I originally had a theme set for this month. The plan was to exclusively cover games (and other things) by smaller developers (nothing higher than a AA title), and trying to find small creators to highlight. The latter would be extremely difficult, given how unhelpful search engines are these days, but I would at least make the effort. I had numerous reasons for wanting to do this, mostly due to what feels like a million years of frustration over today’s internet being driven by an advertisement-fueled algorithm, with gatekeeping being done by multiple cliques of serial abusers, alt-right douchebags, and alt-right douchebags who roleplay as communists for Twitter likes. I feel like this period of time might actually be the hardest time to be an independent creator since the advent of the internet. Not that it’s ever been easy to try and strike out on your own, but I feel like it used to be easier. I know that I’ve been beating this dead horse since 2019 (probably earlier, but I deleted all my posts from 2014-2018 because they were too cringe to keep up), but I am so thoroughly sick and tired of everything being controlled by social media. The endless Doomscroll of bull shit you don’t want to see or don’t care about in order to get to what you actually want. Hell, the catalyst for giving me the idea of Indie Game May was being shown some bull shit performative leftism from a certain TERF game journalist I have on a mutual block when I was actually trying to find some information on the upcoming AEW/New Japan crossover show in June. Twitters mute/block feature does not actually work when you need to block somebody, it turns out. I don’t like to be reminded that terrible people who have done material harm to people I would take a fucking bullet for still exist, especially when I’m trying to do research on a completely unrelated topic.
Confession: the reason why I’ve been so adamant about getting at least one blog post out per week almost every week for the last two years, is because I was trying to show people that a better way is possible; that you don’t need to sift through tons of ads, discourse, and naked bigotry of people who very specifically want you dead just to tell the world “i ate a hot dog today.” That there’s a better world than 12-hour YouTube essays with titles like “Why You Are A Stupid Bitch Fuck Ass For Not Appreciating Call Of Duty Modern Warfare Reflex Edition For Nintendo Wii” or “IS THIS THE HARDEST NES GAME EVER????” with some dumb fuck doing the pog-face to a screenshot of World 1-1 in Super Mario Brothers. That there’s a better world than “You Have Used Up Your Free Article For The Day.” Everything is so fucking reactionary these days, and I don’t just mean politically reactionary. Feels like everything needs to feed off of negativity and clickbait bull shit. Like, more people will read this post where I complain about all this shit than they will my positive review of Paris-Dakar Rally right below this post, or the currently Patreon-only piece that will go public on Monday. More people know who I am because I pissed off a bunch of games journalists back in 2015 or because I stuck up for Natalie Lawhead last year, than people who know me for things I’ve written, games I’ve made, shows I’ve been on, or anything cool like that. Before anyone accuses me of making a self-own, this is a problem that a lot of other people in my position also have; any expression that isn’t anger is quickly overshadowed by the expressions that are. I’ve also had to reckon with the fact that the only reason I have some of the friends I do is not because we connected through common interests and shared views (though we do have those, luckily), but because we were all listed as members of the same neo-nazi sex cult by the lead writer of Starbound, which is kind of fucked up. Remember when you could make friends from things other than a shared traumatic incident that feels like a fucking fever dream in retrospect?
So, with this very long rationale in mind, I wanted to try and change things, and give attention to other people like me, trying to break free of Using The Same Three Web Sites. Now, I’m no fool; I know that I can’t use the internet to change the world (anymore), but I can at least try to convince some people to maybe look at the Doomsday Prophecy App a little less, right?
Well, I changed my mind.
I announced my plans for this month publicly. A (now former) “mutual follower” proceeded to completely fucking explode on me in response. I was told that I was engaging in “escapism.” That I was living in the past. Things on the ‘net today are great, and I’m the one with the problem. Then I was called a list of slurs, only a couple of which I can actually reclaim. Now, whether or not I might be a retarded [CAN’T RECLAIM] [CAN’T RECLAIM] bitch [CAN’T RECLAIM] faggot is irrelevant here. This incident tripped a wire in my brain. I realized that what I’ve been doing is the digital equivalent of trying to put someone who doesn’t believe they have a problem into rehab. It’s not that people don’t know that things could be better, they don’t want them to be. So instead of committing myself to an entire month-long theme that will only be appreciated by a small number of people, I will instead go back to doing what I do best: post about whatever the fuck I want. I talk about games, an*me, pro wrestling, things like that, because I want to. I like these things, and I like to give a bit of analysis to them for other like-minded people to read. I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Fuck it, nobody else deserves my attention. Not anymore.
Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m ungrateful to anyone who does support me. I appreciate each and every one of you who drops in every week to see what I have to say. I’m only frustrated with people who hate the way things are (or at least pretend to), but refuse to make even the most basic of changes to their lives. I’ll keep this up for you. Well, you and the game journos struggling on their latest piece and need to steal more of my ideas. But I am done with trying to convince others. Too much time and energy dedicated to a lost cause. If you’re too fucking stupid to see that, that’s your problem. By all means, keep calling each other unclean on Elon Musk’s vanity web site while enjoying a steady diet of Big Macs, Assassin’s Creed sequels, episodes of Monday Night Raw, incest-themed pornography, and other things that signify a mediocre existence and wallowing in a cultural wasteland. The rest of us will try to do what we can to lift ourselves out of this creative quagmire and maybe, just maybe, have a little fun doing it.
So, what are my plans? Well, I already mentioned a post coming on Monday. After that, who knows? Maybe I’ll talk about Monster Hunter again. Maybe I’ll cover an old Sega Genesis game I liked when I was younger. Might even write about terrible porn again. Whatever. This is my space to post whatever I want. If you like it, cool. If not, feel free to fuck off. I refuse to perform anymore. I will simply do things. Everyone else can have fun continuing to spiral into complete insanity while I look at naked an*me boys and play immersive sims from the early-2000s.