1511: Read This Post and I’ll Give You £1,000

No I won’t. Because… come on, fucking seriously? Do you really need me to explain why that is never, ever going to happen?

Apparently so, because last night’s #AskHannaForCash travesty on Twitter proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that social media is turning people into dribbling idiots.

For those not on Twitter, or who somehow missed this debacle while it was unfolding, here’s the gist.

Twitter user @princessthot posted that she was, for some reason, pissed off with her father, and promptly posted a screenshot that she claimed was his his PayPal account, which supposedly contained in excess of $23 million. She then offered to send money to anyone who retweeted her message or helped spread the word — an offer which would appear to be backed up by a number of people (who, it later transpired, were her followers) who offered messages of varying amounts of exuberance claiming that yes, she “really was” sending out money to anyone who asked for it.

The moment I saw this, I knew it stank. For one of just so many things wrong with this whole situation, who the hell keeps $23 million in a PayPal account — an unverified one, no less?

And yet, very few people — including, I was disappointed to see, some people I follow — seemed to think this was worth questioning, instead engaging with the situation on the grounds that it “couldn’t do any harm” or that it was “worth a try”. One person I follow said that they were “pretending it was real but staying out of it, because [they] want to think humans are awesome instead of terrible.”

Via the Daily Dot, here’s just how easy it is to fake a PayPal balance, incidentally:

Uh-huh. Okay. Still believe it? Still want to believe humans are awesome?

Humans are awesome, is the thing — just this week, two separate crowdfunding efforts paid for a little girl’s headstone and an indie game critic’s cancer treatment. But humans are also terrible, and social media is, regrettably, the natural habitat for some of the worst examples of everyday (i.e. not psychotic dictators or outright psychopaths) scumbags on the planet.

Anyone who’s used Facebook at all in the last few years will know that there’s an epidemic of blindly resharing things without checking to see whether they stand up to scrutiny. If something uses enough exclamation marks and capital letters, many more gullible users are convinced of its urgency and authenticity, and go on to spread it to their social network — and from there, the more gullible users from among their group of friends then spread it further and further and further.

#AskHannaForCash wasn’t as obviously harmful as claiming that Red Bull gives you brain tumours or that a non-existent breed of snake is going to freeze your blood (and, aside: please direct anyone who shares shit like that on your Facebook news feed to those two links and indeed the rest of Snopes at every opportunity). But it’s still harmful in its own way; the person behind the Twitter account, whoever he or she is, was purely seeking attention and validation through retweets and favourites — attach a number to anything and it is seen as social currency by some people, particularly those in their teens — and now, unsurprisingly, having revealed that the whole thing was a hoax (sorry, “social experiment” — the usual getout clause) they have come in for a torrent of abuse. That can’t be good for their mental wellbeing — something which I’d assume is already in something of a fragile state if they felt the need to pull such an elaborate ruse on the less discerning members of the social media sphere.

You my call it cynicism, but the attitude that “if it looks too good to be true, it probably is” will serve you well in the long term. Would you respond to an anonymous email claiming that you could come into possession of a huge amount of money just by providing some simple details? No — at least I hope not. Would you respond to a suspicious-looking Craigslist ad offering you a vast amount of cash for something simple? I imagine not. Would you let a random stranger into your house just because they promised to give you something amazing? I really hope you wouldn’t. So don’t do it on social media.

And come on. Do you really think an obviously bitter and twisted teenager “getting back” at their father by doling out their cash to random strangers is an example of humanity at its finest? Would you really trust that cash? Would you really trust that the details you’d have to hand over to obtain that cash wouldn’t find themselves into inappropriate hands?

If you would, then your Internet license is hereby revoked. Go and read a fucking book instead; it’ll be safer for everyone involved, including yourself.

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.

1493: Making the Tools Work for You, Not the Other Way Around

As an experiment, I’ve un-suspended my Facebook account. This blog post is the first I’ve mentioned of doing so, and I haven’t really got back into “using” the site as such just yet, because there are a few things I wanted to do first.

Specifically, I wanted to take a bit more control of my experience there. The reason I shut down my account in the first place was because the amount of nonsense being posted was reaching intolerable levels — social media experts call this a poor signal-to-noise ration. In other words, little in the way of actual communication was going on, and instead it was becoming little more than Upworthy reshares (and, thankfully, Upworthy seems to have been all but forgotten now) and “OMG! I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS THING!” posts that people haven’t fact-checked before posting. It was becoming infuriating and, as I believe I said around the time I closed my account, it was stopping Facebook from being actually useful — its original stated purpose was to be a “social tool that connects you with the people around you”, after all, and for a while it did an admirable job of that.

Anyway. In order to take control of my experience, I’m doing a few things that can largely be classified as “cleaning up my profile”. I’ve “unliked” as many pages as it’s possible to “unlike” — aside from ones that I actually do either want to show support for or get information from — and I’ve had a ruthless cutback on my friends list. There are still nearly 200 people on there, but when I compare it to some of the people I removed — many of whom had over a thousand “friends” — it seems a little more manageable. I’ve cut people whom I haven’t spoken to for a while, or whom I didn’t feel I’d had worthwhile interactions with online, or whom I simply didn’t really actually like all that much. (Harsh but fair!) I’ve also cut a lot of people whom I mainly speak to on Twitter, and anyone that I wouldn’t classify as a particularly close friend. (In other words, if I’ve removed you on Facebook, it doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t like you; it just means that I don’t count you in my closest circle of friends, since the way Facebook is built has always felt like something that you should share with people you actually know, rather than people who are just Internet acquaintances at best.)

I am attempting to make Facebook work for me, then, and hopefully it will provide a better experience for me. I’m still no fan of the site itself — the interface for unliking pages and removing friends was one of the most cumbersome, badly-designed pieces of UI I’ve seen for a long time, the current layout seems designed to make certain pieces of information as difficult to find as possible, and I’m really not a fan of how the company does business — but I am keen to use it to stay in touch with those people for whom Facebook is the best (or indeed, in some cases, only) means of reaching them.

We’ll see how long it lasts this time around. I’d like to keep an open mind, but we’ll see. And if you dare post any shit from Upworthy at me, you’re on my list. And not my friends list.

1489: Championing the Underdogs

If you’ve ever wondered why I talk so much about lesser-known games and visual novels I come across that I end up loving, Twitter today is the reason why. Specifically, this is the reason why.

For those unfamiliar with the way Twitter works, that’s a search page giving a snapshot of the number of people using the words “Titanfall beta” at any given moment — at the time of writing, there are approximately 30 tweets every minute on the subject.

Titanfall, the new game from Respawn Entertainment, the studio set up by the guys who created the astronomically popular Call of Duty series, one of the biggest names in gaming for the past few years, is going to be a big hit, it seems. And this is lucky not only for Respawn, but also for Microsoft, who are counting on Titanfall being a system-seller for its so far disappointing Xbox One console. We’ll have to wait and see whether Titanfall shifts Xbox One systems, but if interest in the beta is any indication, chances are good.

But I don’t want to talk about Titanfall. I haven’t played it and thus can’t comment on it in any great detail. I have registered for a beta key because I’m interested to see if it can change the mind of someone who finds Call of Duty utterly mind-numbing, but I’m not going out of my way to get one, and frankly I’m sick of hearing about it.

It’s this latter point that ties in with what I said in the first paragraph. Any time something “big” like Titanfall comes along, any smaller developers attempting to promote their work may as well just pack up and go home, because the big game is all anyone’s talking about. This is how marketing works, of course; EA and Respawn want Titanfall to be as big a seller as possible, so it’s in their interests to ensure as many people are talking about it as possible, and what better way to stir the pot than a steady flow of beta keys being released into the wild?

But what of the poor souls who, like me, have pretty much zero interest in Titanfall? There’s nothing stopping us continuing to go about our gaming business, of course, but it’s frustrating if it just happens to be this week that we find something really cool that we want to share with people. It’s also frustrating if otherwise great games come out, but news of them actually being great is drowned out by everyone stampeding to play the beta for the latest manshoot. I fear for Bravely Default and Danganronpa, both of which are fantastic games that deserve a far greater audience than they will almost certainly get — Michael Pachter would probably brand them “failures” if he had any idea either of them existed — and titles that are competing against Titanfall’s beta test for the attention of gamers worldwide.

I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who’s enjoying the experience of the Titanfall beta; by all accounts, it sounds like something that someone who enjoys competitive team-based multiplayer shooters will have a lot of fun with, and that’s great. But at times like this, it’s easy to feel a little cynical about the games biz’s apparent inability to acknowledge the existence of more than one Good Thing at a time. As ever, the game that’s likely to make the most money gets the majority of the spotlight attention, leading to swathes of articles from diverse sites all writing very similar things to one another, providing validation to those who were probably going to buy the game anyway and continuing to alienate those who are more interested in more niche, specialised titles.

At times like this — and I’ve said this before — I feel as if the games press needs more specialised publications. We’re starting to get this to a certain extent with indie-focused websites, but we need to go further. There needs to be an acknowledgement — or more of an acknowledgement, at least — that gaming isn’t just about the latest, biggest-budget game out there, and that games don’t cease to be relevant after their “opening week”. The latter point in particular is something that infuriates me no end; if a game doesn’t sell a zillion copies in its first week, it’s instantly branded a failure by analysts and press alike — meanwhile, it’s extremely rare that people like, say, me buy something the moment it’s released.

What have I been playing today, for example? Atelier Rorona, a PlayStation 3 game that came out in 2010. Are the experiences I’ve had with that game today irrelevant due to the fact it came out four years ago? No, of course not, but you might be forgiven for thinking that if you took a look at Twitter today.

Sigh. I’m pissing in the wind with this, of course, and it’s far easier to just get on with what I’m doing, talk about the things I’m enjoying and hope people who feel the same way might gather together with me. I just felt the need to express some frustration, and I’ll start taking my own advice tomorrow, I think.

1477: Nondescript

It’s been one of those days that just sort of… happened today. I wrote about EA’s horrendous molestation of the Dungeon Keeper series, gave Flappy Bird a well-deserved drubbing in a review and a few other things, then played an interesting horror game called Serena which I’m going to write a review of tomorrow, then capped the evening off with some Final Fantasy XIV. That was my day. That was it.

Much as we might like to always have interesting things to talk about and tall tales to tell, the fact is that most days we go through our existence are pretty humdrum, boring and nondescript, with almost nothing of note happening whatsoever.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course, because having humdrum, boring and nondescript days suggests that things are going all right — it’s better than having days that are crushing disappointments, or that make you want to punch walls, or that make you want to sit in the shower and cry, for example, but it’s also not quite as good as days that make you want to explode in happiness or play a pair of tea tongs like castanets. (Actually, I must confess to doing the latter earlier while waiting for a cup of tea to brew, but it was more through boredom than happiness. Tea tongs actually make a surprisingly convincing castanets substitute, FYI.)

Perhaps this is why social media has risen to such prominence in recent years. Everything from the humble status update to a “selfie” has the potential to make the mundane seem so much more fascinating than it really is — at least it does to the people posting these things. Yes! they’ll think. Here’s my dinner! It’s amazing! Maybe people will be jealous of what I’m having! I have beans with sausages! Joke’s on you, losers! Oh God I’m so lonely.

It’s sort of baffling if you take a step back from it all, really. Take photography in particular — the rise of digital photography and phone cameras have devalued the humble photograph from cultural artifact to disposable, throwaway thing. Photos used to be a precious commodity — you’d go on holiday with a couple of 36-exposure rolls of film in your bag, and you’d try to make every shot count. Now, you can afford to take pictures of every course of every meal you have and share them to the world as if they give a shit. And Silicon Valley types who enjoy making new social media apps for no other reason than to say they attracted several million in seed funding, whatever that is, can take advantage of people like this by offering them apps that allow them to “turn your photographs into beautiful memories” and the like. Ugh.

Of course, the Internet belongs to everyone so it is your choice how you choose to go about using it. Just remember that the things you’re posting might not be as interesting to other people as they might be to you. Heaven knows I know that after writing 1,477 days of nonsense on these very pages.

There you go. I even have something to say on a humdrum, boring and nondescript day such as today. And now I’m going to bed. Good night.

1463: Losing Face

I’ve been off Facebook for some time now — a cursory search through these pages suggests I closed my account in October of last year — and for the most part I haven’t missed it.

I certainly haven’t missed the endlessly inane reshares of content from George Takei(‘s PR intern) which in turn was stuff that already did the rounds on Reddit and subsequently Twitter several days earlier.

I also haven’t missed the few people who seem to think that Facebook is an appropriate platform for standing atop their soapbox and bellowing the most ill-informed political and/or sociological opinions they can possibly think of.

I also haven’t missed having shit games and advertising jammed forcibly down my throat every time I log in. I spent a considerable amount of time reviewing Facebook games professionally and all it left me with was a bitterly passionate desire to never play one ever again.

And yet…

Over the weekend I went out. This is nothing unusual in itself, but this was something of a special occasion — it was a reunion of sorts for those of us who studied music at the University of Southampton between 1999 and 2002. We were a pretty close-knit bunch while we were there — though I must confess, being a joint-honours English and Music student, that I always felt somewhat on the periphery of this particular social group — and most people have kept in touch pretty well ever since. A number of us are still in Southampton, too, though a distressingly small number of us are actually doing anything with our music studies professionally. (Note to kids planning their future: when someone tells you that a particular degree is a “good, general choice that will get you into most careers,” they are talking bollocks.)

Anyway, yeah. We went out to a pub near Newbury and ate our respective body weights in roast dinners and custard-covered desserts. It was thoroughly pleasant, particularly as I hadn’t seen some of these people for a while.

It’s partly my fault, of course — I could have very easily picked up the phone and invited them over for dinner, or coffee, or whatever, but I haven’t. But then they haven’t either. I don’t say this with bitterness — it’s just the way that the rapid pace of modern 21st century life makes people think. Real-life friendships often fall by the wayside somewhat, and people whom you once spent every day with become people that you see a couple of times a year — albeit on those occasions, you’ll start singing improvised offensive German barbershop a cappella as if no time whatsoever had passed between the last couple of times you saw one another. (At least you will if you are me and my friends.)

The thing is, though, for many people, Facebook fills that gap between in-person interactions — or “face time” as obnoxious wankers like to call it. It allows you to remind each other of your existence, and to likewise acknowledge one another’s existence with a Like or a Comment.

At least, that’s the intention. One might argue that said intention has been somewhat diluted over the last few years as Facebook has become less and less about meaningful social interactions and more and more about sharing viral content in an attempt to amass as many Likes, comments and shares as possible.

Having almost missed out on this reunion due to my non-presence on Facebook, I find myself questioning my decision to leave the network. It also makes me ponder whether or not it might be possible to use it in a different way — specifically, to have a substantial cull of my friends list to just those who are local and whom I am likely to want to see again at some point. I’d cut out any Pages that I was following — not that I think I was following many in the first place — and keep my friends list down in the double-digits if at all possible. I’d be ruthless in the culling of people who didn’t post anything interesting or useful and consequently cluttered up my news feed with bullshit, and I’d lock down my account so I’d be in complete control of who could find me. I’d also minimise overlap between Facebook and Twitter, because what’s the point?

I’m tempted to try this, though with all the changes I’ve seen Facebook make regarding how it decides what it wants to show to you, I have my doubts as to how useful the service is even with these attempts to take ownership of the experience. It certainly can’t hurt to give it a go, anyway, and if it does turn out to be useless nonsense as I suspect, it’s little bother to simply hit the “deactivate” button again.

I’ll leave you with this, which is a big part of my hesitance to return:

1371: Cutting the Cord

You’ll recall that I’ve been contemplating this for some time now, but as I promised to myself, I’ve reached a decision: the Monday after this one just coming, I’m deactivating my Facebook account.

“Who cares?” I hear you say. And, well, that’s sort of the point, really; I don’t care about Facebook. It is largely useless to me these days.

As I noted in my post a few days ago, there’s been a noticeable shift in the quality of posts among my Facebook friends recently. While I don’t blame any of them for wanting to share things that are important to them personally, it’s getting to the point where there’s so much noise that there’s not any room for conversation any more.

Social media is increasingly becoming “fire and forget”; people post something designed to get noticed — perhaps a passive-aggressive status update, or some sort of sociopolitical rant, or an Upworthy article with a particularly smug title — and then wait for the comments and likes to roll in. And then… nothing. Nothing at all. There’s no discussion — except in rare sociopolitical cases where you can guarantee there’ll be at least one person coming along to state the opposite opinion and start a tedious circular argument in which no-one ever agrees to disagree — and no real value to it all. For me, anyway.

I remember being resistant to Facebook when it first started getting big. A number of my real-life friends were encouraging me to jump aboard — remember, Facebook used to only allow you to add people you actually knew — but I thought it was going to be a passing Myspace-ish fad, and as such held off for a long time. I finally gave in while I was on holiday in the States visiting my brother, and Facebook proved to be a good means of sharing the photos I’d taken — photos that I was particularly keen to share because I’d started experimenting a bit more with composition and editing.

All was good for a while; Facebook’s Groups and Events features served their purpose for a while, too, proving to be a practical means of organising collections of people and inviting people to events. But increasingly, over time, and as Facebook started to become more and more popular and more open, these features lost their value. When was the last time you responded to an Event invite? When was the last time you joined a Group?

I can trace the beginning of Facebook’s downfall from my personal perspective to a fairly precise moment — it was back when they started making it into a “platform” instead of simply a site; back when Facebook games and “apps” first started appearing. I was initially in favour of this — the accompanying site redesign that came with the launch of the Facebook platform made the site look a whole lot better on big, high-resolution monitors, and it was and still is a potentially good idea to have the site act a bit like an operating system.

Unfortunately, things just declined from there. There started to be too much of everything. Too many games, too many people, too many ways of posting. People felt obliged to share each and every mundane little thing about their lives, egged on by other people and the mass media. Today, you can’t watch the news without the newsreader demanding to “let us know what you think”; you can’t watch a new TV show without a hashtag appearing in the corner.

These things aren’t bad in isolation, of course. It’s neat to be able to discuss a TV show in real time while it’s on; it’s cool that people have a medium of self-expression and communication that simply wasn’t really possible and practical pre-broadband and smartphones. But everything just adds up to a frustrating experience, and it all but destroys the original point of Facebook — a cosy little private network where you could easily communicate with your real-life friends and share select photos and notes with them.

Times have changed. I haven’t gone with them. And I’m fine with that. As such, the Monday after next, my Facebook account is going kaputt. I’m leaving a week’s leeway in order to ensure that those people who do want to stay in touch have the opportunity to pick up my alternative contact details; those who don’t bother? Well, it’s probably time I cut those people out of my life, anyway.

If you’re reading this, have (or indeed had, if you’re reading this after the fact) me on Facebook and want to know alternative means of getting in touch with me if you don’t already have them, let me know via a comment on this post — be sure to leave your email address in the appropriate field.

Tata, Facebook. It’s been fun. It’s not you, it’s me.

Actually, it is you.

1365: Your Face

I find myself once again giving serious thought to the closure of my Facebook account. This is not something I should be agonising over as much as I have been, I know, but given that Facebook is such a firmly-entrenched part of modern society, it bears some consideration.

The main thing that’s frustrating me with it at present is the fact that the whole “broadcast and amplification” thing seems to be getting far worse than it’s ever been. My News Feed at present consists almost entirely of people making ill-informed political statements and sharing the latest scaremongering chain letter that they haven’t bothered to fact-check. (Currently? It’s an apparent epidemic of “false widow” spiders in the UK — these spiders do actually exist, but it’s rare that a bite from one will cause anything more than a bit of discomfort, and certainly not require the amputation of a limb in any cases other than those which have suffered the most severe of allergic reactions.)

The point here is that Facebook’s original purpose of communicating and sharing personally meaningful things has all but completely gone out of the window in favour of sharing the latest “inspiring” clickbait from Upworthy (seriously, fuck off, Upworthy, Buzzfeed and all of your fellow content farms), the latest moral panic from Daily Mail-like sources, or the latest “OMG hilarious!!!” video from whatever dark corner of the Internet produces nothing but “OMG hilarious!!!” videos.

The reason I hesitate so much and continually wonder whether cutting the Facebook cord is a good idea is that old chestnut — “it’s the only way I’m still in touch with some people.” Well, to be honest, a lot of those people for whom Facebook is the only means I can still contact them I haven’t actually spoken to for ages, even on Facebook; those people who actually care will probably know how to reach me via other means, or will pay attention if I leave some sort of post with alternative contact information prior to closing down my account. Those people who don’t care? Well, I guess they weren’t that good friends after all.

In cutting the Facebook cord, then, it will doubtless be sad to effectively cut ties to some university and school friends, but it’s also an inescapable truth of life: people go their separate ways following milestones, and sometimes that’s for the best. I won’t deny that there are people I miss, but I’ve been just as lax at staying in touch with a lot of these people as they have been lax towards me. It’s no reflection on either me or them in most cases; it’s simply the fact that our lives have moved on in different directions, and we each have our own different priorities, groups of friends and personal interests.

Typing this out has helped me think a few things over. I’m going to carefully examine my Facebook usage over the next week, and make a decision at the end of the week as to whether or not I’m going to close my account. If I decide to close it — which, right this second, is the decision I am erring towards — I will leave a message up on my profile for a further week with alternative contact information — where people can find me elsewhere on the Internet (primarily Twitter or Google+), or via email — and then close it. At that point, those people who want to get in touch can; those who can’t will be confined to the past, likely never to be heard from again.

Anyway. Apologies for thinking out loud. Perhaps some of you are thinking the same things too, though.

1325: Focal Point

I’m sure any writer pals reading this can probably relate, judging from some things I’ve read recently: it is infinitely easier to focus on negative things than it is about positive ones. And those negative things absolutely dominate your thoughts, almost completely obliterating any good work the positive things might have done.

Let’s take an example. Recently, I wrote a lengthy article about “otaku games” — that particularly misunderstood aspect of Japanese gaming where people who don’t play them constantly judge them as being nothing more than pervy fanservice. To be fair to their opinion, there often is a fair amount of pervy fanservice in them, but it’s pretty rare that is the sole or even the most important part of them. Check out the piece here.

On the whole, response to the post has been very positive. I’ve been very happy to hear from a lot of fans of Japanese gaming who thanked me for giving a reasoned, rational take on the subject — with input from people who are actually involved in bringing these titles to the West — and for treating both the games and their fans with respect. I’ve had people tell me it’s a wonderful article, compliment me on covering something that other sites don’t bother with (or take the more common “This is Bad and Wrong, LOL JAPAN” stance on) and generally express a very genuine-feeling sense of appreciation for something I worked hard on.

So what do I find my brain focusing on? The guy who tweeted at me saying “TLDR” (seriously, that is pretty much one of the most disrespectful things you can say to a writer, especially when they’ve worked hard on something — try giving some constructive criticism or, even better, actually engaging with the points made in the piece), and the commenter who complained about me “not talking about the game” in my Tales of Xillia review and lambasting me for promoting an “incest simulator” in an article about visual novels. (Said “incest simulator” was Kana Little Sister, an incredibly moving work which I’ve written about at length in a number of places on the Internet; to refer to it as an “incest simulator” in a distinctly Daily Mail/Jack Thompson-esque way shows an astonishing lack of understanding, my keen awareness of which was what inspired me to write the “otaku games” piece in the first place.)

I wish I didn’t feel this way, but it made me feel somewhat better to read this piece over on Hookshot, Inc recently. Here’s what was, for me, the most pertinent part:

“Reader feedback is, in many ways, wonderful. It pulls writers down from pedestals and/or ivory towers, and it democratises a whole medium. Every voice is heard, and charlatans are uprooted. A culture of reader-fear has, arguably, been fostered – but ultimately people raise their game, and those much-suspected dirty deals are (by my reckoning) far less likely to occur today than they were five years ago.

“The problem is that all this is incredibly unhealthy for writers with… what you might call an ‘amiably complex psychological disposition’. I’m one of these people (it’s hugely common in my field – and indeed any creative arena) and I couldn’t even count how many of my working days have been ruined by an angry person venting steam beneath a piece I’ve written. The black dog starts barking, and your creative mojo runs away.

“Sure, the trolls are generally a minority – but when your mind has been built to concentrate on negativity rather than happy, happy, joy, joy (and you work at home, on your own) then comments threads are a mental plague pit.

“As a writer – what can you do about this? Well, you can start making your review scores more conservative for a start. Oh, and you can definitely avoid rocking boats that contain angry devotees of certain platforms, genres and franchises. Oh, and how about excising all humour for fear of miscomprehension from angry dullards you’ll never meet?

“OMG HANG ON GUYS OUR COLLECTIVE INSECURITY JUST BROKE GAMES WRITING.

“So basically: say what you want to say, and suck it up. There’s no wrong opinions, only a lot of people who think you should be fired for having a right one.”

I was simultaneously surprised, delighted and slightly depressed to read that. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, and I wish it was possible to train oneself to be more like, say, Jim Sterling — someone whom I greatly admire for his no-nonsense attitude and at least outward appearance of having thick skin. (For all I know, Sterling might finish his day job and cry himself to sleep over the torrents of abuse he receives on a daily basis, and I wouldn’t blame him if that were so — but I somehow doubt that’s the case anyway.)

Ah well, as Will Porter writes in that excellent Hookshot piece — seriously, go read it if you have a few minutes — the only real thing we, as writers, can do is say what we want to say and suck it up somehow. If we start sanitising our own opinions, thoughts and even writing styles to appease the lowest common denominator in the comments threads, then the world of writing would be a boring one indeed.