(Note: This marks the first installment of Territory Thoughts, a semi-regular post that’s going to serve as a way to talk about my random musings and whatever is going on in life at the moment. I’ll try to make these official in places like Twitter but probably not IG, and I most likely won’t talk about them a lot on live streams. I’d suggest following the blog’s RSS feed if you want to make sure you see absolutely everything I read, and to skip the posts tagged “TT” if you only want my edited, heavily-considered articles rather than a bunch of random stuff that serves to help you get to know me.)

So we’re about a week removed from my last blog post about anime conventions, and I really enjoyed writing that one. Sadly, it’s been like pulling teeth to get it in front of eyes. While I was reading the notification of a Reddit sub that quickly banned my submission of the article for “self-promotion” (more on that in a second), it was impressed on me how absolutely crap most social media platforms are in 2022. We should have seen it coming when the pandemic started, to be honest.  We all were locked in our homes with no clue whether this weird virus all over the news was a cold, the Spanish Flu, the Black Plague, or something even worse. So we all looked at our Twitter feeds and thought, “Hey…I can use this as a way to get up-to-date information that will work to keep me and my family healthy!” Instead, we got a never-ending parade of rage, speculation, and confusion that helped nothing.

Most of the other social media sites are essentially the same way. I was around for the early days of Digg.com, which was a revelation for me and other nerds…supposedly, you didn’t have to search multiple websites to get your tech news…people would just post stories on Digg, and the Good and Honorable Users of Said Website would upvote the useful ones, downvote the ones that were spam or not useful, and you’d get everything you needed to know at a glance. Then Facebook and Twitter weaponized the like system, and Reddit perfected it. Now, try to find a subreddit that (a) allows the dreaded “self-promotion” (i.e., posting a link to something you created) and (b) said self-promotion doesn’t involve naked people. Good luck. Now, no matter what subject you want to learn about, you can find a subreddit that is full of sh*tposting and memes about said subject with zero of that actual subject to be found.

But part of the reason that writers write, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not, is for catharsis. We get something in our heads that we either feel like we need to share with everyone else, or we just want to get it the hell out of our own head and into the world, and that’s the way I was with that particular article. The con experience was just so…different than my normal existence for the past couple of years. I’m sure the lack of social interaction during the pandemic didn’t help either. So that function of writing remains fulfilled, but still…you’d like to get someone else to actually READ the damn thing.

Honestly, I appreciate anyone who bothers to read ANYTHING that I write, and especially this sort of thing that’s so far afield from my usual game analysis. And I appreciate all of the encouraging feedback that I’ve gotten so far from those of you who’ve read it. But social media seems to exist to prevent the dissemination of any information that does not contribute to blinding rage, and I’m wondering more and more why I’m participating in it. Maybe WOPR in Wargames was right…”The only way to win is not to play.”