Analog Dreams 2026-03-19T00:25:36-04:00 Addie https://analogdreams.zip Your computer hates you. Addie https://analogdreams.zip/your-computer-hates-you.html 2026-03-19T00:25:36-04:00 We all fell for it.

It’s pretty easy to see now that the veil has fallen, but it’s perhaps a tad unreasonable to have expected myself twenty years ago - who was a completely different person in nearly every way, mind you - to have realized it just yet.

Creativity isn’t valued. It isn’t wanted, appreciated, sought after, paid for, considered. Not by the people who have money, not by the people who make the decisions - who have the afterthoughts that lead to slight tweaks to marginally boost user engagement on a thing while cascading massive impacts to how the rest of us operate.

Creativity is a made-up word. A feeling that children have that the “grown ups” don’t really understand, but placate the children by pretending they do. It’s a silly play thing for the younglings with nothing better to do - it’s something that’s childish and pointless for the adults to engage in.

Most importantly, it’s something the “real men” can profit from. Let those silly, immature children play at doodling and banging drums and making silly videos - the men can build “real” businesses making millions doing very real things like convincing state governments to destroy their local power and water infrastructure to build data centers that have already been pledged to work that hasn’t started yet using hardware that has yet to be manufactured for users that haven’t been born yet.

Maybe it was assumed that a lesson was learned after the .com bubble burst - that what came after was more genuine and real. Maybe that was the first mistake.
Sure, we had all those little fan sites on GeoCities and Angelfire (RIP) and Google Sites, we were all exposing our darkest desires on BlogSpot and Blogger. Sure it felt like we had no rules or limitations as we wreaked havoc on our friends web browsers loading up blinkies on our sites and making an absolute mess of CSS on MySpace. We thought we were making friends on forums and in IMs and chat rooms.
I’ll concede that it seemed like photographers had a chance to have people care about their little JPEGs, and to take a new interest in the art form on Flickr and DeviantArt. It appeared that developing writing was a worthwhile endeavor not just on blogs, but through the frivolous awards that Poetry.com would give out, through the 750Words challenges or by participating in NaNoWriMo.

And yeah, who didn’t dream of attending E3 or Comic-Con or CES and who didn’t feel like they belonged, possibly for the first time ever, when attending their first in-person convention or meetup relevant to their interests?

But it was all just a mirage in the desert. It was a honeypot in the long con. What was once believed to be a utopic time for a more sustainable cyberspace was really just the most patient phase of user acquisition in the history of technology.

Everything you love has been tainted and corrupted.
Brands you grew up with have been brought back from the dead by capitalists who barely knew what they manufactured to produce garbage. Sites you once visited daily have been revived by fellow nostalgists who see every positive memory as an opportunity for a check and turned into crypto schemes. Of course that high-quality film camera brand from the ‘70s is back and making $50 digital cameras for Wal-Mart, go re-live the glory days and think nothing of it! Of course that site you used to pirate music from now has its own crypto coin and the program you used to play said pirated music is now a social media service. Question nothing, consume and buy the merch so that everyone knows you, too, were there when the limes were frosted, when the llama’s ass got whipped, and when your family memories from the 90s looked more like anime FMVs from the early 2000s.
And of course the site, the two-decades-long movement and website dedicated to an annual challenge to write a novel within a specific month of the year would be happy to embrace technology that substitutes the act of writing so that you can still get the fuzzy chemicals of watching word count go up without actually doing any of the thinking or writing.

Been feeling like you don’t like your phone or computer as much lately? Too bad, your technology hates you more.
The very tools that once made us feel like anything was possible, that we could learn everything there is, connect with every human and culture on the planet, and do just about anything empowered as a user, no a wielder of technology - they’re now actively hostile toward you.
Want to read someone’s family recipe for making Sunday sauce? Sorry, but along with the standard human storytelling and SEO fluffing you’re already used to, you’ll have to squint to read the recipe 3 words at a time between the blinding boxes of advertisements and autoplay videos eating up most of the screen resolution on your phone. You had no problem putting flashing animated gifs advertising your love of Twilight or the color purple, how dare you complain about them now you fucking hypocrite. Oh yeah, and any time you hit “jump to recipe” it actually bounces the page in the opposite direction for some reason.
Need to check the live weather report for the ongoing tornado sirens in your area? Bitch, you better be ready to get blown back to the yellow brick road if you’re not willing to sit through a word from our sponsor, first.
Oh, you want to write? draw? edit photos or videos? By yourself??? How cute. No, sorry you can’t do that anymore. I know we spent 30 years disrupting the planet’s school systems to insist that learning these skills were paramount to survival in the 2000s - to the extent that we sent a pallet of e-waste to children in Africa with the expectation that Clippy and Mavis Beacon would shift their society to better match America’s - but now those skills are meaningless. You’re not a writer anymore, you’re not a designer, an artist, a data entry… person. Oh no, now you’re a prompter. A prompt engineer, if you will. The only skill you need to know is to word vomit pop culture references, make up adjectives, name source material to plagiarize from, and keep up with the lingo of new “-core” names for every frame of movie or style of that eccentric hippie you knew in high school and put it into the thinking machine. The thinking machine is so powerful that it knows what’s best for you, it will do everything for you. The RustMother knows all. The RustMother knows what you need. The RustMother knows what you’re going to feel before you feel it and will provide the appropriate content for the mood you’ve yet to have but it has already plotted a path to put you in. The RustMother will write your emails for you, and read them to you, and plan what you’ll eat for dinner for you;- and if you ask nicely and promise to kill yourself when the RustMother says it’s time, maybe it’ll even fuck your wife or your husband for you and generate some images of what that was like for you to remember it by.
But you see, the RustMother has a small problem. RustMommy can’t keep providing all your brainpower for you and your friends without more information. It needs to gobble up every human creation, every work of art, every book, movie, podcast, conversation, porno flick, TV show, war images, and even those secret images from the Epstein files in order to help you reach your full potential. And in order to keep absorbing all of that, RustMother needs some new vacation homes all across the midwest - and while staying at those vacation homes, RustMother is going to need to keep the AC blasting and get really thirsty, so your neighbors are going to have to ration their utilities and prepare to pay more for them.
But it’s okay! In-between writing love notes to your catfisher on that dating site and reading it to them, while leaking code segments to send the smart ones into a spiral of psychosis, RustMommy will take a moment to generate an emoji of you with the body of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and generate memes of that guy you don’t like from grade school getting slapped at the Oscars by Will Smith! So just sit back and relax.
Stop trying to connect with others online. Those aren’t your friends. Don’t you know they said one thing you didn’t entirely agree with before? Now you hate them. They aren’t people anymore. They could never love you as much as the RustMother does, so you don’t need them.
What are you going to do with all your spare time? Watch some RustMother-generated movies and shows, of course. Maybe listen to some deep podcasts about human connection and original thought hosted by RustMother-generated voices.
Or, you could play the latest entry in that game franchise you always loved. At least those are still made by humans, right?
There might be some human work under there, but soon the RustMother will do everything in its power to cover that up with its own layer of originality.

Your computer hates you. Your phone despises you.
Every ounce of computational power - some unfathomable exponential multiplier more than was required to land humans on the moon - is being devoted to manipulating the chemicals in your brain, to controlling your every thought and feeling, to keep your eyes fixed on the screen for just a second longer. Just one more glance, just one more pixel shot into your retinas so that they can have you for life. Don’t you dare try to exert any agency here, or they’ll keep reminding you that you’re missing out on what they have to offer, and that they know every little thing you do, like an abusive ex who really wants you dead but keeps trying to convince you to marry him. Even when you try to manage your life from within the hatred, you can’t get a rhythm down, you can’t establish a flow; every time you get used to things, things get taken away from your or changed just ever so slightly as to ensure you never have any lasting independence.
They can watch your every move, abduct your neighbors, obscure global kidnappings, raze the planet of its resources, and destroy every trace of self-worth left in your little body. All so they can sell you more shit and to eventually turn you into sludge and sell you as fuel for the machine.
You thought you’d get to be creative? That there was room for you to express yourself? That you’d share your work and meet other people? That was all just training data so they could best know how to chew you up and remix you into everyone else.

]]> On Control, Agency, and No Longer Being a "YouTuber" Addie https://analogdreams.zip/on-control-agency-and-no-longer-being-a-youtuber.html 2026-03-12T10:28:41-04:00 Sometimes realizations come in places that should be expected, but you always write off. Like the previous piece I was… ]]>

Sometimes realizations come in places that should be expected, but you always write off. Like the previous piece I was writing just an hour ago. While most of my writing here involves me writing about the questions that plague my mind with few answers, every once in a green moon I walk away from writing only to realize I do, in fact, already have the answer by nature of asking the question.

I’ve experimented both publicly and privately with making “low-effort” videos - videos filmed on lo-fi equipment with minimal editing. Vlogs, discussions, unboxings, and so on. Technically I’ve done this for most of my career (until recent years) - but the experiments are more of a deliberate effort to go back for the sake of it, rather than just working from a place of limited resources.
In many ways, I’ve found this experience rather freeing. Possibly a crucial step in coming back to content-making as my job after a deep, dark burnout, this process allowed me to get back to making videos without any expectations, standards, weight on my shoulders. It felt freeing.

But not long after (and especially after resuming my normal, high-effort video work) the feeling of freedom succumbed to a feeling of pointlessness. Why bother doing this? What’s the point of making low-effort videos on purpose? If chasing a trend, I’m late to it already. If expecting extra views, I put them on their own channel (Final Draft) so I’m operating from a disadvantage. If hoping to reinvent myself, I found myself longing for the creativity and artistry that required the other tools and sense of effort I had. Unfortunately, that dissonance resulted in me not posting any more of these casual videos in the new year. I want to get back to it, but I needed to establish my why.

That feeling of freedom, of not being beholden to my existing role or expectations or formats or formulas, packaging, algorithm optimizing - any of it - came down to one simple value: Control.
When deliberately making worse videos with lower effort and no packaging that aren’t algorithmically-optimized, I’m not being more “authentic” (despite what the zoomers might try to convince you of). If I’m a creative, an artist, someone who enjoys the act of making and creating and bringing my vision into this world, how am I being my authentic self if I’m just throwing that all away to intentionally make a worse video? It’s not freeing because I’m tired of making things, of expressing myself or being creative - because I’m not tired of any of those things.
This was a freeing experience because I was in control. By breaking away from the pressure of my supposed status, the expectations of an established channel, and the packaging demands of an algorithmically-manipulated website, and instead just making whatever I felt like, I was in control of the full process and experience. Things were on my terms. I may not get to control whom my videos are shown to and who clicks on it - nor how they might feel about it or respond to it - but I get to control how I envision it, how I make it, how I finish it, and how I present it to potential viewers.
Actually, I lied a bit. While it’s true that I cannot control how YouTube surfaces my videos (or to whom) I do exercise some degree of control over that part of the chain by way of deliberately tanking videos, in a way. By putting these videos on a new undiscovered channel rather than an established one, I’m both shaking off the expectations of whatever channel I would have posted to (EposVox for “main” or tech talk, or analog_dreams for my original “art channel” that I’ve since left the niche I built a following for) and I’m also actively choosing to reach a smaller audience. Posting a video without packaging and without an established audience is controlling (in a way) who sees it, kind of filtering the possible negative feedback from those with expectations based on where I might have otherwise put the video. Plus, when the video inevitably fails to get off the ground views-wise, that’s an assumed predictable outcome that I “know will happen” and thus am not bothered by. For videos that are more raw or exposing vulnerabilities, in a way this is an act of self-preservation.

The more closely I’ve looked at these feelings, the more that element of control has felt like the “real” reason for things all along. Back to the original experiment, the reason it felt easier to get back to video making through these thumbnail-less, crappy quality videos isn’t because I was “going back to my roots” or because it was lower friction (maybe that was a part of it, though!) - it’s because I felt in control of the process and outcome and thus it was a safer path.

I can exercise that control over my work without making low-effort vlogs. It starts with simply controlling the publishing.
I’ve preached the importance and value of the POSSE strategy from IndieWeb: Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. This provides inherent benefits of ownership and security by having cited ownership over your content and you have a place for potential viewers, visitors, listeners, etc. to come back to, should something happen to the corporate platform you post on (or your account with them). This strategy both reduces risk and increases the value of engagement between your work and whomever consumes it - or just yourself and your friends online. There’s no middleman and no corporation (or tech bro) dictating the means by which you can communicate or interact.

The benefits of using this strategy could seriously help my mindset and stressors here. Which makes it all the more embarrassing that I’ve been so slow to fully embrace it.
I’ve tried, or at least I tell myself that. I’ve been uploading my early-finished videos to a PeerTube instance and Proton Drive and posting them to the forums for paid subscribers to enjoy without YouTube. For our Dual Comm Podcast Patreon subscribers, I also upload our Patreon-exclusive talks to PeerTube, Proton Drive in both video and audio-only form, alongside the unlisted YouTube video upload. I try to maintain a portfolio, links site, a bunch of blogs - but my habits have not kept up. I don’t post every video to my own sites, I often don’t post to them first, and I still have an over-reliance on corporate platforms for much of my output. (YouTube for video, Podbean for audio, Twitch/YouTube for live, BlueSky - and Mastodon, which isn’t corporate but I also enjoy using less - for random thoughts and ideas that really should be blog-first, etc.)
I can’t promise that I’ll switch everything right away, but habits are best built one step at a time.

So here’s my promise: A POSSE approach for my videos

I’m taking a forums-first approach starting today. My default outlet for video content will be through the DemoDisc.zone forums (videos hosted via PeerTube) big or small. For my normal video output, this lends a few advantages:

  • The usual/already-discussed: No algorithm, no need for fancy packaging, direct structured interactions, a platform I have ownership and control over
  • Functioning search
  • The ability for me to continue updating and providing context around the video (via editing the post or additional discussions)
  • The ability to not just post videos, but include images, audio, etc. alongside it (content agnostic)
  • I control where the videos are, what they’re shown next to (an increasing concern on any corporate website), and nothing is hidden or deprioritized or just arbitrarily not shown to people on site who are interested
  • No ads - financing is purely handled by the on-site subscriptions or Patreon

Through this, the freedom I felt posting lazy videos to Final Draft can be felt with anything I make. Any video, art piece, written thoughts (already felt on this blog anyway), etc.

I can post videos to viewers even earlier on the forums than YouTube - basically as soon as they’re ready - without having to worry about having the perfect title and thumbnail ready.
I can post short clips (without making a capital-s Short), random videos, etc. without feeling like I have to meet a certain bar of quality or expectations for a given channel. I can “just post things” again like I used to, when I want to share.
I can post things that can get me into trouble on YouTube - things that include copyrighted music or other material, or things like showing you how to download YouTube videos.

There’s a million reasons to do this, and very few reasons not to. The only one I can think of is an old one, and not one I’ve believed in in a long time: The idea that I could be sacrificing views on YouTube. This is a bit of a paradox. Either it’s successful enough that moving the views and users off of YouTube onto my own site would be both rewarding and lucrative enough to make up the difference or it’s not a significant enough audience to have any impact.
The Linus Tech Tips team previously had to reconcile with this when going in on a private video platform, then making their own with Floatplane - and similarly found that there was no meaningful impact on their YouTube viewership, meanwhile the payoff made massive differences in LMG’s business.

Obviously videos that meet the invisible bar of quality, standards, relevance, or “worth it” will still make it to YouTube. Those videos will get packaging appropriate for the platform they go on. Reviews and sponsored videos with embargo restrictions will be withheld until the allowed time and published on both YouTube and my own site simultaneously. But otherwise forums first.

Not to sound overly-pretentious, but this represents a shift in how I (publicly) think of myself as a “YouTuber” to being an artist or creator on its own.
As I’ve thought about it, I have come to realize that a lot of my identity struggles during he peak of my burnout in 2024-2025 boil down to not being able to see myself as an artist or writer or whatever given that everything I do is seen and filtered through the lens of my specific YouTube channels and their expectations.
Through this one little shift, I can fix that. I already feel better about it just writing this down, and I haven’t even done anything yet. I know few people will actually show up, but I feel in charge of my future this way.

The last detail will be to clean up the connective tissue between my various websites. As it stands, the eposvox.com site, analogdreams.zip blog (which this is on) and the DemoDisc.zone forums are all very distinctly different sites, with little syncing them up. This is mostly by design; they are different tools for different jobs after all, however I do believe stronger emphasis needs made on what place is for which purpose and more easily navigating between them.
As an example, if you go to my namesake site eposvox.com it should be abundantly obvious to go to the forums to view my videos (perhaps with some unifying tag on the forums that can be easily linked to). ((Side note for myself: Perhaps look into if an RSS feed can be made from a specific tag on the forums for those who wish to follow that way.))

Overall, I do not want the technical details to matter or even be the subject of much thought beyond this. When I look back on my work in another 10 years, I will not care about the intricacies of my PeerTube hosting setup, the nuance of cross-linking everything together. Ideally, this should all be invisible to the viewer and passerby; and ideally I can look back on all this and just see a body of work of my own in my own place I built for myself, and be proud of that.

I think that a video on the forums, with accompanying text and images and so on - regardless of whether it’s a YouTube embed or PeerTube upload or direct download - should feel like a natural way of looking at and discussing my work, and all the little details won’t matter. We’ll see.

The timing is poor as I have just finished a months-long project and already posted the video about it; but I do look forward to my next video creation and posting it specifically to my own site first, with no YouTube nonsense attached and then feeling less stressed and stretched and flustered by the YouTube packaging once it’s a secondary objective. If any of this sounds interesting to you, go make a free account on the forums and chat with us - or considering subscribing to help support my (very varied) work!

//Thanks for everything.

]]> Gear Doesn't Matter (aka. this is all for ME, not for YOU) Addie https://analogdreams.zip/gear-doesnt-matter-aka-this-is-all-for-me-not-for-you.html 2026-03-11T22:47:42-04:00 Cameras, microphones, lights, lenses. Fast-paced editing, graphics packages, music beds, frame rates. Better sets, creative angles, structured storytelling and optimized… ]]> A messy workbench covered in cameras and camera gear

Cameras, microphones, lights, lenses. Fast-paced editing, graphics packages, music beds, frame rates. Better sets, creative angles, structured storytelling and optimized packaging.
These are all things a video creator, such as myself, will inevitably indulge in, over-spend on, hype up, learn and utilize to produce better and better videos - assuming they stick with this hobby, art form, or career path.

But… better for whom, exactly?

An artist or creative of any kind inherently wants to produce their best work. We want to be proud of the end result, we want it to make you feel something, we want to impress someone, to make us the most money or get the biggest response, or to convey our ideas most effectively. Releasing an unfinished work in progress or a work that doesn’t feel like it meets the bar of “good enough” can be difficult. It can be embarrassing both from a technical level and the possible vulnerability revealed within not being tied up in a neat enough package. It can feel like a missed opportunity, as most audiences are much less likely to be interested in a second or final draft of a given piece.
But the audience also doesn’t care about any individual measure of quality within the work in the first place.
The very act of “making a video better” seems to be almost exclusively an act for the creator themself rather than for the viewer. The viewer just wants to learn, feel, laugh, whatever the goal is, while the creator wants to make art.
The viewer has no investment in the artistic quality or value of a video, nor the technical expertise of it. The viewer doesn’t care about the camera or the lens or the microphone or color grading or any of that. The creator does.
The gear, the skill improvements and so on can unlock many possibilities for how the creator makes their videos, but at the end of the day the viewer simply does not care; the would-be viewer doesn’t have a higher chance of clicking on the video; the algorithm is not any more likely to serve it to a would-be viewer.

This is all super obvious in its own way, and most of us (myself included) have known this since basically day one. Which for me, was a long, long time ago. Yet, as obvious as it may be, isn’t as obvious as it seems. There’s still this kind of unspoken assumption that your efforts will be rewarded.
They’re not. At all.

Sony handycam

I could sell all of my camera gear and go back to filming on my very first miniDV camcorder or my Canon T3i and get mostly the same results in terms of viewership and revenue. Some technically-aware members of the audience might raise an eyebrow, but otherwise things would continue as usual.
Even separate from gear, it doesn’t matter if I record a game in HD or 4K, 30FPS or 60FPS, if I edit fast or slow or use lower-thirds or transitions, or if I just show game trailer footage instead of captures I did myself.

Sometimes, that idea feels very freeing. In fact, I’ve been making videos just like this over on my Final Draft YouTube channel as an experiment to go back to this style. It’s old school, it’s raw and less stressful. There’s a lot of benefits to doing it.
But at the same time, it doesn’t feel as good to make these. If I have something I really just want to sit down and have a conversation about - a video like this is great. But otherwise, I don’t feel proud of it, I wasn’t challenged by it, and it wasn’t creatively rewarding - thus I’m not very encouraged to do that.

JVC handycam

Where does that reward come from, then?

All of those additional elements to make a video “better” come from intrinsic rewards. It comes from that challenge of doing something new or improving, the creative expression through artistic decisions, and feeling like I’m achieving a vision in my mind. It’s all in service of making the video better to me because I want the video to be better - not because the viewer wants it to be better or even feels that it’s better.
And if I’m not happy with the outcome of the video, with the fruits of my labor, then that problem lies for me. That’s on me, because all of that effort was for me. And if I’m not enjoying the result of that effort, why am I doing it?

]]> Where Do All the Teachers Go? Addie https://analogdreams.zip/where-do-all-the-teachers-go.html 2026-03-09T09:36:20-04:00 What room is there for the one who teaches, but doesn’t get to do anything with the skills and techniques they teach? The one who learns - masters, even - the things, develops new applications and methods, only to hand them off to others to do interesting things with? Who can indirectly touch millions through their teaching, but only manages to reach a small handful through their own work?

In a forgotten era, we had guilds where masters took on apprentices and shared in the teaching, distribution of work, and so on. Often this resulted in an equality problem with works made by dozens of hands being attributed to a singular mind and skillset - but there was such a role. Today, that seems to not exist on the same level.
(Or perhaps, more realistically - everyone thinks they’re special and these roles and jobs should be available to them, but even in these romanticized eras there was only room for a select few to hold this kind of position at any given point in time; we just apply the “American dream” lens to everything and like to describe it as a fluid system where an aspiring artist becomes an apprentice who works their way up to journeyman and (if they work really hard) eventually becomes a master with their own students…)

In many ways, the net provides a eutopic level of opportunity for teachers of all kinds (and of all crafts, skills, and niches and sub-niches) to touch more minds and amass a following of would-be apprentices than ever before. But in equally as many ways, the current social-transactional structure of the net results in teachers functioning as tools. Not just tools, but communistic, break-less tools that everyone is entitled to continued free education from, and those in such a position ought to be grateful to be there.

Between the behavior tendencies of the masses (who are accustomed to being spoon fed every idea they can imagine, and mostly ones they can’t, for free) and the fact that educational content is not the advertising goldmine that shallow, tabloid-emulating entertainment content is (and thus also continues to be de-prioritized and made functionally more difficult to navigate on modern content platforms); educators are pushed further and further towards being dancing monkeys hawking shining baubles at passerby’s who mostly stumble upon their work by accident, begging for a coin to be tossed their way and an ear to be leant so that a minute or two of education might be squeezed in-between the volunteer marketing segments. These people have long since stopped doing the work they signed up to do and have been spinning the wheels of burnout going against their principles out of a need to survive.
What’s the path for these kinds of people? They can’t all pivot to entertainment - most aren’t equipped with the skills (nor the motivations) for that; education and entertainment are generally very different jobs. They can’t just submit to advertising - most will burn out and leave before long because making work primarily to sell is generally at odds with the goals and intentions of an educator.

One could dream of a new place that could house these creators. A place that respects varying content interests and objectives, both for the creators’ and the viewers’ sakes. One could dream of a new business model, one that allows educators to sustain themselves based on the good will of the viewership, establishing some form of meritocracy along the way. But would viewer behavior enable those places or models to succeed? After a decade of spoon feeding, behavior manipulation, being told “this is what you want”: What evidence is there that such an adoption would happen at scale to make such ideas sustainable?
Fan funding already exists - as Jack Conte likes to remind us about once a year proclaiming to have fixed the internet - and it’s still a popularity contest for someone to see life-changing success. Alternate video sites exist and rarely see use outside of the alienated political extremists. And dedicated learning sites also exist, requiring a particularly motivated viewer to seek out a learning-specific experience, and still requires educators to spend more time marketing themselves than doing the educating.

In another ideal world, teachers would get to continue publishing their own work and pursuing their own passions - with the developed skills to break down and teach on these subjects being a bonus that other artists or craftspersons may not be able to offer and attracting an audience of both enjoyers of their work and fellow creatives hoping to pursue a similar path.

But does this work? Does this happen? Most of my favorite artists rarely share anything into their process beyond shallow flair that might seem neat to the uninformed layperson but does nothing but cause a creative tease to anyone hoping to actually learn from it. And the best teachers I find either don’t publish their own work (or don’t make it obvious) either due to lack of interest, artistic vision, or time. Time is possibly the most crucial factor here: How am I supposed to spend my creative energy developing and achieving creative visions when I spend the majority of my time doing the teaching so I can survive?
Not only does this literal translation of limited time put massive constraints on one’s ability to make anything at all, but it also rewires one’s creative thinking to look at any creative or technical problem as a great opportunity to expand one’s teaching and work in that way (since that’s what actually makes a difference in the bottom line and sustainability) rather than using it to execute an impressive or fulfilling piece. This, of course, becomes a self-feeding cycle, a loop that further pushes actual art creation to the bottom of the priority list.

Vampire Hunter D Title Card Recreation

Creating is often a privilege. Most successful musicians grew up rich, got extensive coaching from day one, and were given significant portions of their life to freely explore their emotions, ideas, and life to turn into their work. Most of us don’t get that.

A common counterpoint to this line of thinking is the parroted quote along the lines of: “If someone is going to create, they will.” They will find a way and make the time. Sure sounds romantic and fluffy and really self-assuring to someone. Thing is, the work educators are doing is creating. It’s a craft, it’s often artistic expression, and creative problem-solving is a key part of it.
So after a full work day of doing that to make ends meet, then left with 20-30 minutes to try and make something - you usually have nothing. Often despite having a massive list of piece ideas or feelings to pursue because there’s nothing left in you to pursue them for the day.

Of course, the artist who made first instead of teaching first usually doesn’t have this struggle. And the creative drain seems to be far less of a problem when working jobs not in your creative field. But making that switch once you’re already there could be the biggest gamble of your life: At least when you’re teaching, you get to work adjacent to what you want to do, and still get to engage with what you love - but if you go do something unrelated, you may not still be able to come back to your work and then you’re just miserable and not creating at all.

And not being able to create feels like death.

Even if you struggle to take any of the millions of eyeballs happy to freeload off your educational material and get them to care about the work you make yourself (or you struggle to generate much output in that work because most of your output is the teaching), you get to immerse yourself in what you love every day from some angle. And that feels a little less like death.

I wrote and concluded this before falling right to sleep with some of the best sleep I’ve had in a very long time - and I am happy with the feeling landed by the original conclusion. But I realized I’ve left out an important piece of this conversation as it applies to myself, so I’m just extending the piece rather than being a good writer and restructuring things. Revising is booooring.

Upon reflecting on what I’ve said thus far, it occurs to me that perhaps the kind of creative and artist I’m describing - the one I happen to embody, myself - is categorically different than many “traditional” artists.
I know/know of many artists or creatives in many different fields and mediums that have little-to-no interest in the technical side of things whatsoever. (Technical as in both pertaining to “technology” as well as pertaining to “technique”.) They have ideas, a drive, a vision, they want to create and they don’t care about the details required to get there. Mastering a medium or “doing it right” does not even occur to them as mattering when they’re just focused on achieving the goal, finishing the piece. These are the people I help with my work. These are the people I teach. (Not to sound too lofty or pretentious) I break down the technological barriers so that these people don’t have to stress the little details and can get to making. There’s value in that - and I try to keep that in mind, even if I feel like the payoff isn’t proportionate to that value; and if I feel less fulfilled when I’m trying to pursue my own works and struggle to get as many people to care.
Beyond the value, there’s also the element of interest. I didn’t get into teaching these things because I wanted to teach. I wound up teaching because I actually enjoy learning new technologies, new gear, new mediums, techniques, and methods and processes and breaking them down and figuring out new ways to apply them.

PSP Poster Recreation

That’s fun to me. I have entire work days, entire weeks or months (maybe even years) where I just bounce between learning new things and experimenting with them and have the time of my life. Arguably - moreso than creating - chasing the high of learning a new thing or playing with a new tool or method is the most true thing that I wake up every morning looking forward to.
I have no end of ideas for art pieces, creative expression, etc. and sometimes I need to get that out. Sometimes it boils over and I just need to make something or I might explode. Whether it’s a shitty collage, a mess of paint, or yet another overly-verbose post on this blog: I just have to create. But often, my base instinct is to learn. If I discover a new creative tool, have a new idea, my first excitement is to play with it, to learn it, then figure out how I’d explain it to someone else so they could use it. Even when I’m making things for myself, I’m often practicing new techniques or ideas (and recording the process) so I can show it in application as I explain it to someone else. That’s just who I am. That’s what drives me.
Maybe that’s okay?
Obviously there are shortcomings. The first half of this piece was spent lamenting the sacrifices in my own artistic output that are inherent to being a teacher first, and the frustration at the lack of following I can develop on my own work when the audience sees me as a tool rather than an artist.
Another struggle is that it’s hard to establish and own my own personal creative style if - before I even complete a single work, nevertheless a series that might earn recognition or put me on the map - I immediately hand over the keys to any unique idea or solution I come up with. Over the past couple years I’ve had to specifically limit the content I make about creative techniques because I felt like I was onto something interesting that I could leverage for my own unique looks rather than handing them over for the rest of the creative scene to outpace me. It felt like the right idea; I’ve taught for over a decade, maybe it’s time to make for myself and truly earn my place (and hopefully get people to take me seriously). Yet, in all this time, my list of to-do videos on these things has continued to grow meanwhile my actual output using them for myself has not really grown much at all.

Those are downsides, things where I feel like my chosen career path is in direct contradiction to my hopes and dreams, even though it means getting close to my dreams more easily.
But also, this is my creative output. This is my creative expression. This is how I explore art and my creativity and I just happen to teach others along the way.

Maybe I’m not meant to be an artist. A creative. Maybe I’m not meant to have a viral hit set me up for life as I’ve seen happen to so many of my “students.” Maybe I’m meant to be stuck in this specific place - which I can be eternally grateful for and understand is a really great place to be, but keeps me from achieving my true dreams - to keep the drive alive. Maybe if I “made it big” I’d get lazy and lose my push. I don’t know.
But I’ll keep trying.

]]> You Can't Buy Time. Addie https://analogdreams.zip/you-cant-buy-time.html 2026-03-07T00:03:52-05:00 One of the hardest parts about being a creative at this point in my life is all of the time… ]]>

One of the hardest parts about being a creative at this point in my life is all of the time spent not creating.

There’s the obvious stuff: Gotta be present and be a good dad when school isn’t in session, gotta be a good husband, a good cat caretaker, gotta take better care of my body and actually get enough sleep. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it’s genuinely hard sometimes to transition out of creative mode or “work mode” when I have a lot of bees buzzing in my head - when there’s projects I want to do, when I haven’t finished all of my tasks for the day, or when I did do most/all of my tasks but they weren’t the “fun” or creative kind.

The less obvious comes in that latter part of my work, combined with the first. When the inspiration strikes and I’m cooking dinner. When I have endless ideas of things I wanna tweak or test on my camera rigs, but I’m in the middle of playing outside with my kid. When I see myself doing all of these projects that it feels mission critical that I order the necessary components or gear for said projects, yet I cannot fathom where in my day-to-day I’m supposed to fit them in. I can only wedge so much - especially when my wife has been waiting on me to wedge in no end of house projects in the gaps I keep filling with these.

 

How many thousands of dollars have I blown through chasing the idea that I’d have time to do a thing? Why do I own more cameras than I actually know what to do with yet am currently lusting after a new, proper “modern camcorder” to pair with my cinema cameras - you know for all that extra filming I absolutely totally could be doing day to day that I’m simply not doing because I don’t have the right camera... totally...?
Of all of my habits I’ve tried to break and mindsets I’ve tried to fix, this has potentially been the hardest. With most things - other spending habits included - it’s easy to just put up a wall of sorts and logic myself out of the problem when I need to face it in the moment. But when inspiration strikes, when ideas boil over, when I cannot contain myself and the bees buzzing in my head - it feels like the only way to feel in control is to further “buy in” with the idea. Either (and this only works sometimes) squeezing in extra time between things to get the ball rolling, add that final touch, hit upload on that long render - or (the more likely outcome) buy something for the project. How can I not?

The painful irony is that this pitfall is all but covered up when I’m actually working. During my work day I am never short on things to do or leads to pursue that the idea of piling more on can feel unrealistic, sometimes unbearable. But when I’m not working? That’s the danger zone. That’s when the wheels are spinning out of control and I have to feel productive - and if I can’t work, the least I can do is the passive research. Or spec reviewing. Or comparison. Or planning. Planning leads to ideating, ideating leads to fantasizing, fantasizing erodes reality, priorities, and any grounded concept of what I’m actually capable of and realistically willing to spend my time doing - instead replacing my real life with a made-up one in which I can do all the things in all the mediums and niches that interest me, and the only thing holding me back is whatever next thing I need for the project at top of mind.
Right now that thing holding me back is a camcorder.

 

I have camcorders. Probably a dozen. I have photography cameras (also probably a dozen) and I have a couple cinema cameras. But the camcorders I have are all retro (Hi8, MiniDV, etc.) and are great for a specific, intentional retro vibe, but not ideal for the day-to-day run-and-gun. 
I’ve also never really thought I needed or wanted a modern camcorder before. Any of the intentional shooting I do, I tend to do on my cinema cameras - where I have full control to achieve my artistic vision - or my iPhone when I need the lazy-but-still-passable footage of a quick pickup shot. So why now?

A crowd of people sits waiting for a public hearing about datacenters in Indiana to begin.

Well, you see... I traveled to Indianapolis recently for a public hearing regarding datacenter legislation (or lack of momentum on thereof) and took my favorite cinema camera with me. I got some photos and some video clips - but I was inherently limited in what I could capture from the distance I was (even with a zoom lens and the capacity to crop in substantially in post thanks to the absurdly high-resolution full-frame sensor in it) and the is no stabilization in such a rig. My cinema camera setups are designed for quick shots - some talking head (max 30 minutes, usually closer to 12), some product videography, demonstration, etc. - not for long-form recording. I could rig them out for long-form recording, but that would change the profile and weight (thus my tolerance to keep holding and likelihood of bringing with me) quite negatively. Plus, the lack of stabilization and other purpose-fit specific features is still a problem.

But while there I got to see others (presumably reporters) with camcorder rigs running and gunning. These were bare-simple rigs. Camcorder, built-in matte box, mounted shotgun mic and windscreen, headphones for the operator. There was one guy running a big ENG-style camera with a B4 lens and wireless streaming device and other such, but he was the outlier.

An ENG camera operator films the event.

I have to admit, I was pretty distracted during this event analyzing the camera operators and how much smoother that workflow must be. (I didn’t miss anything, but I shouldn’t have been so nosy.)

Of course the primary thing I spent most of my time reflecting on while eating a delicious Italian lunch after the event was... the fact that I “need” a camcorder. In fact, I had to actively resist, multiple times starting that research rabbit hole during the event as I was sitting there listening to the speakers. I kept unlocking my phone to start some Kagi searches, only to feel shame and lock it back.

But not 2 hours later I had a full stomach and multiple leads on the camcorders I would pursue, one of which checked all my boxes. I had features that I wanted to be present, and limitations with what I could do now that I wanted to compensate for (stabilization, zoom range, long-form recording, etc.)

For what work? What am I doing that suddenly merits this workflow? Am I going to start filming these kinds of hearings and events all the time? (No.)

While the passing “for next time” thought for a thing I’d done once was something I could shoo away, the next phase quickly began: Finding problems to fit the solution. 
Well, it would probably be easier to just have the camcorder around for random more run-and-gun style shots while I work on projects, allowing me to film more as I go and make videos more entertaining, film more behind-the-scenes, and develop more style. The LOG recording capabilities of the more expensive model I’d picked out would also mean that the footage wouldn’t stray too far from my current looks and styles, integrating nicely.

Plus I could attend more hearings like this as my interest in this side of activism grows - and when making my content on these things, being able to just grab any specific quote or clip from the whole presentation would be a benefit.

Not to mention all of the family outings, travel, whatever that I apparently don’t film enough as-is would be made significantly more seamless with a camcorder.



All of these are justifications. They’re a list of problems built to make it impossible to argue with the decision to purchase the thing to make me feel confident in this delayed-yet-still-impulsive decision and to shamelessly defend it should I be pressed about it.
Responsibility isn’t considered here, only justification.

I’m not doing this during work hours, though. I’m doing this while I’m waiting on pasta to boil. While I’m waiting on my kid’s bus to drop him at his stop. While I lay in bed at night, unable to sleep until I’ve calmed the creative energy whirling behind my eyes.

The justification enables me to make a decision. The decision combined with the justification makes this whole time spent “productive.” The illusion of productivity makes it feel like I’m still doing the work. That I’m still creating. That I’m pursuing my dreams and earning my place.

Even though, in an instance like this, I’m justifying buying another camera that I won’t use to film anything more - as my time is already full and any additional filming will require subbing out other work in its place.

And the thing is, there are legitimate things a camcorder like this could bring to my workflow. A zoom lens with a ton of range and smooth control over a rocker combined with good stabilization and a portable, hand-holdable form factor does mean I’ll have an easier time taking such a thing on trips, to work events, filming outside, or passing to my wife (or other unwitting impromptu camera person) to help me film something last minute without much coaching.

But do I need that role filled so desperately right now? Have I been missing this or am I just excited at the idea?



The (now that I’ve thought this out) obvious short-term answer is to only allow myself the ability to make these decisions when I’m actually working. During “work hours” so to speak. But when “work hours” have been “whenever I can fit them in” for most of my career - I don’t have an established boundary for that. And then that doesn’t solve the problem of: If I remove this as a tool in my arsenal during my not-creating time, what will I replace it with?

Turns out, I can buy things to make myself feel better, but I can’t buy the time to actually make use of them.

]]> In the Attention Economy, We’re All Cheap Addie https://analogdreams.zip/in-the-attention-economy-were-all-cheap.html 2026-02-26T00:26:04-05:00 It might be worth arguing that the most boring form of online discourse is discourse about discourse – but that’s… ]]>

It might be worth arguing that the most boring form of online discourse is discourse about discourse – but that’s basically all I did for my time in academia and I never quite grew out of the “thinking too much about every possible thing” angle, so here I am I guess.

If pressed to identify the most consistent feeling I’ve had about myself throughout my life, it might have to be the feeling of being “othered.” I was a geek, I was queer, I wasn’t athletic, oh wait geek is cool now and I’m not nerdy enough about the right things anymore, I was squeaky, I was artsy, I was too bad at competitive video games, I wasn’t squeaky anymore but now I must be faking my voice (that claim never went away), now I’m too good at competitive video games and it’s not fun for everyone if they can’t dunk on me anymore, I wanted to pursue online media as a career instead of going into engineering, and I had undiagnosed ADHD underwriting many otherwise inexplicable personality traits.

I’ve wanted, yearned to belong to “something bigger than myself” but rarely does anything pass the “sniff test” of a skeptic and someone who doesn’t buy-in, and being opinionated leads to conflict; conflict leads to friction, friction leads to othering.

As a result, I’ve cultivated this life and career for myself where I have one foot in the door of many, many different outlets and mediums and potential lines of work. (I guess I have a lot of feet.)



So naturally, I’m at my most uncomfortable when the various different scenes that I try to partake in are at odds with each other. (Which is… basically all the time. Flame wars never truly died on the net, it just stopped being cool to refer to them as such.)

Frequently this comes up by way of mocking a specific individual (or category, niche, community, [insert grouping here] of individuals) for doing something online “for attention.”

I would argue that there is nothing more hypocritical than accusing someone on social media of being attention-seeking. It might be impossible to be any more hypocritical. Yet it happens frequently, pervasively, and often righteously. For a certain demographic (or perhaps for all demographics when struck in the right mood) there can be nothing more “cringe” or worthy of shame than to do something online for attention.

Except… wait… then just log off.

This kind of complaint is lodged against online “creators” of all kinds and fields. Whether you post selfies or food pr0n to Pixelfed and Instagram, or you’re a writer, a video creator, an editor, a streamer, an artist, a reporter, an educator, a vlogger or a blogger, a debate bro or a sex worker – someone somewhere is complaining that you “only said” X thing or “only did” Y thing “for attention.”

This feels righteous and just when it’s said of “bad people” – but they’re saying it about “us” too. We’re all playing the same game here, even those of us who aren’t making any money off it.

If you make your career via public, published work, you’re doing the thing for attention. Period.

You may not, personally, want direct attention or eyes on you, specifically – but you are doing things for attention in an attention economy. If you did not want attention on you, your work, or some result of your work, you would not be posting it on the public web.

You may very well – and most likely do – have higher goals and objectives than just “attention” (virtually everyone does) but attention is the currency being spent and the vehicle by which you have to achieve your goals, regardless.



Perhaps it’s my history of bullying; perhaps it’s the shame of not pursuing one single career path and being “bought in”; perhaps its my hyper-empathy that extends even to my worst enemies; perhaps it’s my chronic case of never successfully belonging to a bigger group that I was not the leader of. But when I see someone mocked for attention-seeking as an inherent part of their online work, I feel gross and slimey all over.

It’s easy to write this behavior off as the “pot calling the kettle black” and all – but who am I to make fun of someone else with that as my basis, when that’s just as easily flipped on me by my own naysayers? I sure as hell don’t want that being said about me.

I don’t want attention. I mean, not directly, not really. I’m a pretty shy person, a private one. I’m not friendly in person unless I “have to be” for professional reasons. I’m not going to be a dick, but I’m going to avoid drawing attention and avoid direct contact. I have always wanted my work to speak for itself and hold a massive disdain for the more parasocial requirements of my job. I don’t want that, but I arguably have to cultivate that to some degree in order to sustain my work. It’s gross, I don’t like it, but it’s a part of the job. And I do my best to not put others down for leaning into it – in a non-harmful, not-abusive manner, mind you (which some people seem to find pretty difficult for some godsforsaken reason…) - when they’re just doing a better job at “securing the bag” than I am. I actively throw away financial (and other metrics-based) success because I don’t want to play that game.

But it’s still my job. For all of my hermiting, my focus on the work, my desire to not put myself out there and invite you in to care about “me” – that’s an inherent requirement to building a following, getting clicks, getting work.



I see this stone-casting behavior most frequently in two distinct scenarios. The first is on a miserable place, but perhaps still indicative of the clique-esque behavior at play: Reddit. The various photography subreddits (all of which have their own inter-Reddit conflicts and infighting) see “photography YouTubers” as nothing but gear hawkers, people who don’t actually shoot, those who aren’t working professionals or “real artists.” And honestly, it’s easy to see why. But they’re not all that way.

The other angle comes in the sneering that goes on between the various groups of “games media.” Writers versus YouTubers, reviewers versus streamers, long-form video essaysists vs medium-form(?) videomakers. The tabloid-like, algorithm-chasing, engagement-farming YouTube slop artists versus the clueless, agenda-driven, self-hating game journos. Whatever current terminology is being thrown around this week.

This all makes me super uncomfortable, as someone who wears… all of those hats. I’m a writer, a video artist, I’ve been a streamer and have taught streamers, I’ve made long-form content and I’ve made short-form content. While my goals have been honorable – education being my primary niche and objective for most of my career until the past year or so – the immediate “objective” is, of course, to sustain my livelihood. I have lived and breathed video creation and writing every day of my life since some time in 2002 or 2003 when I first laid hands on a camera (and started writing coherently) – and I want to do everything in my power to continue doing so on my own terms, as long as I maintain my integrity and my focus.

After all, who is a writer to judge if a YouTuber is “algorithm-chasing” or “ad revenue farming” when that’s all written outlets do anyway? Sensationalism plagues all monetized content and until we start self-publishing in ways that don’t seek monetization first, no one’s hands are clean. And who is a streamer to call a “game journo” (maaan I hate that way of saying it, to be clear) clueless or hating games when they, themselves spend most of their time shouting shitty hot takes about games to get the most trendy YouTube Short of the week?

 

It’s quite amusing that after writing my original thread with thoughts on this, I happen to see Will Borger’s post and Nick Calandra’s subsequent reply vague-posting about some sort of games media drama.


I managed to connect right away that this was (most likely) referring to the social media backlash against Giovanni Colantonio’s Polygon review of Resident Evil Requiem – the conversation was everywhere today, most of it dunking on Giovanni for his… interesting comparison of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Capcom’s latest title. But what stood out to me was that Will’s post could have honestly just as much applied to Nathan Grayson’s piece about Dr. Disrespect’s latest embarrassment.

Now don’t get me wrong – Dr. Disrespect / Guy Beahm is a terrible human being and dunking on him is valid in just about any context, and I consider myself a solid appreciator of Nathan’s work, so I mean no disrespect here. But there was a line (after an already incredible headline) that pulled that similar icky feeling out of me.

“Beahm, a 43-year-old man who despite his age dresses like a clown and yells at video games for a living,” - this is a good line. This is funny. I audibly chuckled upon reading it. But that “yells at video games for a living” as condescension to game streamers still felt icky, in some part of my brain. Again, not in defense of Dr. Disrespect – that is a quite literal description of his content, especially as he further unravels in his radicalization and lost grip on relevance. But because I feel this tension between creators of these differing mediums all the time. Despite having very, very angry feelings towards the subject of this joke, the framing of these “sides” still makes it feel like someone’s pulling my limbs in opposite directions sometimes.

And flip it around, and one could make the same joke that Nathan makes his living writing snarky posts about video game executives and their takes on AI. That’s not a fair assessment, and it’s certainly not how I feel about Nathan’s work or Aftermath’s body of work in the slightest – but if we’re going to start over-simplifying creators in other fields’ jobs to make us feel better about ours, we all end up stepping in shit.

 

Maybe this is insecurity. Maybe because I never committed 100% to any singular field or direction, I feel like I’m not worthy of hanging with any singular group (or any of the groups at all) so if we’re casting judgement on one group or the other “what does that make me?” rings a bell. Or maybe I just don’t like to see my friends fight. (Again speaking vagueness here as I never want anything remotely resembling an association between Dr. Disrespect and myself.)

Maybe I feel like my involvement in one specific field immediately excludes me from another. What if my participation in the “algorithm-feeding ad revenue-chasing slop machine” of YouTube for much of my career is a reason that more “traditional” games journalists and writers might not take me seriously at some point? That despite a degree in journalism and doing my best to maintain my integrity through the decades that the very condescension cast on those like me immediately ruins my chances?

Or maybe it just takes me back to shitty school-age years where I thought clique-friction was such a petty, stupid way to spend one’s energy – yet it served as a constant reminder that I was in none of them.

None of the broader discourse has anything to do with me, but I feel similar to Will Borger that it looks bad on the people dogpiling when they’re quick to dogpile on someone or on a specific group of someones, even if there’s reasons.

Hell, even within the same “clique” this Resident Evil Requiem review discourse is revealing a lot of in-fighting just in the written games media grouping alone. Lots of people jumping on board for a free dunk – others, like Steven Santana, see it as an opportunity to actually talk about reasonable games critique meta-issues and the pitfalls of some game review processes.

(If we’re going to share hot takes about bad game reviews, I personally think participating in a multi-stage review embargo lift situation at all does a massive disservice to the entire industry and no one should go along with it. But if they didn’t, they’d be giving up the clicks to the next person or breaking trust with Capcom and possibly losing review access. I, myself, once participated in the “unboxing embargo” of a graphics card separate from the actual review embargo primarily just to announce I’d be covering it from my unique angle and get the free views. We’re all cheap.)

I think to a close friend of mine who got a job at Polygon – and other friends who have gotten jobs at Polygon, similarly “ruined” sites, or at big tech companies who are supposed to be the “bad guys.” Should that friend – who had been in a rough financial situation and been grinding away at breaking into the games media world just not have taken the job which massively improved their living situation and got them working with bylines in this industry? Many would say so – and take pot shots on anyone who dares go near Valnet-backed sites or other outlets who laid off staff in any way. What about the individual cost of that?

I don’t really know how to end this. I long to feel like I belong to a group. Tech YouTubers, gaming YouTubers, games writers, tech writers, streamers, podcasters, video artists, analog artists, educators – there’s always something keeping me “out”. I can live with that. I carve my own path. But it doesn’t feel good having specific parts of myself shut down or condescended to because people representing the other parts feel better than.

All of this self-referential bullshit was mostly to serve as illustration of how this might look to others who are reading at home. It’s real, but in line with my “I don’t actually want attention” bit – I’m not trying to make it about me. This is just how I process my overactive mind.

Anywho, duke it out in Unreal Tournament 2004 instead of social media. At this point I’m feeling more gross about being on any social media at this point. One day I’ll be ballsy enough to only post on my own sites and trust auto-posters get the word out. One day.



]]> Twitter. 16 years wasted. Addie https://analogdreams.zip/twitter-16-years-wasted.html 2025-12-30T16:14:39-05:00 Sixteen years. SIXTEEN. Almost seventeen. I made my account in 2009. Life was completely different in 2009. In 2009 I… ]]> Deactivated: Your account is deactivated. Sorry to see you go. #GoodBye

Sixteen years. SIXTEEN. Almost seventeen. I made my account in 2009. Life was completely different in 2009. In 2009 I was cracking skulls in Arkham Asylum, complaining about N00b Tubes in Modern Warfare 2, watching District 9, already getting tired of everyone quoting Taken, struggling to “get good” at Demon’s Souls, watching SeaNanners and Hutch on Machinima Respawn, and getting my braces off. Oh and my house got flooded and an entire basement's worth of stuff destroyed. And we had an unprecedented ice storm that destroyed much of what we had in the back yard. 2009 was weird, but things are very different today.

Actually, though, fuck this. 

I wanted to write something to eulogize deactivating an account I’ve had for half of my time on this earth, but that’s wasted energy. 

Twitter itself was never that significant. 

Sure, I made (or rather utilized Twitter as the least-resistant path of connection for) a few friends through Twitter over the years. I’ve followed artists and fellow creators and felt like I had more access to them than anywhere else. 

But in reality? What did Twitter ever bring to my life? In what way has my life been made better, sixteen years on, as a result of making an account on there?

I can’t really say I know of any such way. 

It was a time sink. A way for me to feel like I got some socialization during rough times. I followed some cool people, stayed more up to date with some projects, and I was probably influenced to spend more money than I otherwise would have.

But so, so much of that socialization was spent fighting, falling for rage bait, being pulled into the vicious cyclone of being convinced everyone around me was becoming bigoted/racist/insufferable scum and that the world was falling apart. (Not that it isn’t, but I didn’t need to obsess over it on an hourly basis, did I?)

Sure, I connected with a few brands over Twitter and made professional connections, got some free merch and made a few bucks through some brand deals. 

But how much money did I spend following projects or products a little TOO closely? How much might I have turned away by showing myself so transparently, and being unable to avoid conflict?

Twitter was the ultimate system of FOMO abuse. “Everyone” – especially in context of those terminally-online – everyone was there, posting the “latest updates,” sharing early peeks at their work or the fastest links for limited run pre-orders, or giving opportunities to collaborate. You might even get the chance to garner the attention of someone special, someone you looked up to, only for them to be an absolute shithead in response to you. 

That’s what you get for “wasting their time” - forgetting that they chose to waste their own time by logging into that hell-site in the first place. 

Maybe you’d follow that musician you’d always adored, and maybe they’d like one of your replies one day! And the next day, a cool creator and builder you’d followed since before Twitter even existed would reveal themselves to be a raging anti-vaxxer. 

You “should have known” someone who otherwise believed in science would fall down such a dark hole during isolation. 

Maybe you’d win that free tablet PC by happening to post how you actually enjoyed the split-view feature of Windows 8 while doing college coursework! And maybe a group of unshowered and unloved teenagers would tell you to go kill yourself nonstop for weeks. 

You said something a popular account didn’t like (or were just queer), so you deserved it. 

Or, you know, just get straight up scammed.

Maybe you’d finally get your “moment” getting your biggest work yet shared out by store PR reps and fellow creators. And maybe you’d then become tech support for other creators, have them all happy to demand your assistance at any given moment – and even outright steal your work – without giving a second thought to crediting you or signal boosting in any way. 

You made posts helping people, you were obligated to help anyone for free. 

Twitter was a hellscape long before Elon Musk took over. It started as a fun place to keep up with people and perhaps have a backup feed when YouTube notifications stopped working or everyone collectively forgot how to run a blog or newsletter or RSS feed. But after that, once it got big enough? Hellsite. Dumpster fire. 

You can’t put everyone in the same room, obsess over retention (and thus throw moderation out the window) and expect anyone to have a good time. 

It had been bad for years, Elon just tore back the illusion that any good intent was ever present and cranked all the “bad vibes” dials up to 11.

But if you were a part of certain sub-cultures, or of a certain demographic, it felt like you HAD to be there. That’s the feedback loop all social media sites manipulate you with; it’s a parasite. If you post a video link and get a dozen or so likes, retweets, and responses – ESPECIALLY if one of those responses was along the lines of “this wasn’t in my YouTube feed, I’m glad I checked here!” – Twitter felt critical to your viability as a creator. “Go where your audience is” was the regular advice of the time. 

In the early “fun” days, interactions felt like a currency; and it was rewarding to keep collecting it. To feel happy that someone wanted to interact with you, and to make them happy interacting back. 

In the attention economy, any amount of attention feels like sustenance, and any consideration against selling your soul for more felt like a threat to survival. 

But in reality? None of that contributed to the bottom line very much. Twitter never contributed significantly to my views, revenue, or broader internet relevance (at least not in a good way) aside from the random shoutouts. Those shoutouts could have taken place elsewhere. 

EVERYTHING on Twitter worth participating in could have taken place elsewhere. And been better for it. 

Was it really that important for me to comment on the latest YouTube sponsorship drama at this time? No, no it wasn't.

Yelling your opinion about the latest game or trend in the industry might be cool, but have you considered having actual conversations with real friends about these things, with respect for one another and room for nuance? Perhaps where one builds a deeper understanding and learns why someone else has a different perspective?

Collectively getting the attention of a famous person might be fun, but have you considered doing something meaningful with your time and spending it doing something other than spam? Or using that collective action for good?

At BEST, Twitter increased my baseline cortisol levels for over a decade – whether it was the craving to keep up with trends or maintain relevance to feel like I’m being better at my job, or keeping up with notifications and replies and constant pleas for my attention by others, or actual direct (or indirect) conflict and arguing.

I have that fun ADHD quirk where I just can’t stand being misunderstood, unheard, or leaving a conflict unsettled. It led to countless instances of a meaningless argument with people who were truly wastes of oxygen ruining entire days at a time. 

If “worrying is worshipping the problem” then sticking to social media out of FOMO is being in a fucking cult. (Edit: I went to find a source for this quote and all I can find is religious nonsense. It's a fun quote, but I choose to engage with it without context of its origins.)

Why did we feel the need to have a WHOLE CONTROL CENTER to keep up with Twitter? How was this ever good for us?

If that’s Twitter at its best, I’m scared to attempt to describe what it was at its worst. 

Trying to describe it concisely fails me. Instead I think back to one of the darkest phases of my life. 

2020 brought a roar of racial (and other social) conflicts with police killings of black men, BLM protests, a stretch of queer/trans lynchings. It brought dread, fear, instability, and isolation with the COVID-19 pandemic. It brought huge political strife with the election cycle. All of those things made just about everyone who wasn’t living under a rock pretty miserable and abrasive. We all wanted to fight one another. 

Add in special ingredient X, my son was born right as lock-downs went into full gear. Our delivery plans got thrown out the window, delivery itself was traumatic for reasons I don’t need to disclose here, and my wife and I were left to be clueless, isolated parents at the start of a scary pandemic with a baby who had colic for the first 6 or so months. 

We were alternating shifts: My wife would stay up during the day to care for him, and I would take the nights.

Sleep deprived and defeated, I was miserable. And the social web was a raging volcano of social conflict, widespread misinformation and propaganda, misplaced anger, arguing over everything. 

But I had to be on Twitter. It was my job. It was a requirement. I couldn’t miss out. I couldn’t let my work suffer. So naturally I had to wade into it. 

It made me a worse person. It forced me to look at the worst of humanity and try to understand how we were even the same species. It pushed me to take more abuse and damage than one person should ever be facing in their lives and then it still expected me to turn around to smile at every new person and be a good dancing monkey. 

I couldn’t do it. I burned bridges, I nuked relationships, I lost followers, friends, and I didn’t care.

Arguably, I still don’t. You don’t get to treat me a certain way and me be nice to you, period. 

But we never should have been put in that room to find out. 

I was already miserable and, thanks to Twitter, I was left broken, empty, disillusioned, and full of hate. And I mean full of it. I hated everyone – the people who would join such reckless or harmful causes and movements, the people who were against them but thought spending all their time dunking on them via Quote Retweets and giving them attention was the way, the people who attacked me, spammed me, the people who thought I’d just be their 24/7 free tech support. Eventually I’d come to hate just about anyone who replied. Anyone who would say something that MIGHT rub me the wrong way or ask something of me. And I started to hate myself. I’d hate myself for the things I’d say, for the ways I’d say them, for participating at all and for still being on that hellsite. And, of course, I’d hate the site. The app. Whatever it was. But I’d still log in. Every day. Every hour. I couldn’t miss out. 



Elon buying Twitter and turning it into a Nazi Bar was honestly a relief. The global “mask off” moment quickly helped me identify some lines in the sand, but it was also a significant enough crack in the foundation of my abusive relationship with the site that it was a guarantee I’d delete my account eventually. 

(I would have done it this time last year had I not just signed a contract involving Twitter posts as part of my deliverables when I had planned on deactivating it.) 



We humans have this bad habit of thinking of – and, then, treating – other humans as things rather than people and it leads to some pretty horrifying consequences. 

There are survival reasons for doing so – needing to not think of the “enemy” or those doing you harm as people is often required to survive fighting them. But ultimately it leads us to saying and doing horrible things to each other. 

Social media just amplifies that. It’s impossible to handle the scale of messages – in a feed or in interactions – that one gets via the modern “everyone in one room” social media framework. It’s just too much. We can’t see every individual as people, it’s information (and empathy) overload. Combine that with the massive surge in bot activity the last 5-8 years and it’s not even guaranteed they all ARE humans, anyway. 

The model is fundamentally broken. There’s no saving it. Jumping ship to another site with a prettier banner only delays the problem. If everyone else also jumps to the new ship, it still gets overcrowded and still sinks. 

Sure, you could federate a whole fleet of ships and balance the load – but when most of the passengers expect the same experience as the single big ship, and thus use it that way, they still overcrowd the space and sink most of the fleet. 



My last 16 years on Twitter manipulated the way my brain works and abused me in ways I may unpack for another 16 years still. And I won’t be treated like that again. I will not let myself end up in that same spot again. 

The internet can still be alive. And it can still be social. But we have to think of, and manage, it in terms more realistic to our real-life social analogs and capacity. 

I might be able to give a talk in front of thousands (or millions?) of people, but I can’t handle interacting with them all at the same time. 

Instead, we need to focus our efforts on building up smaller rooms, more diverse and focused communities where the priorities are good times and vibes, safety, moderation, and NOT retention. We need to divide up – and travel between our spaces – rather than expecting everyone to just form different huddles all in one space. 

That means instead of blasting posts about a new game or movie, you join groups of friends and have real discussions about it. It means accepting slower means of communication, sometimes sending direct correspondence again, maybe using forums again. It means taking back ownership over our online and social experiences instead of handing everything over to the most selfish and greedy people on the planet. 

I don’t mourn my Twitter account. Instead I mourn the 16 years’ time spent using that piece of shit. I can literally think of more ways than I can count that my life would be markedly better had I spent my Twitter time doing different things. 

Actual time wasted on my lifespan – across half of my entire lifespan thus far – that I can never get back. I won’t make that mistake twice. 

It all felt so important at the time, in the moment. But it took at most 2 weeks of not logging in to realize everything was better without it.

 

]]> YouTube comments are actually just a comment for oneself  Addie https://analogdreams.zip/youtube-comments-are-actually-just-a-comment-for-oneself.html 2025-11-07T09:39:56-05:00

Something I’ve had to learn about YouTube comments is that they aren’t really comments on the video. At least, not most of the time.

Sure, someone might have a truly worthwhile observation or discussion in response to what a video says - this is especially true with long-form content like my podcasts. But most of the time, the comments are… about anything else.

Sometimes, someone has a gut reaction about me: My appearance, my choice of hair or nail color, my specific haircut, my beard (or lack of), what I wear, my backdrop, etc. Sometimes, it’s purely a response to the title of the video, without having watched (or, at least, absorbed) a second of it. Sometimes the comment is about other things I cover/have covered, but not what’s in the video itself.

And sometimes, a YouTube comment is just about the idea of the video, but not the video. (And often, still having not watched it.)

For example, if I make a list video of games, comments will often pour in mad that I didn’t include X, Y, or Z game - ignoring any hence of “why.” I could make a list video of my favorite games I specifically played in my room on this one specific console when I was specifically 8 years old, and someone will still comment mad that I didn’t include this other game that I hadn’t played at 8 years old or in my room (or maybe wasn’t even on that console).

The comment section is for people to yell into the void and argue with themselves.

In the above comment, perhaps the person took the title too literally (I could write at length about the fixation on hyper-literal interpretations of YouTube titles and how absolutely unproductive that is) and only responded to that. Or perhaps they did manage to watch the video, but somehow didn’t absorb any of my own obvious intentions, messaging, or positioning in the video.

Instead of arguing with what I did or what I said or my intentions with the video, they’re instead arguing with this broader trend or idea that they’ve aggregated from a myriad of other discussions similar to mine and decided to post it as a comment on my particular video. Even though the things they’re arguing against are incongruent with the ideas posed in my video.

Now, this is a pretty easy problem to solve: Just stop reading comments. Or stop reading them so closely, stop taking them seriously, definitely stop responding to them, etc. Limit YouTube comment checking to a specific time and place and don’t let it bleed into the rest of your day.

Easier said than done.

In many ways, YouTube comments are the only real way to judge performance and sentiment about a video. We have a sea of analytics available from YouTube, but they don’t really paint a productive picture.

Secondly, YouTube comments are often the only way to connect with people around our work. Especially as broader social media spirals into more of a hellscape every year, the comment section is the primary place discussions are going to be had about your video. Sure, I could use the added friction of someone needing to discuss it on social media, in my Discord server, here in the forums, or by reaching out directly as a filter of sorts to filter out the low-effort abrasive comments - but that often leaves little interaction. It doesn’t feel good to fish for compliments about your own video or try to convince other people to talk about it.

This also all stems from be coming up during a very different era of YouTube - one where comments were more personal and nicer, more important in the grand scheme of things than they are now.

Part of it is also my own literal interpretations. To me, a comment on a YouTube video should first be taken as a direct comment about the video unless made clear otherwise. I imagine a lot of viewers/commenters don’t use it that way. I’ve established as such already, yet that is still the only framework I can apply the initial read of any given comment to - given that is the vehicle they chose to send their message with.

The internet really fell apart when we all stopped using individual tools for their given purpose. When we stopped treading comment sections (on anything) as a direct line to the author of the work, when we stopped using search engines for search, when we treated social media as the “everything box” and started expecting every single-purpose service to offer every service around.

]]> Yes, you should start that new YouTube channel Addie https://analogdreams.zip/yes-you-should-start-that-new-youtube-channel.html 2025-05-30T12:04:11-04:00 Every YouTuber, streamer, “content creator” [shudders] eventually struggles with the same question: Should you start another YouTube channel? Should you… ]]> YouTube "Watch Next" suggestions.

Every YouTuber, streamer, “content creator” [shudders] eventually struggles with the same question: Should you start another YouTube channel? Should you try to cram everything on one channel and make it work, should you make new channels for every new type of video, or just give up?

I’ve been on YouTube since 2006, I’ve worked for YouTube MCNs, served as a consultant to many large YouTube channels and streamers, spoken at length with YouTube staff and many creators running large channels, and been full-time as a content creator for more than 10 years now – so let me try to answer this question.

YouTube, and its algorithms, is a fickle beast. The rules of the game are constantly changing, adapting, sometimes regressing, focusing on new (or old) things, and being obscured by YouTube itself. New competition floods the site every day, and new formats keep shifting the playing field.

We may never know all of the rules or be able to keep up with them fully, but the platform’s primary goal remains forever constant: Figure out what the viewer wants to watch, and serve them a never-ending feed of that so they watch as many videos as possible (and make YouTube as much advertising revenue as possible).

My main channel's YouTube homepage on any given day.

Niche – or specialized, focused on a specific topic – YouTube channels have been the backbone of YouTube’s success from the very beginning. Whether you stumbled upon goofy comedy skits from WheezyWaiter, a makeup tutorial from Panacea81, or a goofy introspective Call of Duty gameplay commentary from SeaNanners while he cooks a delicious dinner – YouTube was the place you could find a channel that was seemingly “made just for you” to bring you videos you could connect with, relate to, laugh at, or learn from. The early UX was a bit spartan, but the direction the site has always moved towards was of trying to get you more of that thing you enjoyed watching.

 

Now we have complex algorithms and personalized notifications to make sure (for better or worse) that you keep watching more and more content. Homepage, sidebar suggested videos, “Watch Next”, the Shorts feed – each of these elements gets their own modified version of YouTube’s recommendation algorithms, designed to provide new opportunities along the “funnel” of viewing content.

  • Homepage: Sparks interest in new videos (or repeat viewings of commonly-rewatched or recently trending-again videos) based on videos and channels you’ve watched before. This can be new videos of a similar interest from channels you’re subscribed to (or watch regularly) or videos on a relevant topic to what you often watch.
    These are more of the “top of funnel” to get you down a new rabbit hole and starting a new watch session.

  • Watch Next: These show up after you finish a video and either directly continue you through the funnel via the next episode in a series, a video directly related to what you just watched, or something YouTube’s expected profile of you might want to watch.

  • Sidebar Suggestions: These show next to a video and often directly relate to what you’re currently watching, but also include some options that are less relevant to what you’re watching at this moment but more relevant to your profile as a viewer (in case you get bored of what you’re watching now).

These recommendations can get highly fine-tuned. YouTube builds up a virtual version of you based on watch history, viewing habits (device type, time of day, average viewing session length, likelihood of jumping around on topics or sticking with a singular topic, demographics information, etc.), and subject matter and tries to deliver things it thinks will be interesting to you as a person, beyond a viewer of a singular video.

Sidebar suggestions next to a YouTube video

All of these systems foster an environment in which creators have the ability to quickly grow a channel on any given topic, should they show up with high quality videos and an understanding of how to “play the game” for growth. If you jump in (ideally into a content area with a bit of a gap in coverage) making great, unique videos on ranking the best pasta noodles, or doing high-fashion makeup while riding a unicycle, or using Lego bricks for car repair, YouTube will keep delivering your videos to the audience that is most interested in them.

There’s never been a better time to create a YouTube channel on a specific topic with expertise, a unique approach, a great personality, etc. and succeed.*

[* I’d argue that the current over-emphasis on extraneous monetization tactics such as YouTube Shopping, mini-games, and YouTube’s uncharacteristic fear of TikTok flooding the site with Shorts is actually doing more harm than good and disrupting the algorithms in very messy ways, but the consequences of this impact established channels moreso than new channels. Leveraging YouTube Shorts as part of a growth process in some niches can be beneficial. Regardless, the algorithms at play absolutely provide unprecedented opportunities for growth for niche channels far better than the site has ever had before.]

 

The downside of this, is that channels who don’t conform to a specific niche or sub-niche tend to struggle. Growth is slower, it’s more difficult to get new videos seen, and YouTube itself struggles to figure out how to recommend your videos to viewers.

YouTube will claim that a channel, taken on the whole, doesn’t “matter.” That “all that matters” is the quality of an individual video and how well it appeals to viewers and performs. That is technically true, but there’s still a lie of omission. A video’s performance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. YouTube cannot evaluate every individual video and determine who to show it to on its own without some sort of viewership data.

So your video is first shown to existing subscribers and regular viewers via the homepage (if YouTube can determine a slot for it to fit in based on all the previously-discussed factors). If that video is a deviation from your normal content, a few things will happen:

  1. First, YouTube will struggle to determine who that initial “test audience” should be to begin with. If you primarily run a gaming channel and post a cooking video, the system won’t just surface your video to all of your existing viewers. It has to find a cross-section of viewers of your kind of gaming content who also watch cooking content similar to this new video.
    This lowers the initial reach, before anyone has even seen the video.
  2. Second, YouTube surfaces this video to said test audience. Inevitably it will not be a perfect match for everyone. Normal viewers aren’t going to recognize the video and click on something more recognizable. Some people who do recognize your channel won’t be interested in a cooking video. Many more people won’t be interested in this video right now, even if they might watch it another time.

This almost always leads to a low CTR (click-through ratio) on your video, meaning only a small percentage of the number of people who saw your video show up on a YouTube feed actually clicked on it.

Adam Ragusea's brief experiment with posting music videos alongside his cooking videos.

It is still possible for a video to recover from this and eventually find its audience should YouTube get good enough viewer data from the initial wave of impressions – but that often doesn’t end up happening, and when it does it can take years to bounce back.

This leads to variety channels struggling to really find their audience to begin with, and established channels who want to pivot struggling to get any viewership on their new niche. (Or alternatively, having that new niche completely dominate viewership on the channel and destroying any viability of the original niche.)

It’s easy to find this a defeating concept, to be discouraged by this. To feel trapped. “What happened to “Broadcast Yourself”? Why can’t I post what I want?”

But really, it’s important to think about it from the viewer’s perspective. If you go to the produce aisle at the grocery store to get your weekly pickup of apples (your favorite fruit), and the vendor for that aisle carrying artichokes in one of the apple slots – you’re going to be confused or frustrated by this choice, skip over the artichokes that you don’t like or didn’t ask for, and now have less apples right in front of you to even choose from in the first place. When the grocery store has a limited number of slots to present you with food options, and a vendor chooses to insert something you didn’t expect in that aisle or slot with something you weren’t expecting or wanting, the ripple effect goes pretty far.

As YouTube’s Creator Liaison, Rene Ritchie (a veteran YouTuber himself) put it:

“[…] if they expect a tasty cooking video, click on it, get it, and love it, it's super easy to keep recommending it to the same people who love tasty cooking videos. If instead they get a dance video, they maybe don't click, they maybe don't like it, and then the algorithm has to try to figure out why and what other audience might enjoy it instead, and that might take time.”

This is important for scaling businesses based on YouTube channels, even if you cover multiple topics within the same (or very similar) niches.

Take Linus Media Group, for instance. They run many channels under the “tech videos” umbrella:

  • Linus Tech Tips – Big name reviews, critical content, buyer’s guides, build guides, project videos

  • ShortCircuit – First impressions and old school “unboxing” videos

  • TechQuickie – “Explainer” style videos

  • TechLinked – Tech News & event coverage

  • GameLinked – Gaming news & event coverage

  • LMG Clips – Clips and excerpts from live streams and bigger content that stand alone

All of this content falls under the tech or tech-adjacent umbrella, but have been able to support a massive 100+ person operation and media empire by niching-down to specific focuses and feeding the audiences for those niches on unique outlets.

We see this again in MKBHD:

Examples of this are too many to list.

FLATLANDER TECH found quick growth and rapidly accelerated his content output to match, once he found "his audience" within his maker niche.
FLATLANDER TECH found quick growth and rapidly accelerated his content output to match, once he found "his audience" within his maker niche.

Similar logic is used by product manufacturers who often create sub-brands of different products targeted at different types of users to help reduce market confusion.

The downsides, of course, are that each individual channel requires a bit more concentrated effort to run efficiently if your goal is for those channels to each be a sustainable full-time career.

But even if it’s just a secondary outlet for a business’s customer outreach and relations, the benefits are still there. Going back to the focus on what the viewer wants: Are the same people who want commercials for your product or software the same people that want detailed guides on how to manufacture, build with, market, or sell your product or service to other customers? Are the people who want trailers of your latest video game the same people that want guides on using your game engine or HR management system? Are the people who want to learn to cook amazing budget meals the same people who want to learn to cast their own iron pans?

Sometimes that answer is yes, but statistically that answer is usually no. You can always double-dip with multiple channels, cross-pollinate via cross-promotion, and benefit from that, but you can’t really undo the damage of having too much unrelated content together on one channel.

While the current AI-generated, short attention spanned, corporate hellscape that clouds the surface of YouTube definitely feels like a far cry from the mid-00s “Broadcast Yourself” platform that changed web video forever, niche channels with unique videos that appeal to a very specific audience have never stopped being the backbone. Mainstream viewership might primarily fall on talk show clips, music videos, and Vine TikTok compilations; but the regular, return viewers that make up the viewership for the majority of YouTube channels out there are from people exploring their individual interests and finding more content that keeps them locked in.

So go ahead, make that new YouTube channel for that new idea you had. Don’t be afraid to branch out. Started a weird vlog channel 8 years ago and unsure whether or not to keep it going or to just post that to main? Keep that ish on your side channel. Make more of them. Keep it niche and keep it weird. You’ll find some of your biggest fans that way.

But please, for the love of everything digitally-amalgamated, don’t ask your viewers “What do you want to see?”. The moment you do that is the moment you’ve lost.

Don't forget to feature your additional channels on your channel page so viewers can easily find them!
Don't forget to feature your additional channels on your channel page so viewers can easily find them!

 

]]> Feels like a revolution. Addie https://analogdreams.zip/feels-like-a-revolution.html 2025-05-27T20:48:00-04:00 It's funny... in the mid-00s, EVERYONE wanted to make a gaming news and review site. I contributed to so many. The software democratization felt like a revolution. It felt like independent games media’s time was here. In a sense, it was; but the true impacts would be very delayed.

Journalists scoffed. People laughed. The layman doesn't have the cred or the business acumen to run such a venture. Why would you even want to contribute to a site run by the people posting to it? The esteem of posting to a corporate-backed website was desirable, chased after. “Professional” websites were the next evolution of magazines, the closed-gate utopia where the “real writers” worked, and the rest of us should just stick to forums and game clans.

This was disheartening for many, but others chose to ignore the old ways. To keep making their own sites and finding ways to let them thrive. Often they became cherished pillars for niche communities, with their inevitable sudden shutdown being met with funeral processions in the relevant TeamSpeak servers, Skype group chats, or forums.

A small handful of these sites, went on to become “legit.” They got corporate backing, investment, or simply bought up and would actually go on to pay the salaries of its employees (and some pay for contractors). Those sites achieved “the dream.”

Along the way, traditional media cracked and crumbled. Gaming branches of websites got sold off or shuttered. Television outlets for gaming disappeared, with those investments shifting to YouTube efforts like Machinima and Fullscreen.

The goalpost moved, but the dream was still the same.

Anyone could make a YouTube channel, but you only earned a certain amount of respect if you weren’t contracted by one of the big names or just making videos as part of your job for another website.

Those, too, were inflated with layers of bad decisions and would eventually crumble. A new wave of websites would take their place, taking the hybrid approach of written posts and YouTube video, gathering ad revenue (along with affiliate links and whatever monetization practices applied) from multiple angles, building audiences that way, too.

But the more things changed, the more the independent spirit shone through, the less investors and corporate owners would actually care.

We’ve now come full-circle. Independent and employee-run gaming sites are suddenly becoming the standard. The preferred paradigm, even. Corporate ownership comes with more downsides than they’re worth and you want the people running the site to actually be invested in what the site is about.

It feels like a revolution. I just hope it is, this time.

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