What Social Media Means to Me

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Hello.

If you’re reading this, it’s possible you have followed a link from my Twitter or Facebook profiles after one of my online offerings “blew up,” as the saying goes. You might be wondering why I put together a blog post rather than some link to my works to piggyback off my “blowing up,” so let me tell you.

I hail from the era of Usenet and the early pre-AOL days. The sentiment of that proto-social media community was pretty unanimously “the Internet (yeah, we’re talking about the era where proper English dictated that the word was always capitalized) isn’t real.” It’s a social programming that I haven’t amended… and don’t particularly feel compelled to either.

Social media exists in my sphere of consciousness to peddle my wares and occasionally shitpost. It’s why I have more than one real life acquaintance and/or friend that has me blocked on various social media platforms (this is perfectly okay, for the record). Any nuggets of wisdom you find from me on Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or wherever is going to be few and far between, and you’ll only disappoint yourself looking for them.

I prefer to leave my serious observations of insight to this blog… that rarely updates, which should tell you how often I have wisdom or insights to share. I’m just a dude, trying to create my own problems to resolve… then sell them to you!

I’m told I also intentionally construct things to make them look far more absurd then they really are. But that’s just silliness, I tell you.

Anyway, have a good day, afternoon, evening, or night. Feel free to explore this blog if you wish. Maybe buy something as long as you’re here.

Or don’t. It is a silly place, after all.

This Was/Is/Will Be the Reason the Revolution Failed/Fails

Alex Laughlin has a rather interesting piece he composed for Defector that I found fascinating, but probably not for the reason Laughlin intended, and allowed me to embrace in the inner old man that I’ve been slowly becoming as I shake my head at “kids these days.”

https://defector.com/resonate-podcast-festival

The article itself chronicles the rise and inevitable fall of the Podcast Boom, as defined by the Resonate Festival, and how ironically it is perhaps in a better place now that all the big money interests are gone and they are allowed to simply be themselves.

I drew a different lesson from it, though. I saw a collection of people desperate to find some handhold for their passion project to make money and allow them to continue doing it. Podcasts have merely become the latest creative venture where people are reckoning with a depressing reality of humanity and the societies we build around themselves.

“Podcasts are dead?” The average human asks. “But I listen to Joe Rogan every day!”

That is the painful truth that quite literally every creative medium faces eventually. Just like books. Just like artwork. Just like movies. Just like television. Video games are right in the middle of that devastating sorting. Streamers are getting beaten with that reality right now like it’s a mafia shakedown.

It happens to all of us.

The discovery that the average human being could not give one single solitary fuck about creative work, with the exception of a handful of rather generic, unchallenging examples that they can nod their head to, not require a terrible amount of thought, and give them a momentary distraction before they jump back into the rat race that is their daily lives.

It is nigh impossible for anyone other than those few examples to ever make a living solely on creative work, and often times the people that do are more lucky to get that critical opportunity than simply being so good they can’t be denied the spotlight. Sure, about twenty gazillion people listen to Joe Rogan. A million billion people will happily read something from John Scalzi or Stephen King. They’ll gleefully line up to watch the next big film starring one of the Wilson brothers (I actually have forgotten just how many of them are in Hollywood right now). Hideko Kojima could be the producer of “Kojima Shits on a Plate” and have approximately seven million people desperately asking if it comes with a “Smell-o-Vision” feature.

(I want to be clear that I’m not attempting to particularly drag anyone I’m naming here. Another harsh truth that the desperately creative don’t like to face is that there are very, very few genuinely awful creators who don’t know their craft at the top of any given heap. They are more than great at what they do, even if they rose to prominence due to things outside of their creative skill set. Time to cope and accept it, Mr. I Got 17 Subs via Spotify.)

But 99.9% of the people who try their hand at creativity are simply never going to make enough and get enough of an imprint for it to their path to a comfortable life. That’s the reality, and no amount of social or economic upheaval is going to unlock more slots in the collective interest of human kind. It’s an exclusive club, and you are overwhelming unlikely to ever get an invite. That simply has to be okay, because that’s not going to change.

Now, I’m not trying to deter anyone from creating. That would be… (looks back at his bibliography) rather hypocritical. If you are willing to tear yourself apart to scream into a void, go for it. Just don’t expect anyone to listen. Don’t expect anyone to particularly care. If you get lucky, get that shot, and find a hand hold to build from, go for it, don’t look back, and don’t apologize for your good fortune.

But don’t spam social media with your links. Don’t be a nuisance trying to advertise yourself to a public that doesn’t give a fuck. Don’t be a shit heel trying to drag down anyone you think “got lucky,” thinking that it’ll help you advance in any tangible way.

And get off my lawn.

Metaphorically, of course. I don’t have a lawn. I live in a moderate apartment in a suburban commercial district.

Here We Go Again (On the Price of Games)…

So, I would never have thought that I’d have a discussion about Kirby beyond the real history behind the character (he was named after the lawyer that helped Nintendo win the rights and trademark to Donkey Kong). But here we are!

So, it turns out that the price for the new Kirby Air Riders has been released, and boy, are some people on social media not very happy that it clocks in at the $70 price point. This is not at all surprising to me. In my almost five decades on this earth, I have seen this unique Five Stages of Grief play out specifically twice (to the former Blizzard developer that snarled at me about it, no this isn’t some “nostalgia” speaking, I was no snot-nosed kid the last two times this happened; I was a grown ass man paying for my own stuff and my memories are very clear).

From the era where games were literally all over the place (those Super Nintendo ads from the early 90s that have game prices anywhere from $35 to $90+ aren’t fake folks, they are very, very real), to the early days of standardized prices, to the bump to $60 in the early aughts, to the now $70 bump… gamers have always bristled when the prices went up. Hell, this current grousing isn’t even particularly worse. So, if I seem dismissive of it to some small degree, it’s for a reason. This isn’t new, and there’s nothing particularly “fresh” about this current age of protest that tells me it’s going to be particularly different this time around.

At least, not specifically in gaming. Economic pressures as a whole are a different tale that has yet to be fully told.

It’s also a big part of the reason why “taking a side” on this isn’t as easy as both “sides” want it to be, because there are legitimate reasons on both sides, in a way that wasn’t exactly true the last few times this happened.

Let’s start with how the industry’s price increases are valid. Yes, it is very true that games and game hardware has not kept up with inflation over the last twenty-some-odd years. Just like with the bump to $60 as the industry standard, there comes a point where a static price point simply becomes untenable, and the industry probably held out longer than it should have.

And I say that because it is very clear that there’s a degree that the complaints are empty. Contrary to what gamers want to believe, people are willfully spending more than they ever have on their games, even adjusting to inflation, thanks to how “free-to-play” games are happily fleecing gamers far more harshly than up front prices ever did. The same community complaining about $70 cover prices generally has no problem dropping $100 a pop on a gacha system slot machine (though they don’t hesitate to complain about it).

They also gripe about $80 games… yet happily spent $60, then $10, then $15, then $20 on increasingly robust DLC packages. This isn’t economic uncertainty speaking here… it’s mere sticker shock, and I personally don’t find that a particularly compelling argument from people who absolutely have the means to pay the extra cost (which I would suspect is a significant majority of gamers).

There is also the simple reality that hobbies are expensive, and gamers honestly get off pretty close to the easiest on that score. Name any hobby, of any slant, in any area of interest, and hoo boy, if you think the prices of games are problem…

Just ask any avid hiker about the costs of just being able to fucking walk through the wilderness. If you are going to be invested in something to the point that you want to genuinely enjoy that experience, it’s simply going to cost you a lot of money. There is a massive degree that it is, to put it bluntly, unavoidable, and a reality that said hobbyist has to accept.

Now, with all that said, there’s no small degree that the arguments of the industry are more than a little bit of bullshit as well. While it’s true that gamers ask for more than they ever did, game developers and studios and publishers overplay that desire.

“Gamers want 8k/120fps with photorealistic 3D effects… etc. etc.”

Do we, though? Do we really? The biggest hardware hit of the last generation didn’t even have 4k capability. Hell, it couldn’t even run a lot of its games at its stated max performance of 1080p. And the “most powerful console of its time” finished in such a distant third that its publisher now is trying to sell their software subscription service to anyone willing to host it.

“Games require so many more people and take so much more time that prices have to reflect that…”

Does it though? One of the best games of the year sold for $50 with a team of (if I recall correctly) 30 developers, not including the contracted work by voice actors and whatnot (which most publishers don’t count in their employee roster anyway).

While I am dubious that smaller teams producing smaller games with less development time sold for less is a replicable answer across the entire industry (play time became a selling point in the “golden age” of gaming because gamers rejected that idea in the 90s and 2000’s), it is certainly possible to deliver a premier experience with less overhead, and its been done fairly frequently.

And finally, there is the reality that the purchasing power and disposable income for a lot of gamers hasn’t meaningfully increased over the years. I am not convinced that group is a majority by any stretch (again, people are genuinely ponying up despite the increases), but its a group that certainly exists, and doesn’t like the idea that the industry is leaving them behind. They can see the writing on the wall here, and that they are being priced out of the games they loved as children as those companies chase the disposable income of those higher up the purchasing ladder.

Yeah, all those words to say… I don’t know if there is a simple answer to this problem. I’d say that there really can’t be a solution until the Great Revolution overthrows this late-stage capitalist world… but considering how poorly communist governments tend to treat games (or any artistic expression, for that matter), there might not be a particularly satisfactory solution on the other side, either.

On Messaging…

For nearly the last year, the political left in America has been obsessed with “messaging,” and “strategy,” and have been very, very loud in their displeasure that the Democratic Party “leaders” aren’t doing it right, at least, not certain leaders.

There’s a degree that this obsession is understandable. We are desperate for an answer. Something we can do that will sway enough people in our direction. That we must have made a mistake, and that if we just do [x] or [y] different, that will be enough!

But let me offer this possibility: What if “messaging” and “strategy” don’t actually matter as much as we want it to, and all these beatings we’re giving each other (and ourselves) aren’t going to really make that much difference?

Strategy and messaging is fine and all, but it all hinges on a potentially dangerous assumption. That the units in play are actually competent enough to understand the message, and cares enough to take it to heart. It is not the slightest bit clear that the “Average American Voter” is either of those things.

Imagine sitting down at a chess board, and you discover that half of them are Monopoly pieces, another seven are actually glued to the board, the two bishops are both on black squares, and four of the pawns are actually on the other side of the board.

At that point, any strategy you might have had needs to go out the window.

Oh, and every five turns, the rules change into an entirely different game. The “Average American Voter” is not only dreadfully incurious, they also have the object permanence of a demented goldfish that had meth sprinkled into its tank. What they care about now is likely not what will matter to them five weeks from now. And frankly, all it would take is one squirrel with its tail on fire running past them, and all your carefully crafted “messaging” will matter slightly less than fuck all.

So, my advice? Take a deep breath. Don’t hurt yourself or others. There’s a degree that you can do “everything right,” and it’s just not going to sink into the heads of a good chunk of people. Worrying too much about messaging right now is a fool’s errand. We don’t have to do this to ourselves.

When You Get What You Wish For…

I am not even going to pretend to celebrate the miserable life of Charlie Kirk. Not for someone who willfully created this political environment expressing truly heinous and disgusting “opinions.” A man who willfully stoked hatred, and who called for the oppression of the oppressed. A man whose only real guiding principle appeared to be pushing the boundaries of what would be considered proper discourse. He was a real life Twitter troll manifest in flesh, and that is nothing to laud.

If Charlie Kirk wanted people to speak kind of him in death, he probably should have tried not being a worthless, vile, antagonistic, miserable, deplorable piece of rancid pig shit in his life.

I’m not even going to pretend to mourn the death of a man who up until the day he died held the belief that people dying to gun violence was an “unfortunate” acceptable cost for the right to bear arms. Though I suppose one could say that he died for his beliefs, I guess. That’s more than most of his ilk can claim. So, I guess he has that going for him.

And I’m certainly not going to mourn his death when other far more deserving victims that damn day were shot in a school in Colorado. I also think there was another shooting incident elsewhere, but my short digging couldn’t find mention of it thanks to Charlie Kirk burying pretty much all other news outlets in horrible pandering to some sort of comity that he absolutely did not deserve.

I’m also not going to try and shame the reaction from a growing number of the left celebrating the monster’s demise. I really don’t give a shit how uncouth “polite society” might think it is. The amount of political violence aimed towards the left is so tilted against them, that I am not at all surprised that a relatively large segment is going to cheer it finally turning the other way.

This is the world that the right wing created, so the idea that they are appalled that the left would finally start pushing back with the same sort of bitterness and bile should not be the slightest bit surprising. Patience and understanding runs thin over time, and this has been an environment that the political right wing in America has been shaping for a very long time.

Though I strongly suspect, like most of these amoral cretins that perpetuate these shootings, we’re likely to discover that trying to plot their political leanings will be a lesson in futility. The sort of person that decides that shooting someone dead is the next rational step in their lives likely holds very little rational beliefs at all, with the only consistent trait among them of being shaped by the cult of violence that is increasingly finding purchase in every corner of American life and society.

So no, I neither celebrate nor mourn the life and death of Charlie Kirk. He doesn’t deserve my, or anyone’s sympathy. He doesn’t deserve mine, or anyone’s, sorrow. To put it more crudely, fuck Charlie Kirk, the horse he rode in on, and the casket he leaves with. Good riddance, and rest in piss, asshole. You, at least, got exactly what you wished for; which is something I can’t say for most of the victims of gun violence in this country.

If there is one thing that I mourn beyond those who did lose their lives tragically yesterday (it’s actually not entirely clear if anyone in Colorado has died outside of the shooter, because even trying basic current updates for that gets Charlie Fucking Kirk news spit back out by the goddamn AI algorithms), it’s that I already know where this political violence takes us, and it is nowhere good.

As satisfying as it feels to learn that the vile gun advocate died due to gun violence, absolutely no one is going to have the epiphany that all of this is heading towards a massive cliff, and once this train flies over the edge, it’s going to lead to a whole lot more people across all walks of life, winding up dead with their blood flowing in the streets.

The tit-for-tat has only started. Now begins the escalation.

Good luck, America. We’re gonna need it.

On the “Progressive Problem”…

So Chelsea Clinton is running for office.

Maybe.

Possibly.

At least, according to right wing rumor mills. But that rumor is all that left-leaning social media needed to get lost all up in their feelings, and reveal more about themselves than they realize.

Now, as far as Chelsea Clinton goes, I know next to nothing about her. I don’t know anything about her politics. I don’t know if she even has any intention of actually running for any office, much less Jerry Nadler’s seat in New York. I also don’t care. I wouldn’t care if she was running for office in Michigan (the state that I live in).

See, I’m not afraid of names. My view is that anyone who wants to run for office should run. If Chelsea Clinton has problematic politics (the fear of which seems based entirely on her last name than anything she has ever said), and the primary voters select her anyway, that tells me we have a problem with the electorate.

But I suppose I can be flippant about that because I already know that’s true. The electorate of the United States of America (and honestly pretty much anywhere) is filled with profoundly shitty people who hold extremely shitty views of the world around them. I also know that these people aren’t “brainwashed” or “manipulated” or “misled” or “distracted” or whatever. People aren’t empty vessels in which shitty content is poured into and mixed. Humans, in general, are broken in so many ways that it can be relatively easy to weaponize them for whatever cause you want.

And that is what has my fellow left-leaners scared. Deep down, despite all their bluster, they know they are a minority. They know damn well that they don’t represent more than a significant minority of the public no matter how much they claim that there are a legion of closet socialists just waiting for the right message. We just hate admitting it to ourselves, because that admission would require there is long-term work to be done, and if there is one thing the trust-fund babies who fuel the leftist and progressive themes on social media hate more than liberals… it’s work.

That’s the “Progressive Problem.” It has nothing to do with our message. It has nothing to do with the spats with “libtards” and “dirty centrists.” It’s that we don’t want to do the ground level work to make our minority a majority. It’s because then we’d have to accept there are, in fact, good faith criticisms of the model we propose. We’d have to acknowledge that things could go very wrong with our model, and actually do the fucking work to address those problems. We’d have to acknowledge that (gasp!) an all-or-nothing approach is a terrible approach to pretty much anything in life!

It would also require us to acknowledge that we fall victim to the exact same flaws of personality that we scoff at others for falling for, and that a cadre of very loud “fauxgressives” with bullhorns posting breathless screeds about Chelsea Clinton on BlueSky are probably really poor figureheads for any sort of political movement.