Tag: social media

My Twitter replacement

Photo by daniyal ghanavati on Pexels.com

Those who have been following the saga of social media for a while will know that Twitter is a right old mess right now. Between Elon Musk's incredible ego and a series of bizarre policy changes and introductions (most of which are likely related to Musk's ego in some form or another) it's certainly been interesting to watch the world's most popular social media platform (for how much longer?) go through some trials and tribulations.

But those of you who have been following me for a while will know that Twitter hasn't been much fun for a long time now. When I first joined (which must have been around 2007 or so, maybe?) it was a great place to make new friends, enjoy good conversation and just generally have a good time. But as the years have gone on — and particularly since the significant online upheavals that can be at least partly attributed to the "Gamergate" mess of 2014 — it's become a less and less desirable hangout, for a variety of reasons.

Chief among them for me is the combative, confrontational tone the site as a whole has taken on. While it is still possible to have civil conversations there, it feels like it's much more likely that if you post an opinion of your own someone will come along and shout it down before long. Even if your opinion is not, in the grand scheme of things, particularly important or worth getting upset over.

Anger seems to be the default state for many posters on Twitter, and this is often expressed through some seriously unpleasant behaviour. Anyone who is into Japanese games, for example, will doubtless have seen the disgusting vitriol that gets thrown the way of localisation staff (more specifically, female localisation staff) on a fairly regular basis, regardless of whether or not any "mistakes" have been made. And the same is true in all fields; the quote-tweet dunk is a universal constant, and it does not make for a friendly environment where one wants to hang out.

But alongside all this, Twitter itself has been changing in functional, mechanical terms. The rise of "The Algorithm" on all manner of social sites — with the most notorious being YouTube, of course — has meant that no longer can you count on your social media experience being your own, if indeed it ever was. Rather than showing you the things that your friends have been posting in the order that they were posted, you now get shit you didn't sign up for pushed into your feed as "recommendations", based on the ill-defined assumptions that Twitter makes about "quality content".

I never signed up to Twitter for "quality content". I signed up to chat with folks from a forum we all used to frequent that we weren't able to use any more due to the site's closure. That's all I really wanted. And that's emphatically not what the site provides these days.

So between the change in atmosphere, the change in the way the whole site works and the whole Musk fiasco, I've come to the conclusion that it's simply not worth wasting time pissing around on Twitter any more — if indeed it ever was. Rather, I think it's high time that I brought this blog back, since it's a much better means for me to express myself — plus the comments section is a much nicer way to hold a conversation in most cases. (Unless those people find their way here, but you know how it is.)

So that's what I'm going to do. I'll be keeping my Twitter account open because it's still useful for things like news aggregation and PR contacts, but pretty much all I'll be posting on there is links to stuff I've done, either for work or for pleasure. When I want to actually talk about something, I'll do it here, like in the good old days.

I'm not making any grand promises about posting frequency or anything like that, this is just going to be an "as and when I feel like it" sort of thing. I'm also not going to commit to doing silly comics or anything, even though I know one particular reader (whom I hope is doing well, given that I haven't heard from her for a while) is a big fan! This is my scratch pad, my brain dump and my place to express myself. No "algorithm" rules the roost here, and as such it's a much better means of getting to know me than the toxic bird site.

So see you around here, I hope!

2541: Farewell

This is my last daily post on this blog, to coincide with the last hour of the last day of 2016. I'm not going to rule out posting on here again when I feel like it, but this is the last of my daily entries. I feel that the exercise has run its course, and I'm definitely satisfied with what I've accomplished over the last 2,541 days.

Why am I stopping now? Well, it's part of a broader plan I outlined a few days ago. I want to unplug and get away from the constant noise of online culture in 2016. It stopped being fun a good while ago — roughly coinciding with the rise of the outrage brigade who love nothing more than using their social media clout to shame people for enjoying "problematic" material — but it's also been becoming increasingly apparent that the reasons I've been keeping my social media accounts active for as long as I have simply don't seem to be the reasons other people keep them active.

On previous occasions when I've considered deactivating my Facebook and Twitter accounts — Facebook in particular — the thing that has always stopped me is the thought that "oh, people won't be able to get hold of me easily, since everyone uses Facebook nowadays rather than anything else." But over time it's become apparent that while everyone does indeed use Facebook, pretty much the last thing they use it for is keeping in touch with other people. Rather, the inherent encouragement of narcissism in modern social media encourages people to post everything about their lives — or rather, everything in a heavily edited, idealised version of their lives — in an attempt to make other people feel like they should be having more fun/sex/babies/delicious meals/strong opinions about Donald Trump. And while that occasionally leads to heated debates in comment sections, it very rarely seems to lead to good conversations.

Twitter comes at it from a different angle. I've heard Twitter described as being like going to a party where everyone is shouting things at the room in general hoping other people will come and join the conversation, and that's a fairly apt description. The particular trouble with Twitter is that its original selling point — its 140-character limit, intended to encourage people to "microblog" rather than post walls of text — isn't conducive to nuanced discussion and debate, which leads to particularly obnoxious behaviour when people of differing ideologies and/or opinions about which anime girl is hottest come into contact with one another.

In short, I've been finding social media to be more trouble than it's worth, so I'm unplugging from the noise in the hope that those people who do value my friendship will make use of other, more private and personal means of contacting me rather than everything being aired in public. And this blog comes under that header, too.

This blog has been valuable "therapy" for me over the course of the last few years, which have been, to say the least, rather challenging and difficult for a variety of reasons. I've faced many obstacles — some of my own creation, some by other people being colossal jackasses and my not really having any power to do anything about that — and, while I wouldn't say my life is where I want it to be in the slightest, I feel that I've grown stronger as a person as a result.

But I feel like I need to start a new chapter. Leave behind the past, and look forward to a hopefully brighter future. It's not easy to shed emotional baggage — not to mention the physical baggage that mental stress can leave you with — but severing my ties with the past, be they social media accounts or indeed this blog, feels like the right thing to do right now.

I'm not disappearing entirely, mind you; as I mentioned in my previous post, I still intend to keep writing weekly on MoeGamer, which will become my main place to write about games I've found particularly interesting or exciting, so I encourage you to subscribe over there if you like what I'm doing. And for more general writing, I'm starting up a weekly TinyLetter — effectively a small-scale mailing list — for personal notes to those of you who have been kind enough to show me friendship and support over the last few years. If you're interested, you can sign up for that here. (Those of you for whom I have email addresses already, I'll be taking the liberty of signing you up automatically at some point on New Year's Day; I hope you don't mind, and if you do, please rest assured that if you decide you don't want to receive my notes, you can unsubscribe easily.)

Aside from that, though, at this point in my life I feel like broader Internet culture just doesn't hold the value it once did for me, so out the window the unnecessary crap goes for 2017. I'm not encouraging any of you to follow my lead and I'm certainly not casting any judgement on those of you who still find value in social media and Internet culture at large; I'm simply saying it's not for me, and explaining where I'll be going if you do want to find me.

If you'd like to stay in touch more privately, please either subscribe to my TinyLetter — which you can reply to just like a normal email — or drop me a message via my Get In Touch page with your email address and/or any other contact details you'd care to share.

For those who have supported this blog for any period of time — be you lurker or regular commenter — thank you, good night, and I wish you a happy, healthy and hearty New Year. Here's to 2017 being a better year for everyone.

2531: Planning to Unplug

After some discussion with my friend Chris recently — partly inspired by my recent post on mobile phone apathy — I've made the not particularly difficult decision to try and "unplug" as much as possible from the general noise of the Internet in 2017.

And I'm talking about more than just stepping away from Twitter and Facebook like I have done a few times in the past, as positive as those experiences turned out to be for me. I'm talking about a pretty thorough purge, and a return to a simpler, quieter life with fewer external stressors.

You see, the allure of the Internet and its ability to connect people from all over the world has kind of worn off somewhat for me. The last few years have demonstrated that there are a significant number of people out there who are more interested in conflict, oneupmanship and narcissism than actual meaningful interaction. The fall from grace of the games press — and many game journalists' pretty much unveiled hatred of their audiences — is just one of many examples of this, but the overall negativity that infuses what feels like the vast majority of online communications these days is just proving to be more trouble than it's worth.

I don't need that. It's not adding anything to my life — nothing good, anyway — so, I figure, why continue to put up with it? There's no need to.

As such, starting on New Year's Day, I'm going to begin a process of unplugging as much as I possibly can. Twitter and Facebook are both going completely, since the annoyance both of those bring to my life far outweighs the benefits of both of them. More significantly, I'm planning on ditching the smartphone age in favour of an older, simpler phone that doesn't bug me every five minutes with updates and notifications. At this point, I'm strongly considering picking up a second-hand N-Gage I've seen on Amazon, since that has the added benefit of being an underappreciated and increasingly rare gaming platform as well as a phone I very much enjoyed using when I originally had one.

I'm also going to draw my time with this blog to a close. I'm satisfied with what I've achieved here since I started, but the time has come to move on. I'm not going to give up regular writing, mind you; I'm still going to post weekly articles over on MoeGamer, since those have a clear focus, and I'm also intending to start a weekly TinyLetter as a more private, more personal substitute for my daily updates here. I'll post details on how to sign up for that towards the end of the year, so those of you who want to continue to follow what I'm up to can do so.

I'll be keeping more personal means of communication open. My email address and Google Hangouts accounts will still be active, as will my gaming accounts on Steam, Xbox Live and PSN. But the shouting into the void that is public social media will, hopefully, become a thing of the past. It's no longer enjoyable, useful or fun, so I have no need for it.

I'm not going to put my personal email, Google Hangouts and gaming account addresses in this post for obvious reasons, but if you are interested in staying in touch via any of these means, please feel free to drop me a line via my Contact page explaining who you are and how you know me. If we've chatted before in the past, great, no problem; if we've never spoken before, however, please do include a bit about yourself in your message.

That's the plan, then. And I anticipate that it will lead to a happier, more peaceful and less stressful 2017 for me. At least I hope it does, anyway!

2528: 30 Day Video Game Challenge All in One Day Because Otherwise I Won't Remember to Do the Rest of It

Every so often, one of those "30-day challenges" does the rounds on Twitter, Facebook and whatever, and while I'm often tempted to participate, I know that a few days in I'll probably forget all about it.

So to prevent that from happening, I'm going to answer all 30 prompts from the "30 Day Video Game Challenge" — which most people seem to have been doing throughout December, which is nearly over, anyway — in one post because fuck convention, I do what I want because I'm a strong independent woman who don't need no man.

All right. Let's begin.

1. Very first video game

Honestly hard to recall, because I grew up with gaming as part of my household. I was born in 1981 and estimate I probably started playing video games around the age of maybe 4 or 5 or so, which would mean my first video game would be one of the hundreds of pirated Atari 8-Bit games that my father and brother had acquired from the local "computer club".

Let's go with Star Raiders, even if it wasn't, because Star Raiders is awesome and naming that as my first video game surely gets me some gaming hipster cred.

2. Your favourite character

I have a whole bunch of favourite characters from a variety of different franchises, so again it's hard to pick one. If absolutely pressed to name just a single one, however, I think I'd probably have to go with Estelle from Trails in the Sky. She's cute, sassy, tomboyish and immensely appealing to me in all manner of different ways, both in terms of her looks and her attitude.

3. A game that is underrated

The original Hyperdimension Neptunia. While its technical shortcomings are self-evident from the moment you start playing it, and it makes some baffling mechanical decisions, it's one of the most memorable games I've ever played, through a combination of its absolutely charming characterisation and those aforementioned baffling mechanical decisions.

4. Your guilty pleasure game

I have no guilt in enjoying any games whatsoever, regardless of their content. I guess the only one I probably wouldn't make a point of talking about in polite company would be Custom Maid 3D 2, and even then I have been known to talk about its interesting stat-raising gameplay as much as its explicit polygonal pornography.

5. Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were)

I've encountered quite a few relatable characters over the course of my years in gaming. It's tempting to pick someone like Noire from the Neptunia series for her somewhat solitary tendencies, though I wouldn't describe myself as tsundere as she is. Someone like Rosangela Blackwell from the Blackwell series of adventure games from Wadjet Eye Games springs to mind; she's a writer who attempts to make the best of a difficult situation. And okay, I don't have a ghost partner with whom I put restless spirits to rest, but I did feel a certain degree of kinship with Rosa's general personality and attitude.

6. Most annoying character

The dude who had the "FOLLOW" marker over his head for almost the entire duration of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, who got to do all the interesting things while I ran along behind him shooting predictable waves of bad guys. That was the last Call of Duty I ever played.

7. Favourite game couple

Gotta be someone from Grisaia here, though I'm somewhat torn between Yuuji and Amane (Amane was my own personal "best girl") and Yuuji and Yumiko (whom I felt arguably made a "better" couple). Let's say Yuuji and Amane.

8. Best soundtrack

Final Fantasy XIV. My enthusiasm for Square's reborn MMO may have lapsed for the moment, but I never, ever tire of its masterful soundtrack by Masayoshi Soken.

9. Saddest game scene

The end of To The Moon. That was the first game since the first time I played Final Fantasy VII to genuinely make me sob uncontrollably.

10. Best gameplay

This is near-impossible to answer because I play so many different types of games that aren't directly comparable. If we're just talking games I've played in the last year, Dungeon Travelers 2's beautiful mechanics and level design are definitely near the top of the pile.

11. Gaming system of choice

Again, hard to pick one, since I do a lot of gaming on a variety of different platforms. I think in terms of "platform that has the most games I want to play on it", though, it's between PS4 and Vita, with Vita having the slight edge by virtue of having been around a little longer as well as being backwards compatible.

12. A game everyone should play

Splatoon. It's just such an utterly joyful experience — and totally free of the arrogant elitism that often plagues online games, thanks to Nintendo's arguably overprotective approach to online interactions — that even the most staunch anti-multiplayer gamer can't fail to have a good time with this one. And then it goes and has a fantastic single-player mode with one of my favourite final bosses of all time, too. Everyone should play Splatoon, and I hope it makes a comeback on Nintendo Switch.

13. A game you've played more than five times

I'm assuming this means "to completion". Final Fantasy VII is the first that springs to mind (I completed this at least 10 times during the first summer I became aware of the series) but you can also throw in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, too.

14. Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper

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15. Post a screenshot from the game you're playing right now.

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(Stock screenshot, I know, but I can't be arsed to turn my PS4 on and go through the faff of getting a screenshot off it.)

16. Game with the best cutscenes

The big "oh shit" moment halfway through Final Fantasy Type-0 is going to take some beating this year, but Final Fantasy XV also has plenty of incredible cutscenes, too. I can't in good conscience give this one to anything but a modern Final Fantasy game.

17. Favourite antagonist

Metal Face from the original Xenoblade Chronicles. In the English… uh, British dub, he struck an incredible balance between being comedic and terrifying. I remember I was genuinely shocked at quite how far that game went with the brutality and unpleasantness, and Metal Face was a great figure to express your anger towards.

18. Favourite protagonist

I've already given "favourite character" to Estelle from Trails in the Sky, so it's only right I give this one to Nepgear. Yes, Nepgear, because she was totally the protagonist of Neptunia mk2/Re;Birth2 and I will not hear a word said against the dear girl by anyone. Also I like Nepgear because she reminds me of myself. If, you know, I was a pretty young girl with a figure to die for rather than a 30-something hairy dude.

19. Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in

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20. Favourite genre

RPG, no question. Honourable mentions to point-and-click adventures, visual novels and arcade-style racing games.

21. Game with the best story

If you count visual novels, The Fruit of Grisaia, with absolutely no hesitation.

If you don't count visual novels, which I know some people don't, then I loved the Ys series, particularly Ys Origin. The amount of thought which had gone into the lore of that world is simply incredible, and Origin brought the legends you learn about in the first two games well and truly to life.

Damn, now I want to play Ys Origin again.

22. A game sequel that disappointed you

Mass Effect 2 is the only example that springs immediately to mind. I was one of the few people who actually rather liked the clunky RPG systems of the original, so I was disappointed when 2 felt like more of a conventional shooter, both in terms of mechanics and structure. The story was decent and I enjoyed my time with it, but not enough to want to either go back or play the sequel.

23. Game you think had the best graphics or art style

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I absolutely adore the art in the Atelier series, particularly the Arland trilogy. The lovely soft lines and pastel colours project such a wonderful aura of calm about them, and that's something that's altogether much too rare in an era of increasing grimdark.

24. Favourite classic game

At last, a question where I can honestly put Star Raiders as my answer and know there can be no argument about it.

25. A game you plan on playing

Trails in the Sky SC, Trails of Cold Steel and Trails of Cold Steel II. I've only played the first Trails in the Sky, but that was enough for me to fall in love with Estelle.

26. Best voice acting

The original Corpse Party on PSP. This was the game that made me switch from dubs to Japanese voiceovers whenever I get the opportunity. Although the audio was in a different language to one I understood, the sheer amount of passion that the actors infused their lines with was incredible, and a big part of the reason that game had such a profound impact on me.

27. Most epic scene ever

Battling Bahamut in Final Coil in Final Fantasy XIV is hard to beat, if that counts as a "scene".

28. Favourite game developer

I'm a fan of Falcom and Square Enix's Final Fantasy team, but I've grown to adore Idea Factory/Compile Heart over the last few years, so I think it's only right to give this title to them.

29. A game you thought you wouldn't like, but ended up loving

Criminal Girls. I picked it up mostly out of curiosity — and partly because I'd heard people call it shit and wanted to judge for myself — but discovered to my surprise that it was a brilliant game with some inventive mechanics and a thought-provoking story.

30. Favourite game of all time

I haven't played it for years now, but whenever anyone asks me this question my immediate thought is always Final Fantasy VII. So it's probably that.

Honourable mentions to Recettear, Geometry Wars 2 and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+.

2488: That Happened

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Are you familiar with the subreddit /r/thatHappened? It is one of the more popular subreddits out there, devoted to posting the sort of "PLEASE LIKE AND SHARE!!" garbage that people so like to festoon their social media walls with these days.

Posts that crop up on /r/thatHappened typically have a number of things in common.

Firstly, they usually involve someone making a point of saying they were doing something entirely mundane, like going to school or filling their car with petrol.

Next, they introduce another character of some description, typically a stranger, but one whom the author of the post mysteriously seems to know absolutely everything about, right down to their ethnicity, age, employment status, affluence and anything else you'd care to mention.

Optionally, a child can be involved in the story. If a child is involved in the story, said child will be quoted saying something that no child in the world has ever said, something which can easily be discerned by the use of vocabulary or turn of phrase. Even at my most precocious growing up, when I knew what words like "floccinaucinihilipilification" and "antidisestablishmentarianism" meant (and how to spell them), I still spoke like, y'know, a kid. Kids in these stories never do, usually coming out with some sort of profound wisdom you'd normally expect to hear from a wizened old karate master or something.

The author of the story, the character they introduced (who is inevitably a minority of some description) and/or the child will then become involved in some sort of altercation with an antagonist, who is almost definitely a white male, because as we all know white men are all literally Satan.

The story will then go one of two ways. 1) The author, the character and/or the child will then devastate their opponent in some exaggerated manner, either physically or with razor-sharp wit. The white male(s) will then inevitably leave with their tails between their legs. Alternatively, 2) The author, the character and/or the child will suffer some sort of sexist, racist, ableist, homophobic or transphobic indignity that is so profoundly terrible that the author's immediate reaction was to post it on Facebook rather than take it to the authorities.

In the case of 1): If the altercation took place in a public place such as a school, petrol station or coffee shop, everyone surrounding the author, the character and/or the child will then spontaneously break into applause and at least one person will be crying.

In the case of 2): The author will blame the altercation on a major event that has happened in the news recently and will confess to be "crying right now", with bonus points if they are doing so "into [their] cereal" or some other foodstuff.

In both cases, the author will then attempt to sign off with some sort of quasi-poetic but ultimately asinine truism and encourage everyone to Like, Comment and Share their post to "raise awareness". Said post (which is inevitably set to Public visibility, even if the author typically keeps their social media pages private) will then receive multiple thousands of Likes, Comments and Shares through the phenomenon of virality, with a significant number of people sharing it doing so blindly without bothering to ponder how exactly something quite so improbable happened, or indeed questioning the author on further details of the incident. (This was a terrible racist/sexist/ableist incident, don't you know? You can't ask questions, you might traumatise the poor soul further!)

Once you're familiar with this template, you can spot bullshit a mile off. I encourage you to get intimately acquainted with it before clicking that "Share" button in the future. On a related note, I also encourage you to familiarise yourself with Snopes.com if you aren't already.

That is all.

2436: Default Tone

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Earlier today, I was browsing through the digital editions of the old magazines I downloaded from AtariMania and came across a short series of articles written by my Dad about "going online".

This was pre-Internet "going online", however, involving a 64K Atari 800XL, a 300 baud modem and an external interface for plugging in such devices, and as such involved dialling up bulletin board services (BBSes) directly to access their information and files.

What struck me when reading my Dad's wide-eyed wonderment at being able to phone up a computer in Birmingham, read messages and download programs (a much more cumbersome process than we take for granted today, involving downloading the program into a "buffer" and then saving it to floppy disk or cassette afterwards) was the fact that any time he mentioned interacting with other people — usually through the BBSes' approximation of a "forum", which allowed people to post and reply to short, simple text-based messages — he was struck with how pleasant, polite and enthusiastic people were. These BBSes were generally run by enthusiasts rather than professional, commercial organisations and consequently tended to attract people in a similar vein.

Fast forward to today and I witness this somewhat sad, plaintive monologue from PR superhero Tom Ohle of Evolve PR:

I'm with Tom here, but I'm at a loss as to how we got from the enjoyably enthusiastic experience my Dad described in these articles to a situation where the default tone on the Internet is aggressive, confrontational, cynical and negative.

This isn't universal, of course — there are still plenty of community groups that are made up of genuine enthusiasts, and interestingly enough many of them are still centred around the Atari community — but even among such community groups you find trolls, naysayers and people who are always keen to see the negative in everything.

This is particularly apparent in the gamer community, who are seemingly never satisfied by anything — blockbuster triple-A games are too formulaic, indie games are too weird, imported games are too "censored" — but it happens right across the Internet, make no mistake.

It's usually explained away by the John Gabriel Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory:

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And for a while that was plausible. But it's not as simple as that any more: the rise in services such as Facebook means that people are quite comfortable being total fuckwads even with their real name attached to the nonsense they're spouting. And it seems to be the default tone these days, which is disheartening; it's actually unusual when you find a community that isn't full of complainers.

Perhaps it's a consequence of throwing everyone from all different backgrounds all together into a melting pot, resulting in inevitable culture clash. Or perhaps the world of today really does engender negativity rather than positivity — I know that I certainly don't feel particularly happy about the way the world is these days, though my way of attempting to counter it is instead to focus on the things that I do love.

Whatever the explanation, I feel it's sad how things have developed since those innocent days of dialling up that BBS in Birmingham and having to explain to my mother why we were on the phone for so long. I feel we've gone backwards rather than forwards, and that it's probably too late to do anything about it now.

All an individual can do, I guess, is try their best not to be part of it.

 

2429: Ads Ruin Everything

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(This was supposed to post last night but didn't for some reason.)

If anyone here is in advertising or marketing…kill yourself. It’s just a little thought; I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root – I don’t know. You try, you do what you can.

Kill yourself.

Seriously though, if you are, do.

Aaah, no, really. There’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers. Okay – kill yourself.

Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good.

Seriously.

No this is not a joke. You’re going, “There’s going to be a joke coming.” There’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself

Planting seeds.

I know all the marketing people are going, “He’s doing a joke…” There’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. Whatever, you know what I mean.

I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too: “Oh, you know what Bill’s doing? He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market. He’s very smart.”

Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking, evil scumbags!

“Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now? He’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.”

Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scumbags! Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet.

– Bill Hicks

It makes me feel a little bit sick inside to recall that when I was a child, I used to actually enjoy the advert breaks on commercial TV. There were ads I used to look forward to seeing, and ads that I still remember today that, to my knowledge, I only ever saw broadcast once.

The reason this memory makes me feel a bit sick is because I look around today and look at all the damage advertising has done to so many aspects of modern life, and I'm disgusted and ashamed.

Mobile phone games, once thought to be a true competitor to home computers and consoles, have been ruined by advertising. Creative work has been devalued to such a degree that it's now a significant risk for a developer to release anything at a price point above "free" (with in-app purchases of up to £80 a time, mind you), with ads punctuating every aspect of the game experience — or, in the worst-designed cases, actively getting in the way of what you want to do.

Games journalism has been ruined by advertising. Earlier today I saw a link to a "review in progress" of a soccer game. The "review in progress" format is usually reserved for games that it is impossible to review based on a launch-day experience — things like MMOs or multiplayer-centric titles. But it's increasingly being used by publishers to stake a claim on all-important search engine optimisation terms and ad revenue by posting an article that includes both the game name and the word "review" in its URL — thereby attracting anyone casually Googling "[game name] review" — without having to actually do a full job of reviewing a game in the traditional sense, and lapping up the ad revenue in the process. Not only that, we have sites spamming articles about the latest, most popular games — even if the sites' verdict on said game was that it wasn't very good, as has happened with Rock, Paper, Shotgun and divisive space sim No Man's Sky — and pulling in those precious ad revenue clicks by anyone Googling the game in question.

Online video streaming has been ruined by advertising. Earlier I was attempting to watch an episode of 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown — hardly the most thrilling or cerebral viewing, but I was enjoying it at the time as an accompaniment to dinner — and the ad break halfway through the programme crashed. When this happens, there is no way to skip the "broken" ad because oh no, you have to watch five minutes of adverts before you can see the rest of the programme, and if you can't watch those five minutes of ads, well then, you're not seeing the rest of the programme.

The Internet in general has been ruined by advertising. I can't think of many sites I've been to recently that haven't had some sort of obtrusive background, auto-playing video trailer or worse, complete page takeover making the browsing experience actively unpleasant. One of the worst offenders is one of the most useful sites on the Web: Wikia, which allows users to create wikis for any topic under the sun, but which makes the site practically unusable on mobile by first loading the page in, then loading a full-page pop-over ad a couple of seconds later which you inevitably click on when you're trying to simply follow a link in the text.

Computer software has been ruined by advertising. Whether it's Windows bugging you to upgrade or anti-virus software promising you a "free gift" that is actually just the ability to subscribe to its premium service for the same price it always is, not even in the world of productivity can you escape someone, somewhere trying to extract money from you.

I hate, loathe and despise it, particularly when I see how demoralised it makes people who want so desperately to do things ethically, but who inevitably find themselves trampled underfoot by people with fewer scruples.

I think I hate it most of all for what it's done to something I love, though: writing about games. There's little to no room for passion in the commercial games press today; instead, it's all "you must have [x] articles about [insert popular game name here] up by the end of the week". It does the wonderful diversity of the medium an incredible disservice, and I feel sorry for those people who, like me, are genuinely passionate about the things they enjoy, but who struggle to get heard and can't even think about making a living from what they love.

Unfortunately, it's the world we live in now. I'm kinda with Mr. Hicks on this one.

2360: A Life Without Social Media is a Life Without Pointless Outrage and Guilt

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I poked my head on to Twitter earlier — not to participate or engage, because I think I've well and truly broken my former addiction to it, but instead simply to share the article on Ys that I spent all day writing.

Literally immediately — and yes, I do mean literally — I saw someone indulging in one of the reasons I stopped wanting to use Twitter in the first place: pointless, unnecessary handwringing and guilt over things that were nothing to do with them.

The person in question, whom I had previously thought to be a fairly level-headed, rational sort of individual, went on an 8-tweet tirade about how awful the 4th of July was and how Americans enjoying and celebrating what has become nothing more than a holiday — regardless of its history — was somehow racist.

I closed the tab straight after I shared the link to my work, because frankly I don't have time for that shit.

One might argue that it's a good thing the Internet has supposedly made us all more socially responsible and aware of all the terrible things in the world — and perhaps it is. However, one thing the Internet very rarely does is actually do anything about these terrible things in the world. Whether it's people changing their Facebook avatars to "raise awareness" for a charity (I think they'd rather have your bank details, thanks), someone painting their nails in protest against the amorphous concept of "toxic masculinity" or flaccid "protests" against whatever the issue du jour is, Internet activism achieves absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Actually, no, that's not true — it does achieve something. But it's not anything good.

The only thing Internet activism achieves is to drive wedges between people — alienating people from one another, and drawing very, very clear battle lines that you can only ever be on one side or the other of. Us and them. The "right side of history" and its respective "wrong side". If you're not with us, you're against us. That sort of thing.

The inherently divisive nature of self-proclaimed activists' behaviour online has had an overall enormously negative impact on online discourse as a whole. As I noted in my post where I decided to set Twitter aside, people who believe strongly in things (or at least consider themselves to believe strongly in things) have a tendency to take an "I'm right, you're wrong" approach with no middle ground. And this is true for everyone who holds strong opinions on one thing or another, whether it's "censorship" in games, the supposed epidemic of "misogyny" that the Internet is suffering, or who they think should win the Presidential election.

The general unwillingness to take other people's perspectives into account has ruined all sense of rational discourse on social media. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it's certainly soured the experience for me; social media of all types (with the exception of this blog, if that counts, which I don't really feel it does) had just stopped being fun, and seeing that string of tweets today the moment I opened the Twitter page drove it home for me. There was a stark contrast between this and the private conversation I was having with my friend Chris at the time, whereby we disagreed on our opinions regarding the video game Limbo — he liked it, I hated it — and somehow, magically, managed to do so without feeling the need to convince the other person that they were wrong. We simply enjoy different things, and talking about those things you don't have in common as much as the things you do makes for some of the most interesting conversations.

You can enjoy your life, or you can spend your time getting pointlessly angry about things and people on the Internet. I've got games to play and things to write, so I know which one I choose.

2344: Life without Social

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2341: Taking a Break from Social Media; Here's Where to Find Me

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I've reached this situation before, as longtime readers will doubtless remember, but I think I've lost patience with public social media (specifically Twitter and Facebook), and as such I think for the benefit of my mental health and overall enjoyment of life, I'm going to step away. I'll talk more about the reasons in a moment for those of you who are interested, but before I do that I'd like to share the important stuff: how you can get in touch with me if you so desire.

Email: pjedavison at gmail dot com, or you can use the Contact page on this site, which comes through to the same address.

Google Chat: My only real form of private IM; same email address as above. I have a few other IM services but don't use them much, so please don't try and chat to me on Skype because I probably won't know you're trying to reach me!

Discord: You can drop in on my server at https://discord.gg/0PVr1hioSgchWQAs and/or add me as a friend under ID Amarysse#2465.

Pete's Pile of Shame: I'm going to post some "live" thoughts and media relating to the games I'm playing over at this new site. Feel free to leave comments.

Note that I will be leaving my various Twitter accounts open, but not monitoring them. They will simply reshare my articles and posts from my sites. Likewise for Facebook. Please do not try to contact me using either Twitter or Facebook, because I won't reply or even see your message!

If you want to play games with me, here are my various game IDs you might want:

PSN: Angry_Jedi
Xbox Live: sonicfunkstars
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/angryjedi
Battle.net: AngryJedi#2260
Final Fantasy XIV: Amarysse Jerhynsson, Ultros server (VinCo Free Company)

Okay. Onto the reasoning for me stepping away, if you care.

To put it bluntly, I'm tired of negativity, because that's what social media seems to have become a magnet for. If people aren't sharing the latest in Awful News from Around the World, they're trying their damnedest to be contrary at every opportunity. No-one agrees with anything any more; everyone seems to perpetually feel the need to "correct" everyone else or have a differing viewpoint.

It's the problem with everyone being able to express their opinions, in other words: everyone feels the need to have their own opinion, and heaven forbid it be the same as someone else's. Arguments erupt over the most stupid things, and people snark about things that don't matter with sufficient aggressiveness and determination to make considering talking about almost anything an unpleasant prospect. As someone who already feels a great amount of social anxiety during in-person interactions, to start feeling this way about online interactions, too — a manner of interacting which I had previously found much more comfortable and pleasant, but which I am starting to recoil away from — this is not the way I want to be feeling.

I'll give you a simple example from today: earlier, I learned that Microsoft sells hilariously awful-looking soft porn movies on its marketplace — a storefront which is accessible on its Xbox One console — and yet we still can't have Adults Only-rated games on consoles due to outdated concerns about Wal*Mart and Gamestop not stocking their shelves with anything controversial. I made a glib observation to this effect, and rather than a simple response of "Oh, interesting" or "huh, that is weird", the first response I got felt the need to correct me on my use of the word "porn". Apparently "topless" is not the same as "porn".

This interaction in itself wasn't anything unusual or particularly hurtful, but it was the proverbial straw that… you know. It exemplified everything that's come to frustrate me about social media in the last few years; coupled with the fact that no-one ever seems to be happy about anything any more — between people whining about misogyny, sexism, racism, homophobia, censorship, Donald Trump, black people, white people, Asian people, Nazis, neo-Nazis, Germans, Belgians, gamers, games journalists, Anita Sarkeesian, feminists, men's rights activists, Facebook, Twitter, Simon Cowell, Nigel Farage, gun enthusiasts, people who drink Mountain Dew, people who do fanart "wrong" and any number of other things, it's no wonder I'm feeling particularly miserable and negative about life in general, really, is it?

So the most sensible thing to do from a mental health perspective when something starts making you miserable is to cut that thing out of your life altogether. Preferably cold turkey. But the thing that always makes me hesitate is the fact that amid all the negativity and bullshit, I have struck up some genuine friendships, and I'd hate to lose those. I'd hate to lose contact with people like Mike Cunningham from RPGamer; Steve Baltimore, Joe "Eritach" Sigadel and several others from Operation Rainfall; the glorious perverts of Anitwitter such as Vyers, Ashley, Luka, Firion, Bubbel, Xiaomu, Rin, Radkatsu, TheHatPerson and doubtless hundreds of others I've forgotten to mention. (If I didn't call you out by name here, it's to save time and space, not because I don't want to stay in touch! Unless you're a shithead. In which case I probably wasn't following you anyway.)

As such, then, the details above are there in an attempt to stay in contact with people I want to stay in contact with, despite intending to leave what has previously been our primary means of communication behind. Please do feel free to use them and to say hi to me using any of the means listed; they're there to be used, so don't feel like you're "intruding" in any way by sending me a friend request or a private message via some other non social media means.

In order to continue one thing I did enjoy about Twitter — posting "live" thoughts and reactions to games I'm playing — I've set up this site to continue doing so. It'll probably be primarily PC games on there, as sharing console or handheld screenshots and other media is a bit more of a faff, but if you want to see what I'm up to and share your own thoughts on games I'm playing, feel free to drop by and leave a comment.

I'll be leaving my various Twitter accounts and my Facebook page active in order to share things like these blog posts and my other content from around the Web, but I won't be actively checking them, so please don't use them to try and get in touch with me. No, really; I've turned off notifications on my phone and everything, so if you try and say something via one of those means, I won't see it.

I'll be continuing to post here each and every day, sporadically on my new site and (hopefully) weekly on MoeGamer. Those are the best ways of keeping up to date with what I'm doing and having a chat with me, so feel free to follow and comment on any of them.

Hopefully stepping away will allow me to regain a little perspective and a lot of wasted time on a daily basis. If nothing else, it's probably healthy to get away from relentless negativity, particularly when I'm already depressed and anxious.

Thanks for reading if you came this far; hopefully I'll hear from some of you elsewhere on the Internet sometime soon.