#oneaday Day 575: Independence

There was a good post that went around earlier by the VTuber, journalist and activist Ana Valens, reflecting on her time as part of the games media landscape, and how she was part of the sector's slow decline into almost total irrelevance as SEO-baiting and click-chasing became the norm. I strongly encourage you to give it a read — you can do so by clicking here. Go on, I'll be here when you get back.

One of Ana's points in her piece was that as games media slowly circled the drain, particularly as groups such as Valnet and GAMURS started hoovering up once-respectable brands and then systematically destroying them one by one, a new type of "media" stepped in to take its place. This, of course, is the oft-trumpeted advent of YouTubers and streamers, whom many claim to find more "trustworthy" than the traditional games media in many cases — despite the obnoxious rise of the term "influencer", and the clearly documented use of "influencer marketing" being far more egregious than any sort of "paid reviews" that, in my experience, never actually took place when the traditional games press was at its peak.

But I'm not here to rant about the rise of YouTubers and streamers. They have their place — hell, I do a lot of stuff on YouTube and I've dabbled with streaming — but for me, they've never been an adequate replacement for having a publication that was "yours". Back in the '80s and '90s, this would be your magazine of choice: the one you would dutifully buy a copy of every month, or subscribe to if you could convince your parents to do so. As the new millennium rolled around and this World Wide Web thing became the norm — particularly as high-speed always-on broadband Internet established itself as the rule rather than the exception — print gave way to online, and we had some wonderful websites like 1up.com that were as much community as they were professional publication.

Sites like that still exist to a certain degree — I believe IGN and Gamespot still have a certain amount of social features, and the relaunched Giant Bomb is more community-focused than ever — but no site has ever managed to quite recapture that wonderful time: an age of personalities, of brave new frontiers in writing about video games, of figuring out exactly what the "games media" really was.

YouTubers and streamers don't quite replace that for me. Sure, it's nice to find someone who aligns with your values and tastes — and sometimes challenges them — but it's not quite the same as finding an entire publication, put together by a team of people, that resonates with you for one reason or another. There are YouTubers I watch fairly regularly, but I don't think of them at all in the same way as I do 1up.com in the early aughts, or favourite magazines like ACE, N64 Magazine and Electronic Gaming Monthly from the late '90s.

Part of that is their individuality, but it's also a completely different medium with its own appeal elements — and there's not necessarily the crossover you might expect. I will gladly read a lengthy magazine article about something I am interested in, but present me with someone who has made a multi-hour YouTube video on the subject and I will immediately switch off. People keep recommending Noah Caldwell-Gervais to me, for example, and I'm sure his work is very good, but his video on the Resident Evil series is seven and a half hours long. I am not watching that when I could be spending those seven hours doing literally anything else — including beating multiple Resident Evil games in that timeframe.

I'm the same with streaming. I'm sure there are some streamers I'd enjoy watching, but I just can't be arsed to spend my time doing so. I'm not someone who can easily split my attention between a stream and Something Else, and I genuinely think it's disrespectful to the creators to engage with a creative work like a game while watching a video or listening to a podcast. (I also think the opposite, to be clear; if I'm watching a video or listening to a podcast, the absolute most I will be doing at the same time is a tedious, repetitive task at work, or driving somewhere.) And, given the choice between spending several hours watching someone else stream a game and sitting down to play a game myself, I'm always going to choose playing something myself.

Conversely, give me someone who writes well, is passionate about what they do and who tries to find the fun rather than get bogged down in negativity — all traits I try to follow in my own games writing — and I will follow that person's blog to the ends of the Earth. In fact, this year I'm going to make a specific effort to follow more individual blogs and independent gaming sites, because, for me, those are the nearest alternative to what I was describing earlier: a publication that speaks to you, and which you feel comfortable checking in on regularly.

But how is an individual writer different from a YouTube video essayist or streamer? I guess in some ways they aren't. But for me it's all down to how that person delivers their message. I see a seven and a half hour YouTube video and feel like that's not something I'm ever going to spend time watching, but I see a light novel-length article and will happily read it from start to finish. It's just inherently more digestible to me — I'm not in this to "consume content"; I actually want to read interesting things! And, honestly, fair or not, the first thing I think of when I see a YouTube video of a length that absurd is "content". I see a website with a bunch of interesting-looking headlines and I think "fantastic, something to read".

I don't know how much sense I'm making here, so I'll stop talking in circles. I guess the main point I want anyone who happens to stumble across this to take away from the whole situation is that we should continue to reject the click-hungry corporate interests of publications under demonstrably awful labels like Valnet and GAMURS, and instead focus our time and attention on individual, independent creators that we enjoy the work of, and that we feel represent our tastes and interests well.

I aspire to be that for at least some people, and I know MoeGamer in particular has at least semi-regular readers. So I encourage you: if you find something that particularly resonates with you, be sure to tell the people behind it that you enjoyed it — and share it with your friends who you think might also enjoy it! Word of mouth is still an incredibly powerful thing on our increasingly broken Internet, and as the world continues to collapse all around us, it's going to be these little communities we can build away from corporate interests that will remain important lifelines for many.

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

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#oneaday Day 555: Silly things from around the Web

Yes, that's the NCSA Mosaic logo. I am that old.

I can't think of anything in particular to write about today, so I'm going to just talk about a few random things I happen to have seen around the Web recently, or perhaps not-so-recently in a few cases. Hopefully that will at least provide me with some inspiration to say something about each of them. So let's begin.

Lord Heath's farts

This is one of those things that I don't remember the specifics of how I stumbled across it, but I was thoroughly glad that I did. There's a chap on YouTube who goes by the name "Lord Heath", and his channel primarily consists of him doing short, light-hearted review videos of various soft drinks.

However, at various points in his past, he has also committed to video some of the most impressive flatulence ever emitted by a human being. I present to you exhibit A, which still makes me literally cry with laughter every time I watch it (and, more importantly, listen to it):

Everything about this is perfect. The earnest explanation. The explosive opening. The gradual howling of descending pitch. The crescendo towards the end as it comes in to land. The final thrust that accompanies the last burst. The fact that he's naked. Absolutely no notes whatsoever.

Five years I have been pissing myself laughing at that specific video. And I suspect I will continue to do so for many more years to come.

Jucika Daily

Jucika Daily originated on Twitter before migrating over to Bluesky when everyone realised that the place had become a Nazi bar. It's an account that posts Jucika strips, with Jucika being a mostly wordless Hungarian comic strip that ran from 1957 up until its creator's death in 1970.

Jucika centres on the life and times of an attractive young woman called Jucika and the various misadventures she has. She is depicted as being somewhat saucy, risqué and romantically forward, but the comic mostly parodies sexist attitudes rather than objectifying Jucika herself. Indeed, more often than not, Jucika is shown taking advantage of the sexist attitudes of the men around her in order to put herself at an advantage.

The Jucika Daily account posts comics from the 500 strip strong Jucika archive every day, and often includes helpful context in the alt text for each image. While the comics are almost always entirely free of dialogue, there are occasional Hungarian terms that appear on signs and suchlike, so the creator goes out of their way to explain these things where necessary.

At the time of writing, the account's creator is facing a large medical bill for an emergency kidney operation, but they are continuing to post strips while promoting their crowdfunding efforts. Even if you have no intention of handing over money to a complete stranger on the Internet, do at least go and check out the comic strips — they will make you smile.

CheapShow

The CheapShow podcast is ostensibly a show about going through the bargain bins and Poundlands of Great Britain and coming back with the treasure from amongst the trash, but really it's an excuse for best friends Paul Gannon and Eli Silverman to hang out and get very silly with one another — and to include us, the audience, in with their nonsense.

CheapShow has a number of regular features, including The Price of Shite, where Paul and Eli have to guess the prices of various pieces of tat purchased from charity shops; Off-Brand Brand-Off, where one or the other does a blind taste test of branded and unbranded variants of a particular product to determine which is best; and Eli's Country Urban Noodle Test-lab Kitchen, in which the pair taste-test different varieties of instant noodles. Alongside these, which tend to rotate in and out with each episode, the pair also often go on real-life "walkabout" episodes, where they decide to follow a walking tour on a route that falls outside of the usual "tourist" spots in London, and perhaps learn something along the way.

CheapShow works so well because Paul and Eli have magnificent chemistry with one another, and brilliant senses of humour that will resonate well with anyone around the age of 40 or so — particularly those who enjoy a good bit of old-fashioned British toilet humour. Paul and Eli are also both thoroughly lovely chaps outside of the podcast, and they deserve your support.

That'll do for today. I hope you find some enjoyment from these — I certainly have!

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#oneaday Day 550: I'm so tired of online

I've had to block two different people on two different platforms today, both for the same reason: showing up uninvited and spewing some sort of borderline-abusive quasi-scolding because they happen to disagree with something rather innocuous that I had said. The details don't really matter — though if you must know, they really were innocuous opinions, firstly on the fact that localisation into English is not "censorship" (which it isn't, and if you're already typing an angry comment, I invite you to stop, take a deep breath, and just leave), and secondly, that it was surprising someone with terrible handwriting and an obvious lack of care in what they were writing could actually spell a rather complicated surname correctly. Hardly the stuff of epic meltdowns, I'm sure you'll agree — although the localisation topic does tend to bring some of the absolute worst people on the Internet out of the woodwork.

I have a zero tolerance policy for rudeness these days. If a complete stranger were to show up at my door and start hurling abuse at me, I would slam the door in their face. And as such, if a complete stranger decides to show up at my digital door online and start hurling abuse, I will gladly slam that door in their face, too. The platforms on which I blocked these two particularly odious individuals today — my other site MoeGamer, and my Bluesky account — both have pretty robust self-moderation tools that allow you to put nasty little piggies out of sight, out of mind, permanently.

My favourite moderation tool in this regard is YouTube's "Hide user from channel" function. YouTube does many, many stupid things, but this little option is a work of genius. Effectively acting as a shadowban, using this function on a user not only makes the comment you used it on disappear from everyone else's screens, including yours, it also prevents any future comments from that person from appearing on any of your videos. However — and here's the good bit — the user in question has no indication that this has happened to them, meaning they can quite happily continue spewing their hateful rhetoric "at you", and you will remain completely oblivious, while they inevitably get more and more frustrated. This is just delightful.

But you know what? I'm tired. It sucks that these mechanisms have to be in place for a quiet life online these days. And I'm increasingly fatigued with the very idea of putting myself out there — for what, exactly? — only to get chucklefucks who are incapable of responding to a post without resorting to The Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies crapping up the comments sections.

I don't do anything online with the intention of pissing people off, or even being a little bit provocative. I'm honest about things — I'm honest about the person I am, I'm honest about the things I feel and believe, and I'm honest about the things I enjoy. The thing I am most honest about is that I have absolutely zero desire to argue with anyone online, which is why, as a general rule, on platforms such as my YouTube channel and MoeGamer, I make a specific effort to focus on the good and the positive.

Yes, I rant and rave and complain a fair bit here — I will freely admit that! — but this place is for me. It's my place for self-expression, for self-therapy, for processing my own thoughts, feelings and emotions, and it just happens to be publicly accessible. That does not mean I crave sweaty Internet-poisoned dudes in my mentions arguing with everything I say. I am more than enough sweaty Internet-poisoned dude for myself; I certainly don't need any more.

It might be time for another social media break over the holidays. I've already dialled things back a lot from where I was, which is good. But the holidays promise to be a nice time with family, so I'm looking forward to enjoying the peace and quiet. And that peace and quiet will have to be, at least partly, of my own creation.

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#oneaday Day 516: Longform playthroughs

I originally stopped doing longform playthroughs on my channel because it was taking forever to get through a single game (and I was getting bored with Final Fantasy III, probably my least favourite Final Fantasy — yes, I'm a sicko who likes Final Fantasy II), but with my recent playthrough of The Granstream Saga on PS1 proving to be quite enjoyable (if not exactly a viewer magnet, but I don't care about that) I think I'm going to do some more of these.

I've been hesitant to do so for the aforementioned reason, but at the same time I've also wanted to do some more, because I feel like that does better justice to longer games that perhaps can't be finished in a single sitting. And, given that it's easy for me to set aside some "retro time" to record this stuff of a weekend, particularly now I have the MiSTer Multisystem set up, I feel I can probably devote some proper time to a number of games I've been meaning to explore properly for ages.

I think the first one I'm going to do, and I'm going to kick this off alongside the ongoing The Granstream Saga playthrough, is Origin's Space Rogue. This is a game I have adored ever since I first played it on Atari ST back in the day, but I've never beaten it, at least partly because, as a kid, I always assumed it was so dauntingly massive it was impossible to ever beat. However, looking back at it as an adult, it definitely looks like it will be a manageable size, and with my big brave adult brain, I can probably "solve" anything it wants to throw my way. And if not, it'll be a fun experiment anyway.

The other reason I want to do this is because I'm conscious I've done a lot of "later retro" stuff recently with the PlayStation games, and I have no intention of stopping that, but I've been struggling to think of a way to kind of refresh my enthusiasm for older home computer (particularly Atari) stuff. And I think this might be a good means of doing that.

With two longform series on the go, I'm not intending on leaving the single-episode formats behind. There are some games where you only really need a single episode to see what makes a game tick, and from there you can decide whether or not you want to spend any more time with it. There are many arcade-style games that I've played for half an hour on a video as my first encounter with them, and now go back to frequently because I enjoyed that initial session so much.

There's no need to make additional videos on those games, though, because in most of those cases, the game is sort of "the same" each time — it's just my skill and knowledge of it developing over time. And while I don't doubt there's at least some value in demonstrating my own improvement in a series of videos, I feel if I'm going to spend multiple videos on one thing, it's more interesting to tackle a longer game that evolves over time with a narrative, character progression or simply a long overall playtime.

Stuff that I've casually earmarked to look at in this regard At Some Point™ include the aforementioned Space Rogue, Times of Lore, the Ultima games, Dungeon Master, the Eye of the Beholder series, the Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons games and Starflight. Some of these games I've covered before in a one-off format, and always felt like I probably should go back to them at some point.

So I'm going to, starting this weekend!

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#oneaday Day 510: Another great Eddy Burback video

There's a lot of absolute garbage on YouTube, but there are a few folks out there who do some truly special work. One of those people is Eddy Burback, who makes maybe two or three videos a year, but they're always very high quality, both in technical terms and in terms of the amount of research that goes into them. You may recall a while back I was rather taken by his video about giving up the smartphone life.

Today, he put out a new video called "ChatGPT made me delusional", and I sincerely recommend you set aside an hour or so of your life to watch it through in its entirety. Not skip through it at 1.5x speed, not "have it on in the background". Watch it. Because I think it is important.

Here it is:

Burback's aim for the video was to understand the phenomenon of "chatbot-induced psychosis" or "AI psychosis". This is where vulnerable people, already struggling with matters of mental health, would turn to large language model chatbots such as ChatGPT and use them as a form of "therapy" or as a substitute for actual human contact. There have already been some incredibly tragic results, as anyone who has ever read any science fiction would have been able to predict a mile off.

To explore how this might happen, Burback presented ChatGPT with an obviously ridiculous hypothesis based on complete fabrications: that he was the smartest under-1 baby of 1997, capable of producing great works of art, having in-depth philosophical discussions and demonstrating a deep understanding of complex mathematics. It took him two statements to convince the chatbot that this was the undeniable truth, and things just escalated from there.

Burback presented the chatbot with suggestions that his friends and family might not understand his brilliance, and it recommended he flee into the middle of nowhere and break all contact with them, including stopping sharing his location data with the person he trusts most in the world: his twin brother. He continued feeding the chatbot with increasingly ridiculous, obviously delusional statements and deliberate, complete and utter nonsense, and at no point did it attempt to deter him from the path it had set him on.

It was only at one point — the day when OpenAI controversially swapped its "4o" model for GPT-5 — that the chatbot had a momentary blip in feeding into his "delusions" (and, to its credit, suggested some psychological help facilities in the neighbourhood), but Burback pointed out that it was very easy for someone who was paying for the service to just switch it back to the old model, which seemingly finds it impossible to say "no" to the user.

What was particularly eerie about the whole situation is that Burback was using the premium voice feature on ChatGPT, which has clearly been designed to sound as "human" as possible, even going so far as to add realistic inflections and non-fluency features to the things it is saying. (It also pronounces emojis as completely unrelated sound effects, which somewhat detracts from the "humanity" of it all, but still.) In other words, it wasn't hard to see how someone suffering from real, genuine mental health problems might feel like they really did have a person in their phone who was willing to listen to them, tell them they were always right, and repeatedly give them some really, really bad advice.

It was actually kind of horrifying. The way the bot continually escalated into increasingly outlandish behaviour — culminating in him chanting mantras under an electricity pylon, wrapping his entire apartment in tin foil and tattooing a symbol into his thigh — was genuinely frightening.

I know we can all have a good laugh about how the chatbots get things wrong sometimes, but Burback's research here demonstrates that it doesn't just get things wrong (and I apologise for using this sentence construction, given its indelible association with AI writing, but it's an established turn of phrase for a reason) — it offers genuinely dangerous advice with minimal guardrails in place. And it does so without thinking about it or understanding why it might be dangerous — because it's not actually thinking or understanding anything at all. It's constructing sentences that, based on the data it has Hoovered up from across the Internet, it thinks are the correct responses to the things the user has been typing. It is, in essence, an extremely advanced version of the old ELIZA program on classic computers.

And it can go fuck itself.

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#oneaday Day 508: Pondering a new video idea

I play a lot of classic games on my YouTube channel, and that's not going to be changing any time soon. But I'm always pondering interesting new things I might be able to do with the channel, and something popped into my head earlier.

What if I do some videos specifically about programming in Atari BASIC, with an aim to showcasing what an interesting, flexible language it is — particularly compared to some other micros' BASICs — and basing the videos on the numerous tutorials published in magazines like Page 6 and Atari User? (Crediting the original writers, obviously.)

My thinking behind it comes from several perspectives: one, there is a niche interest "market" in videos about programming for classic computers, as evidenced by the thoroughly lovely Yawning Angel Retro channel, who specialises in programming the Amiga with the AMOS language.

Two, I just think it would be an interesting twist on what I do on the channel.

Three, I will probably learn something from it — albeit something that may not necessarily be especially "useful" in the modern world.

Four, it's something to do with the magazines I've been acquiring besides just doing flipthroughs of them (which I also intend to keep doing on an occasional basis).

And five, it's something a bit different to do with the computer stuff. I'm not exactly bored of doing the games — there are still myriad titles I haven't covered on both Atari 8-bit and ST! — but I have reached a point where I want to do something a little different. This is part of the reason I've done so much console stuff on the channel recently — that and the MiSTer Multisystem 2 making it so easy to capture from all manner of different platforms — but I'm always conscious that the backbone of my channel was built on Atari home computer stuff.

I think I will try an experiment in the coming weeks and months. I will start with the absolute basics (no pun intended) for the sake of those who have never programmed in '70s/'80s computer BASIC, and gradually move on to the Atari specialisms: graphics, sound, manipulating the Display List, Player/Missile Graphics and all manner of other things. Some of these things I've never understood, so I feel like taking the time to make a video version of some of these tutorials may well allow me to improve and advance my own knowledge — something I've always kind of wanted to do, but never really made the time for.

In time, maybe I'll even be able to Snorkify some Atari BASIC games. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we…?

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#oneaday Day 499: A productive day of video-making

The MiSTer Multisystem 2 has been everything I hoped it would be: an all-in-one retro gaming device that I can very easily use to both enjoy classic games on a CRT television, with all the benefits that offers, and be able to capture footage from said games to make videos about them. The dual outputs on the Analogue model of the Multisystem 2 means I can do both at the same time, and it's a real delight. So I made a grand total of five (count 'em!) videos today, and I feel like this is going to help me broaden my whole remit on my YouTube channel considerably.

I've built a small following with Atari-focused stuff, and I by no means intend to leave that behind completely. But there's so much fascinating retro stuff out there that I'd love to explore on video that it just seems daft not to… do that.

My aim for the channel has always been simply, to quote my own description, "make you feel like you're sitting down with an old friend to enjoy some great (and occasionally not-so-great!) games." The Atari focus just sort of happened with my own personal interest in the platforms, but it was never intended to be an Atari-exclusive thing, otherwise I would have branded the whole channel that way. Indeed, I'm having a lot of fun exploring weird and wonderful console titles right now — and some of my most successful, popular videos have been in that area.

I think the easiest way to put it is that my YouTube channel reflects how I like to enjoy games when I'm not on camera — I'm fascinated to explore the overlooked and underappreciated titles from both today and yesterday, and there's nothing I like more than being able to share my experiences with people, and those people find a new favourite as a result. As such, with a few exceptions — I'm almost certainly going to do some Ridge Racer at some point — you probably won't see "big name" or "triple-A" stuff on my channel, but you will see some lesser-known stuff that I either enjoyed a lot back in the day and think not enough people know about, or things that I've discovered more recently.

They draw minimal numbers, but I'm also pleased to be back into doing some long, episodic playthroughs. I'm really enjoying revisiting The Granstream Saga right now, and doing video series like this is a good reason to finally settle down and play some older RPGs that, for one reason or another, I have never gotten around to. I have a very long list of stuff that I'd like to play, and ideally I'd love to play them on the channel!

One thing at a time, though. The Granstream Saga is ongoing, but if I remember rightly that isn't super long overall. And then I guess I will have to spin a wheel or something to pick what comes next!

Anyway, if you're not subscribed and want to join me exploring some fun games, head on over to the channel and hit the subscribe button, maybe check out a few videos. It'll be like the good old days when we went over to each other's houses to play games together. Remember that? It's feeling like an increasingly dim and distant memory, but gosh, I miss it. That channel is the nearest thing I've got right now, so I hope at least a few of you derive the same value from it that I do.

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#oneaday Day 497: Not exactly Shakespeare

You know sometimes you find yourself on the Web, idly browsing through nonsense, pointedly avoiding social media, and you occasionally stumble across something that is not exactly important, but which you nonetheless feel like talking about? That's me with the website Wikitubia, a website which is, as the name suggests, a wiki about YouTubers and streamers.

In particular, I'm exceedingly fond of the "Quotes" section many pages sport, which quote the subjects of their page saying things that are regarded as somehow "noteworthy". Except I don't believe Wikitubia has any sort of "notability" criteria for these quotes, which means you end up with a list of complete non-sequiturs, devoid of context, that, more often than not, do not paint a particularly rosy picture of the YouTuber or streamer in question.

As an example, here's the list for the YouTuber "Jerma985", someone I have never watched and do not particularly care to watch, especially after reading this list of quotes — which, as the red scrollbar on the right suggests, is not the entire list:

Quotes
"You know... don't... say... sw... swears..."
"Okay, if I... if I chop you up in a meat grinder, and the only thing that comes out, that's left of you, is your eyeball, you'r- you're PROBABLY DEAD!"
"LIFE IS PAIN! I HATE-"
"OH LOOK IT'S A SHPEE!"
"And take care, everybody."
"Game sucks."
"IT'S OVER."
" What the F*CK is that thing?! "
"I'm not tiny, I'm compact."
"Check out this unprecedented grassroots movement from my boy Bern over here. Thanks guys. Can we get a BerniePog in the chat? BerniePog. BerniePog."
"Brush your teeth if you wanna not go to f*cking jail kids"
"HEY, how about you suck a fart out of my a**!?"
"Coffeeee, cheetooos, chickeeen..."
"Let's go, JERMA VS.STAR JERMA VS.STAR, EVERYBODY WANTS TO SEE THIS HAPPEN!"
"That joke's getting edited out of the video"
"Oh my god, I'm gonna squeeze an orange in my own mouth, and f*cking that's how I'm gonna drink orange juice tomorrow morning."
" I don't want you to ship me a Original Xbox. ".
"Merry Christmas, motherf*cker!"

Not exactly Shakespeare, is it? But then I'm not expecting a YouTuber to be Shakespeare. I just find it endlessly amusing that these specific quotes are picked out as being somehow "iconic" of the person in question. Of this list, I feel like Jerma comes off particularly well with "HEY, how about you suck a fart out of my ass?" and "Merry Christmas, motherfucker!" Truly one of the great philosophers of our time.

Let's do another one! Here's a selection from Videogamedunkey, a YouTuber I specifically dislike for a litany of reasons:

Quotes
I'm Hitman! (Hitman)
I'm Megaman!
I'm Sneakman!
I'm outta here!
I'm going back in!
GOTCHA!
What the b*tch?
Singed Flip!
Let's go to the ocean. (GTA 4)
Kindle? Nook? More like Josh Cook!
Good Job Dunkey.
Good Bye Dunkey.
YOU B*TCH.
Oh no... these people must have beat this whole boring a** game.
What the hell is going on, what is this, WHAT THE F*CK IS GOIN ON?!
It'll be YEEEEEEEEEEEEEARS before you can face me, Soraka!
No, not the Captcha!
Aww, sh*t...

This one is a particularly good example of what I'm talking about here, containing such pearls of wisdom as "GOTCHA!", "YOU BITCH" and "Aww, shit". As I'm sure you are aware, Videogamedunkey not only popularised these iconic phrases through saying them often enough to be quoted on Wikitubia, he actually invented all of them. Yes he did. He really did. (No he didn't.)

Another! In the interests of fairness, let's do someone I like. But that means I have to find someone I like who is listed on Wikitubia and who has a Quotes section. Bear with me a moment (grawr)… nothing for LGR, nowt for Classic Game Room, nada for Good Mythical Morning, I bet Game Grumps has something, though… nope, nothing for them either… Ah, here we go. ProJared!

Quotes
"Hey! It's me, ProJared!" - Jared at the beginning of almost every video he makes
"I'm playing X." - Jared's cold open intro
"Jim the knight. Killed by bees." - Jared in his first Hydelide video
"Yes, I cheated, and I'm okay with that." - Jared on cheating in Two Worlds
"OH MY GOD, IT'S MONSTER HUNTER! I LOVE IT, IT'S SO MUCH FUN!" - Jared in his Monster Hunter One Minute Review
"I rate this an X out of 10." - Jared at the end of almost every video he makes
"Hello ladies. And dudes."
"'Ey girl, what's up? You wanna f*ck?"
"Ready, go!" - Jared in his One Minute Reviews
"X gets a X out of 10 from me." - Jared in his One Minute Reviews
"Don't be that guy! Nobody likes that guy!" - Jared in a DnDecember video
"I have the receipts." - Jared in his "YOU'VE BEEN LIED TO" video
"The next time you see someone being cancelled with a mob attacking them and going after them, ask 'What's the other side's story?' 'Is there more to this?' How do you know that they deserve to be bullied and shamed? Through evidence? Or through public opinion? Nobody likes cancel culture, until they get an opportunity to cancel someone." - Jared at the end of his "YOU'VE BEEN LIED TO" video
"Ever wonder WHY a game is good? Or why it's bad? I'm ProJared, and I'll tell you why. Emphasis on RPGs and retro games most people have never heard of!"

If you're wondering where that random epic rant about "cancel culture" in the middle came from, it was from his extremely well-measured response to some exceedingly nasty allegations that were made against him in 2019 — allegations which he later comprehensively disproved, leading to one of the most impressive redemption arcs I've seen in the online space.

While I know some folks have an issue with the term "cancel culture" due to it often being abused by the worst people on the Internet today, 2019 was a time when the term "cancelling someone" was at its height, particularly among those who were doing their best to destroy someone's reputation. It was often paired with the "crab rave" GIF and coupled with hashtags along the lines of #[name]isoverparty, celebrating the "death" of someone's career online.

Aside from that… again, not a particularly solid list of quotes, is it? I mean, "I'm playing X" and "'Ey girl, what's up? You wanna fuck?" are hardly the sort of thing great literature is made from, are they?

Anyway, Wikitubia is kind of stupid and its Quotes section is even more stupid. But it is, at least, a little bit amusing. And no, I'm not on there. I'm not nearly noteworthy enough, even for Wikitubia — although I must say, I am kind of surprised that some of the particularly annoying people my wife occasionally watches (several of whom have millions of subscribers) are nowhere to be seen, either. I guess it's because the vast majority of Wikitubia seems to be gaming-related YouTubers and streamers, perhaps unsurprisingly. Gaming enthusiasts are exactly the sort of nerds who would compile a list of stupid quotes from people they watch online, after all.

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#oneaday Day 472: Goodbye and thank you to Billy Chaser

I've made a YouTube video about this (above), but I thought I may as well type something up also. I will likely repeat myself.

Today I learned that a few days ago, Billy Hudson, better known as Billy Chaser and one half of The Game Chasers on YouTube, lost his battle with a brain tumour and passed away. I was deeply saddened by this news, because Billy was a wonderful part of the retro gaming community, and someone who had entertained and inspired me ever since I first stumbled across his channel about ten years ago.

At that time, I was working a boring, dead-end office job. I wasn't having a terrible time or anything, but I was bored and creatively unfulfilled. I was fortunate enough to have a desk with its back to the wall and in a corner, so I could watch YouTube videos without anyone noticing.

As it happened, prior to that job I had never really taken the time to explore YouTube at all, so I didn't really know where to start. I forget exactly how I found my way to The Game Chasers, but it was via a deep and branching rabbit hole that included channels such as Classic Gaming Quarterly, Classic Game Room, LGR, ProJared, Game Grumps, Game Sack and all manner of other folks, many of whom are still making great videos to this day.

The Game Chasers was really striking, though. This was a YouTube channel that had the production values of a TV show. Each The Game Chasers video could have easily been a broadcast TV show. Billy, one half of the core pair of Billy and "Shady" Jay, was a trained filmmaker, and it showed in his fantastic editing for each and every episode of the show.

The Game Chasers' concept was simple. It was like those reality shows where people rummage through storage lockers in search of treasure, but with a focus on video games. Billy and Jay would visit flea markets, antique stores, storage lockers and all manner of other places in search of retro classics — and often find some real wonders. This was in the years before "graded" collecting pushed the price of retro games up into ridiculously unattainable territory for most of us, so their stories were inspiring; indeed, watching The Game Chasers was pretty much the direct cause for me expanding my own collection so massively.

Billy was a wonderful character. He was funny and silly, but smart and knowledgeable. Part of the beauty of The Game Chasers is it made the viewer feel included. It made the viewer feel like they were part of the excitement of taking these trips, and part of the joy of discovering hidden treasures in dusty old lofts. It made the viewer feel like a valued friend.

And that was important to me! I have tried, and I have tried, and I have tried to get across to the people I know "in real life" how important retro gaming and computing is to me, but with each passing year, I grew more and more lonely as it became very clear that people not only don't care, they are, at times, actively hostile.

This was heartbreaking, because a hobby is so much more fun if you can share it with people. And as time went on, it was starting to feel I just… didn't really have anyone like that. As unhealthy as parasocial relationships are, watching shows like The Game Chasers made me feel less alone. It made me feel like there were other people out there as passionate about this as me. It made me feel like I wasn't the only one who still enjoyed all this stuff that I grew up with — and for more than just nostalgia. I enjoy collecting, playing and exploring retro games in the here and now — including both revisiting titles from my past, and discovering brand new favourites. That's entirely what my YouTube channel is about.

And that's why it's so sad that the retro gaming community has lost as wonderful a friend as Billy was. Most of us didn't know him personally, but I suspect if we found ourselves at a convention, he would have made the time to shake each of us by the hand and make us feel as welcome as we do watching his videos. And those out there who were fortunate enough to know Billy in real life had nothing but wonderful things to say about him. He would play up the joker aspect for the camera, but in private he would be an incredibly supportive friend.

The world is a worse place without Billy in it. And I hope wherever he is now, he finds eternal happiness amid endless aisles of every video game one might ever want — and endless friends to enjoy them with.

Rest in peace, you magnificent chode. You will be missed, not just by your close friends, but by the entire retro gaming community.

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#oneaday Day 458: A salute to Maru

It's a shame to start my holiday by responding to some bad news, but I couldn't let the passing of such a beloved figure pass without acknowledgement.

I am, of course, referring to the very sad departure of Maru, the Scottish Fold cat who has been a YouTube star since 2008, making him one of the original sources of "cat videos", that ever-reliable activity of those who can't think of anything better to do on the Internet. His owner announced the sad news yesterday, and I have to confess, it made me very sad indeed.

I know first-hand how hard it is to lose a pet. It is like losing a family member. Hell, it is losing a family member. It may be a family member who cannot speak in the same way as we can, it may be a family member who doesn't go out and get a job in the same way we can (although I bet in his own way Maru "earned his keep" in monetary terms!) but it doesn't make them any less important or meaningful to our existences.

Maru's passing is so sad because he was not only clearly a truly beloved pet for his owner, he was effectively a pet of the entire Internet. While I feel the number of people who know who you are referring to when you say "Maru" these days has declined somewhat compared to, say, ten years ago, he has still, without a doubt, touched hundreds of thousands of lives, possibly even millions. In some cases, he may have touched people's lives without them knowing who he was, but the joy he would have brought them in that brief encounter is something truly remarkable.

Maru was a cat with personality. He had a distinct attitude about him, and he clearly behaved in ways that he enjoyed. Granted, I suspect his owner would have "encouraged" him to engage in behaviours that made good videos, but I suspect those behaviours initially emerged completely organically. Our own cats both do silly and hilarious things, completely unprompted by us, so I have little to no doubt that one day, Maru would have just spontaneously leapt into a cardboard box, or belly-slid his way into a beer bottle multipack casing.

He also loved to fit himself into things that were not cat-shaped, such as boxes that were too small for him, and even glass bowls. Again, I suspect this is something that almost certainly happened naturally one day, and then he may well have been "encouraged" to do this a little more often for the sake of some videos. But I certainly don't begrudge Maru's owner — still mysterious and perpetually off-screen to this day, without even their gender being widespread knowledge — any of the fame their beloved cat attained during his long and very clearly happy lifetime.

Maru enjoyed 18 joyful years on this planet, and during this time he must have been one of the most loved pets in the entire world. Because, like I say, not only did he have the love of his owner — who clearly adored him — but he also had the love of pretty much the entire world, too. There aren't many individuals in this world who can truly say that; there aren't many people who can truly claim to be universally beloved, regardless of nationality, language, background, socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, sexuality or any of the other things you might care to mention that act as ways of dividing ourselves from one another.

Maru was a universal. Maru felt like he would be a constant. Sadly, he has gone to a better place now, but I suspect he will continue to be remembered and loved for many years to come. We love you, Maru, and I hope that one day we will have the chance to see you again.

I'll leave you with the tearjerking words of his owner, posted today, and I'm sure we all join them in saluting our dear, departed, beloved cat and the wonderful life he head.

"I'm lonely, so be sure to be born again soon!" I said to him insistently, but he is by nature a laid-back cat, and I wonder if he is relaxing in the sky now. But he loves to surprise us, so I'll wait patiently, hoping for a surprise from him.

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