Fair play to them for actually releasing it, but it really is not very good.

NSFW GIFs (26 hits)

Here's one.

Memes GIF (25 hits)

(Click to embiggen. Some NSFW. Some NSF anybody. Apparently this character is called "optimized GIF dude" and is something of a meme. I'd never heard of him, actually.)

So there we are. I hope you feel suitably satisfied now. If not, go and have a sandwich and a wank.

#oneaday, Day 322: Chinese Whispers

Goodness me. Thank you to everyone who read yesterday's post, including the unprecedented 602 of you who showed up today. Whether or not you agreed with the sentiments therein (and whether or not you were polite about it), thanks for reading.

There have been some interesting developments in the whole thing over the last 24 hours or so. On the whole, the whole thing can actually be said to have had a positive outcome, though not quite through the means the originators of the meme intended.

In fact, the originators of the meme had nothing to do with the NSPCC, as predicted. Fellow blogger, Commodore 64 enthusiast and all-round fine, upstanding gentleman Glen McNamee did a bit of research on the issue and uncovered the fact that the whole thing had actually originated in two separate places in November as a bit of fun, with no charity links whatsoever. Read Glen's blog post about it here.

Dave Gorman also wrote an excellent post on how this sort of thing can undermine genuine fundraising attempts with honourable intentions. Also worth a read.

The interesting thing about all this, though, is the whole "Chinese Whispers" nature of it. By looking at people who had changed their avatar/status throughout the course of the day, you could see the gradual evolution of the whole thing. To start with, it was a "campaign to end child abuse". Then it was a "campaign by the NSPCC to end child abuse". And by the time people like me had written posts on the topic pointing out the flaws in the whole plan, people were taking great pains to explain that as well as changing their avatar, they had, in fact, donated, too. There were also a few people who were up-front about the whole thing and said they changed their avatar purely because they thought the cartoon characters were cool. Fair play to both parties; at least you're being honest. There was also a considerable proportion of people around Facebook who tried to convince everyone that the whole thing was a scam by a bunch of paedophiles aiming to lure children in with cartoon avatars. This last part is bollocks, by the way, in case you were worried.

So on the whole, the whole thing had a positive outcome. It provoked discussion (or rather, argument) and had the net result of shaming at least a few people into tossing a few quid the NSPCC's way, which I'm sure they're very grateful for, though they probably wouldn't have chosen to go about promoting it by people yelling at one another.

The thing is, though, couldn't the whole thing have been resolved without the need for drawn-out arguments in the middle of it? Probably. It's ironic; Web 2.0 is full of narcissism and vanity, but is also a breeding ground for sheep mentality. Some people copy and paste things or blindly follow instructions without considering the implications. Think before you post!

Let's leave it at that. The matter's over and done with. Resolved. Until everyone forgets about it and it happens all over again. When that does happen, just remember that famous and rather offensive comment about arguments on the Internet and the Paralympics.

Also, don't be a dick.

#oneaday, Day 305: My Content! No, MY Content!

I was watching a programme called It's Only A Theory the other night. It's an entertaining and thought-provoking show hosted by Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter in which they bring on a series of experts, get them to argue the case for their theory then make an arbitrary ruling on whether to accept or reject it.

The episode I watched featured a guy with terrible posture who was convinced that "user generated media is killing our culture and economy". You can watch the episode from this point here if you're in the UK.

The gist of the guy's argument was that the sheer amount of user-generated content out… there (here?) on the Internet is killing established cultural phenomena, partly because of the "culture of free" that there is on the Internet. Why pay for stuff when you can get it for free?

He also argued that the predilection for misinformation and relative lack of censorship on the Internet meant that overtly biased material could easily make its way out into the wild and people assume it's fact.

Take this video:

Despite it clearly being dubbed with someone pretending to hiccup and fart, it was all over the Internet yesterday, accompanied by hyperbolic language ("I literally couldn't stop watching") and more exclamation marks than your mother uses when writing an email.

It is kind of funny, fake or not, but that's beside the point.

There was an interesting twist in the ever-running battle of "who invented [annoying meme x]" recently as Rage Guy found himself at the centre of controversy. According to Internet wisdom, a meme is apparently officially "over" as soon as Hot Topic make a T-shirt of it. Because once people in the street start going "FFFFFFUUUUUUU-" to each other, what hope is there?

4chan decided not to take this insult lying down, despite having milked the concept beyond dry for the last two years. Yesterday, this post appeared on Hot Topic's Facebook page:

Someone had "tipped off" Hot Topic that "Rage Guy" was actually a racist comic featuring a guy called "Race Guy" and promptly set about creating a lengthy back catalogue of racist comics. Hot Topic, as a company in the public eye, did the only thing that they could do in the situation—withdrew the stock.

This being the Internet, though, they were of course informed of the prank within a matter of hours and a short while later, this post appeared:

As mildly amusing as all this was, it goes some distance to showing that user-generated media is probably never going to topple properly-produced, accredited and protected media. Both will undoubtedly exist side by side. But while the children of the Internet fight over what is "theirs", play childish pranks on each other, throw their toys out of their respective prams and call each other "faggots", the professionals will continue doing their thing, the same as they've always done, and be paid accordingly. Those with nothing better to do will tear each others' eyes out over who came up with the concept of producing shitty comics in MS Paint first.

You wouldn't catch the BBC World Service trolling Hot Topic.

#oneaday, Day 301: I've Read It

I've been on Reddit before. I didn't find it terribly intuitive, and the sheer volume of information on it was daunting and offputting. Sure, I helped support friends' submissions when I could, but delving into the whole thing proper just seemed like a frankly terrifying prospect.

However, yesterday, I felt differently. Spurred on by this article, which several people had posted to Twitter seemingly independently of one another, I decided to give the community another look. I decided to just dive in and start looking at things, rather than getting analysis paralysis whilst looking at the front page.

And that, seemingly, is the way to do it. There is so much content on Reddit that it is impossible (and probably undesirable) to read it all. So you pick and choose the things that you're interested in.

Now, I know that there are several people amongst those who follow me who are still utterly bewildered as to what Reddit is and what its appeal is. So, with apologies to those of you who are already well familiar with what Reddit is and how it works, here is, erm, what Reddit appears to be and how it appears to work, after a mighty one day's experience of use.

Perhaps the easiest way of thinking about it is that it's the world's biggest forum. Users can post things, which are either links to other sites or "self posts", which are simple messages. Attached to each post are two things: upvote and downvote buttons, and a comment facility. Upvoting or downvoting something promotes or demotes the content, making it more likely to rise to the top of the page (or not, as the case may be). And then the comments underneath are threaded, just like on most blogs these days.

It's in these comment sections that the excellence of Reddit shows itself, though. A far cry from your average YouTube commenter ("u suck!!!!! lol!"), Reddit contributors and commenters appear to be, for the most part, mature, articulate, literate individuals with fantastic senses of humour and some of the quickest punning minds I've ever come across. It's a community that, after lurking for a few days, I certainly wanted to be a part of. Discussion is (from what I've seen so far, at least) mature, thought-provoking but not afraid to lapse into a bit of silliness from time to time.

And diverse. Good God, Reddit is diverse. If you have a particular niche interest, you can pretty much guarantee there will be a "subreddit" for it. Whether you're into gaming, gardening, FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU- comics, porn, music, Uzbekistani sledgehammer dancing… chances are you will find someone there with the same freaky tastes as you. And for those embarrassing questions that you really want to ask people, the creation of "throwaway" sock puppet accounts is actively encouraged to help everyone feel comfortable enough to say what they feel. Many Redditors use their main accounts, though, as the atmosphere of help and support in the appropriate subreddits is, at times, a shining example of what the Internet can be.

A poster I read earlier described Reddit as 4chan 3 days late with a filter for all the disgusting, gross and/or illegal crap. Which isn't exactly high praise, but I can see their point. 4chan, love it or hate it, originates (or at least popularises) many of the words, phrases and memes we take for granted on the Internet today. But then those who are too scared to delve into the murky waters of 4chan (like me… I'm not ashamed) can come across this stuff without unwittingly stumbling into gore porn via Reddit. Everyone's a winner.

Oh, just one tip, though… if you're not interested in seeing a wide selection of user peens (interspersed with a few boobies) then just steer clear of /r/gonewild.

#oneaday, Day 299: The Internet Hits Me... But It Loves Me

The Internet is, as I've said a number of times on this blog, a fabulous invention. I certainly wouldn't be without it and the friends I've found because of it, the things I've learned from it, and all manner of other good stuff.

Paul Chambers, he of the #TwitterJokeTrial, certainly wouldn't be without it either. Because today has been a pretty remarkable demonstration of solidarity and support for him, with huge proportions of Twitter reposting his original "menacing" tweet in full, coupled with the hashtag "#IAmSpartacus". The story even made The Guardian earlier. The principle behind the thing, if you haven't worked it out for yourself anyway, is that if everyone was posting the exact same thing that Chambers posted and was not, in fact, getting arrested for it, then clearly his conviction and the failure of his appeal is utter nonsense.

And so far, there have been no reports of anyone getting a friendly knock on the door from their local bobby. Which is good.

It was actually quite heartwarming to see Twitter—a community of, essentially, strangers—coming together to show an enormous amount of unified support for someone who is still technically a stranger to most of us. The vast majority of people posting the #IAmSpartacus tweets don't know Chambers personally. But they understand what his plight represents—a pretty serious threat to not only free speech, but the British sense of humour as well. Whatever will be the eventual conclusion to the whole fiasco is still shrouded in mystery. But in the meantime, Chambers is doubtless sleeping a little easier at night knowing that to many people, he's a hero of sorts.

So that's all very nice, and one of many examples of how The Internet is clearly a Force for Good. (Of course, some might, at this stage, point out that if there was no Internet Chambers wouldn't have got into this situation in the first place, but let's just leave that argument to one side for a moment, shall we?)

And then we get this:

Source

Good old 4Chan, cesspool of the Internet, originator of some of the funniest and/or most irritating (depending on your outlook) memes to do the rounds on the Web. There they are, genuinely proposing to flood Tumblr with gore, porn, child pornography and "the worst [they] can offer", which probably means "all of the above".

Now granted, Tumblr is a bit of a hipster hangout that is full of people who do nothing but post pretentious photographs, "inspirational" quotes and tame pornography. But there are also plenty of people out there who use it as their blogging platform of choice. With good reason—it's a simple system for sharing text, photos, video and audio that is mobile-friendly. There's no extraneous features or plugins to worry about, it's just type, post, go. Couple that with the built-in community features and, to some, it's like an extended Twitter with no character limits. Not just for hipsters, see.

Whether 4Chan will actually go through with their threat or not is kind of beside the point. The fact that the possibility of such a campaign was even considered is the thing which makes me want to invest in an expansive hammer collection. According to Urlesque, earlier today there wasn't a huge amount of traction for the plan. Which is kind of encouraging, I guess, but it still sucks that there are a bunch of a-holes out there who feel the need to wave their e-peen around at every opportunity.

Whoever came up with the campaign seems genuinely affronted that Tumblr, as a community, is trying to "imitate" 4Chan. Now, there are many things to aspire to in life. But to aspire to being 4Chan is not something that most people would say with pride. And it's pretty likely that a considerable proportion of Tumblr's users aren't even aware of what 4Chan is in the first place. So the particular "Anonymous" who has his (you know it's a "he", and likely a "he" who has never known the touch of a woman/man, depending on preference) panties in a bunch over Tumblr's "imitation" of 4Chan is clearly just looking for an excuse to wipe his dick on everybody's curtains.

Still, as ever, it comes back to the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, which I've posted links to on this blog more times than I care to remember. I guess once more can't hurt.

Basically, Internet, you're capable of showing the very best and/or worst the human race has to offer at a moment's notice. So it should hopefully go without saying by now that the words you should live your life by are very simple: always follow Wheaton's Law.

Don't be a dick.