RAM: System Bugs

For this episode only I'm dropping the characters to get some things off my chest that have been bugging me for some time. And, my thanks to everyone who supports my crap.

DESTROY FAP COUNTER

I would like to see how this place functions without the fap counter for a while. I think it's unneeded and causes people to second-guess themselves and their qposts and cblogs for fear of failure or low turn out. And that leads into another problem: popularity. Playing the popular game is unhealthy and only leads to disappointment. When you test your popularity, how does it go? Yeah.

Do things for the community, do it from the heart and it should resonate.

USER REVIEWS

This is a little personal gripe of mine. I do not enjoy reading user reviews that have scores or ratings systems at the end of the cblog. I feel it undoes all your hard work, typing your thoughts out only to then round it off with a score. Anyone can simply scroll down and see your conclusion and leave. I mean, let's be real, you're only either going to like it or not.

So it's not personal to anyone in particular, please don't think that.

I have the same problem with front page reviews. People can run in, check the score, then run back to Gamefaqs or Reddit or wherever and say, 'Ha, omg liek Destructoid only give da game 8, it shit haha!'. Front page reviews, in my opinion, commit a further sin by having the darn score up on the right-hand-side before I've even clicked on the review! Undermine yourself more guys. I think it would be nice to remove or delay the score's appearance on the front page by a day or several hours. Encourage people to read the review.

POKEMON AND SMASH BROS

I am not a fan of this stuff but I see no reason for it to stop or dwindle because I don't like it. I just want to say that if I don't read a cblog written about those things then please understand it has nothing to do with you, it is merely because I have no interest in those subjects. Sorry. You're more than welcome to ignore and not read my stuff. But hopefully not in retaliation to what I just said cuz that would be petty.

MY BEHAVIOUR SINCE XMAS

One thing I want to clear up is my frankness since the New Year. See, I've been writing a cblog about negativity and its place in this World and our lives and its importance here at Destructoid. I talk a lot about different examples of types negativity, some of which I'll quickly run through now. Mostly because I don't know if I'll ever finish and release that blog.

We ideally want to have a nice place to talk and shit-post freely but keeping things positive-only is a big ask.

There is so much bad stuff going on around the world right now, but we bury our heads and ignore it. Terrorism, poverty, famine, human trafficking, drug cartels, Apple Mac owners... the list goes on. We do not live in a positive-only global culture. The sentiment is nice and one which I do agree with and yearn for but come on, cooooome oooooooon. It's a fallacy.

One of the biggest disappointments for me was when Disqus removed down-voting. Why? Down-voting is still a thing on Reddit. How else, without typing, can I quickly and simply (and cowardly) show my contempt for something and move on? Forget gifs I still have to waste time googling that crap.

I enjoy and embrace the principles of Yin and Yang, that there is a rough, flowing, back and forth between two halves to many things in life. Night and day. Hot and cold. Up and down. Without light there is no shadow... you get the idea. We need both. We need balance. Good and bad. Positivity and negativity. However, there is constructive (criticism) and non-constructive (vulgarity) negativity and self-indulgent negativity or being negative for the sake of negativity is pretty much unwarranted.

If you are going to dump on something then at least have first-hand experience of it. An incomplete experience translates into an incomplete view. And if you're going to throw around a half-assed opinion then be ready to be called out on it.

I'm all for positivity but negativity has its place too. Who likes Hitler? Stalin? Jack Thompson? Chocolate ice cream? Should we only (be allowed to) say nice things about them? Of course not. It's a good idea to do a little research into a subject beforehand as it can help one side-step making a fool of them-self. Also helps if you begin discussing a subject to only attack the subject and not the person you're talking to.

So, let's say I like vanilla and you like chocolate ice cream. Is it sensible for me to question your intelligence and shit on you - the individual - for having poor judgement just because I don't like choccy ice cream? And does it help if I decide to organise and establish a hierarchy of flavours? With vanilla being the top choice and chocolate condemned to low-tier status or second best. My opinion, presented like that, on a subjective matter has very little authority. Who put me in charge, right? If we step back and look at the subject broadly, oh hey, we both like ice cream. We're just into different flavours because we are different and someone decided having choices was accommodating. Nine billion people can't all have the same tastes and share the same views.

This does change, however, when you are arguing with a person about their behaviour or actions, then you do have to call them on their bullshit. It will get personal.

This is all fairly common (sense) stuff and I'm sure most of you already know and understand it. Crazy thing, though, is that this does need to be reaffirmed to some adults.

In the end it's OK, and healthy, to disagree about stuff, things or people and you can go hog-wild with your summation of vanilla (it is superior tho) ice cream or whatever it is you're talking about, but as soon as you move your focus from subject to the person you're conversing with - because you don't like what you're hearing - you unnecessarily cross a line into nugatory personal conflict.

So why do people do that? I don't know. May be they've run out of debate steam or they want to shut the discord down quickly while it's still in their favour, who knows. Whatever the reason, it's probably best to walk away at that point.

I go into and ramble a lot about this type of stuff in the negativity cblog itself but I purposely made it a pain to read – my tone is negative, my prose is negative and it makes for a pretty depressing read as my friend correctly pointed out.
The reason I did that is to make the reader examine how they deal with and process negative themes and ideas. Because to me that is the key, how we handle bad shit. You can run from it, you can hide from it, oh god I'm quoting Thanos. But yeah you can't pretend it does not exist and/or refuse to confront it. You have to build up a resistant somehow and quickly or you'll break easily.

Unfortunately I went overboard with some ideas and my view of things that happen around here. I also got a little too personal with the behaviour of certain Dtoiders and that was when I realised I needed to stop and re-evaluate my work. So I don't think I'll be posting that any time soon. It was also the source of a lot of headaches for me.

Another headache was my attempted social experiment to act and waft a more negative vibe around here to see how people reacted. Again to see how people deal with it. I did start doing it but it got a little too real when certain people showed up and real conflicts started around here. Some of which were mostly because of geopolitics. So this is me saying fuck that experimenting nonsense and it's back to shit-posting for moi.

Not an apology for my behaviour just an explanation of a few things I've being meaning to get off my chest. Do co-workers apologise for treating you like shit at the end of your shift? We face crap everyday at school, work, home and from friends. And we rarely get an apology. Plenty of excuses and justifications, though. It's not fair, yes it sucks, but that's life. There are no safe spaces in the real world.

END OF BLOG

Again, thank you to everyone who does give me a piece of their precious time and kindness. It is nice to know we're not all out for ourselves and some sort of community spirit still exists. Your support encourages me to shit-post more. You only have yourselves to blame!

(There's probab;y a bunch of speeling errors and stuff I need to address here, but it's late and I need to sleep. I'll do it layter. Heh, meant those.)

LOOK WHO CAME:

Luckrequired   

Boxman214   65

homeoftheblues   41

On Air Fish   36

Gajknight   28

wildandfree   27

Agent9   22

The Actual Charlton Heston   20

Retrofraction   8

Dango    1