MEDIHUB

End of Web Wednesday: I Can (Not) Write These

Aug 16, 2023

Yeah, I missed out on many Wednesdays. I definitely remembered the existence of this series, but I either didn't have enough to turn into a post or just forgot to write one in time. So this time, I'm finally going to write one in advance so that I can end this segment. That doesn't mean I won't share cool stuff I find online in the future, but there won't be reoccuring posts for that. Just a shoutout every now and then is good enough. That being said, here's the last series of links for Web Wednesday:

• Identifont: A niche but useful tool for finding that one cool font you saw that one time. I'm a fan of the "Fonts by Appearance" questionnaire that basically plays 20 questions with you to give you a font or set of similar fonts to what you saw.
• How Joseph Anderson got a Trolley to the end of Half-Life 2: Some extended stream highlights of Joseph Anderson proving the beauty of intristic gaming challenges. Outside of being generally funny, these highlights prove just how great Half-Life 2's physics are. When they work as intended, they provide a fun and interesting shooter game. If the player chooses to abuse them, they can turn the entire playthrough into a puzzle of "how far can I push the engine?".
• MAD WORLD [Ska Punk Cover] by KING TUT'S REVENGE: No words necessary. Just listen to the ska.
• Popeyes® New Classic Bacon & Cheese Chicken Sandwich Review | Joe is Hungry 🥪🧀🥓: Behold, some of the most baffling and endearing editing choices I have ever seen on all of YouTube. Introductory shoutouts, temperature tests, intricate speed-ramp montages, all accompanied by multiple camera angles and a professional auctioneer tone. There's a surprise every 30 seconds - an inclusion that seems to break all other rules of YouTube videos, and it never gets old.
• Tetrisweeper: A horrifying mix of Tetris and Minesweeper. Even if you know how to play both, it takes a few minutes to get used to the multitasking. Each individual part of the game is easier than it is normally, but the combination of them makes for an interesting challenge. I hope this is part of a cultural shift where we realize that Minesweeper is one of the greatest PC games of all time (and if Tetris can get like 100 games, Minesweeper deserves a few).

Deceptive Commentary on YouTube

Mar 25, 2023

This morning, I saw a video recommended to me called a genuinely unhinged SunnyV2 video. I'm not a "fan" of nor am I subscribed to SunnyV2, and never watched his videos by themselves. Rather, I have previously watched reaction content from creators like Cr1TiKaL (who again, I am not subscribed to) in my stupors of laziness and while looking for a video to put on while eating. And the important thing that I need to admit is that I took SunnyV2 at complete face value, not realizing all of his many flaws in his videos. I think this is partly due to how creators like Cr1TiKaL praise SunnyV2, which helps bolster the reputation of this unfamiliar channel to me, not wanting to do my own research and investigate whether that reputation is deserved.

Back to the video I mentioned: SunnyV2's original video about famous Twitch streamer Ninja is without a doubt one of the most incoherent I have seen from a (currently) popular YouTuber. I worry that I may not have come to the conclusion if someone else was reacting and commentating over the original video, so I think making this post can help clear up my mind. Looking at his channel, SunnyV2 is a very people-oriented person. He commentates almost exclusively on social media personalities and, in particular, the many ways in which they failed or became hated or irrelevant.

Little Joel's video I mentioned earlier as well as his briefer commentary called How SunnyV2 invents a moral highlight that SunnyV2 has a tendency to make strange connections between facts to "reveal" why social media stars fall from fame. For Kwebbelkop, it's because he bragged about his wealth. For Ninja, it's because he got "political" and was a hypocrite for being mean in the past. For SunnyV2, it seems that if something that he doesn't like occurs at the same time of a creator's fall, then he has enough reason to present that something as a cause of failure.

This doesn't cover all of his content, however. There are times when SunnyV2 creates a video to merely present certain facts or recount a series of events surrounding a creator. Take How Primitive Building Videos Are Staged and How JellyBean Became YouTube's Most Hated Creator for examples. These videos do not have any specific morals that SunnyV2 is interested in presenting, rather facts and events presented in an (hopefully) engaging manner. I'd go so far as to call both of them competently made, and I have no big issues with them.

However, this type of video is presented with the same weight and style that SunnyV2 uses for his more opinionated content, creating a blend and mix of facts and false morals. Now, subjectivity is implied by any essay, but I have an issue with the channel's tendency to present clear opinions like "you should be apolitical if you are popular" as facts or valid reasoning. SunnyV2's tone and editing style reinforce that he is trying to present many ideas as formal and well-thought-out, and therefore more trustworthy. The tone is (mostly) monotone, so it seems less biased because he's not emotional. This is probably conflation with the idea that emotional people tend to be more biased, however the inverse is not equivalent in truth (not being emotional does not imply you are unbiased). In addition, his clean editing style is a notable improvement over the days of audio recordings over CS:GO surf footage, but it fails to supplement an appropriate amount of substance, ultimately coming off as vapid and, at worst, deceptive.

And that's how a lot of his channel comes across as - vapid and deceptive. It is concerned with presenting many topics of petty Internet drama like factual, documentary-style overviews that we can trust to be reputable because of our false assumptions that the commentator is unbiased or that the editing style is connected with suitably good content. The most irritating part about realizing this is knowing that many people are singing the praises of not only SunnyV2, but many other commentary channels that take this approach. And not every video that these channels produce could be bad! But I fear that they may be using the same tricks as SunnyV2 to subtly influence their audience to agree with their reasoning. If there's one thing people should take away from this, it's to question the content they consume and use their own reasoning skills to see whether they agree or disagree with the points that are being presented to them.

Ultimately, I think commentary is a perfectly valid genre of video when done right. You can even make points that aren't unreasonable! Drew Gooden is pretty good at this, for example. He also made a commentary video about Ninja, called I took Ninja's Masterclass and it ruined my life. His points about Ninja's Masterclass are presented in conjuction with good examples and don't make any big leaps of logic. The scope of the video is much narrower than SunnyV2's video, and yet (or perhaps because of that) it contains much more substance. It's also important that Drew is a much simpler commentator, with basic edits and writing. He explains things in a down-to-earth level that people can casually understand, and because of that he doesn't have to make false connections or add extra editing flair. And if you want a more serious essay style that's closer to SunnyV2's structure, you can look at his video Ellen's Fall from Grace. Again, the video is simple but it works as a strength to make it more digestable.

It almost feels like some channels believe that the problem with commentary from the past (think 2016 era of white young adults saying "cringe") was that it was too simple, or too small in scope. And while I commend YouTubers for doing the brave and honorable thing of not bullying children, increasing the production value and editing quality won't transform bad reasoning into anything else.

Tweets and Artificial Puzzles

Mar 16, 2023

More than a month ago now, there was new functionality added for "Twitter Blue" subscribers to increase the character count of their tweets to from 280 to 4,000. There are some pros and cons to this change:

Pros:

• People can describe topics more comprehensively, potentially leading to more productive and intelligent discussions that rely less on quick, witty comments

Cons:

• The feature is locked behind a paywall, meaning most users will not be able to produce more intelligent discussion
• Said paywall only boosts Twitter's further gaps and confusion in features among the many classes of users
• Furthers Elon's plan to make Twitter into Reddit

And if you've spent enough time on Twitter (which is too much time), then those points were already obvious to you. But there is one more objection against increasing character count - something that makes me sound insane when trying to describe it. I argue that there's a certain kind of joy, an art, to cramming all of your characters into that small limit.

I was made aware of this art when viewing many of Internet Comment Etiquette's videos. For those unaware, he teaches his "students" how to leave proper comments on internet posts and videos (which may sometimes be not so proper). And for almost of all the tweets he makes in his videos, he will perfectly max out his character count. For me, at least, there was something satisfying about seeing him leave inappropriate comments in such a precise manner.

Trying to do this on your own can be a bit daunting at first. If you've made tweets on Twitter, then yes, you are aware that there is a limit, but it's never required that you tweet at exactly that limit. So while we're used to saying short things, we were never trained as humans to ration out our characters in writing. Word counts for essays exist, but they're usually a little imprecise, giving you a length of range of word lengths between 100 and 200 words. It would be ridiculous to expect people to write exactly 1000 words, obviously.

But if you so choose, you can partake in this challenge of "fitting it in". I'm calling it an "artificial puzzle", because it sounds cool and I don't think anybody important has used that phrase before. My definition of an artificial puzzle is some sort of self-imposed puzzle on a pre-existing task - basically, a challenge that doesn't really exist. There's no reward for maxing out your character count, and you won't really get any recognition for it. But there is a win condition to this artificial puzzle, and there are certain ways you could strategize and approach the problem to get to that condition. In game design, this is typically referred to as an "intristic reward", which is a reward that the player themselves achieves outside of the scope of the game's direct objectives. For example, a player could speedrun a game or break out of the game's map as fun challenges for themselves.

The actual art of maxing the word count is imprecise, as you will learn. Start by drafting your initial tweet, and drag it out a bit so that your thought or opinion or commentary gets close to the limit. If you're passionate enough about a topic, you should be able to generate enough thoughts about it that can fill the tweet. If you're under the limit, consider changing your vocabulary a bit to add a few extra characters here and there. If you didn't have punctuation before, try adding some to wherever it's appropriate and see where that takes you. If you're over the limit, try simplifying some words or abbreviating where possible. If you did have punctuation, maybe try removing it (unless it ruins the structure of the tweet).

As with many skills (useful or not), this becomes easier with more practice. I should also note that this entire artificial puzzle may not apply to you if you don't use Twitter in the same way that I do. I like to comment on a few trendy things here and there, but a lot of my actual tweets consist of silly one-off jokes and incoherent nonsense. So if you're focused on providing, say, education (in which case, Twitter is a bad place for you), then the artificial puzzle is probably not worth it for you. But if you want to squeeze out the entertainment value of writing silly words together on the platform, try giving it a shot.

After a certain point, like at 4,000, trying to cram all of your characters to the limit is too tiring and excessive. So while it may promote bad takes, misinformation, unproductive insults, toxic discourse, and more, I do appreciate the 280-limit for artificially creating a micro-literary-challenge for those bored enough to undertake it.

Web Wednesday: Missed a Month, My Mistake

Mar 15, 2023

Edit on Mar 16, 2023: Son of a bitch I forgot to post this to this page yesterday. I'm so mad right now.

Oh shit.

Well, unfortunately, I ended up being busy for basically every single Wednesday in a row in this semester, so I only feel like I'm able to make a new post now on spring break. You could say that I could've just made a post on an off day and then uploaded that post on Wednesday, but that would require any amount of forward thinking. But, being honest, there wouldn't have been enough content for me to talk about every two weeks much less every single week.

If I keep this series going for the future, I think focusing on getting the most quality rather than quantity will help make it sustainable. But for now:

• The Company Intro Cinematic Universe is Bad: A standard video essay about a topic that I never gave much thought about. It's a pretty nice dive into the inability of companies to understand design and instead borrow from what works for others. I really like these discussions of "trivial" topics that actually reveal a lot behind them.
• Wonders of Street Fun: neal.fun has established itself as one of the biggest "wow, neat" websites out there, and this only bolsters its reputation. Outside of the standard funny stuff you can find on the street, there are lots of indoor displays that I didn't think street view would include (such as a water slide or a cave).
• The Onion's Future News From The Year 2137: Maybe the most production-and-editing-dense satire I've seen on the Internet. Development of language (such as using "fucking" as a generic adjective in proper speech), insane worldbuilding, fever dream editing, and more make this one of The Onion's best.
• Daft Cube - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: I've been relistening to Daft Punk recently and have dabbled with Rubik's cubes in the past, so I guess this video meets the requirements of an intersection of two of my interests. Outside of personal bias, this is one of those YouTube videos that were made in the era when people just put silly stuff on the platform and would show off talents in creative and innocent ways.
• The Indie Arcade Racing Game(s) That Vanished || A Tribute to Arcade Racing: I've only watched the introduction so far, and I think it's safe to approve this video for further viewing. Very few YouTubers would spend 3 years on a single video essay with their own animations to accompany footage for their slightly niche gaming essay. Will update when I finish the video.

Turns out when you spend less time on the Internet, you find less cool stuff on it. I'll try to up my attentiveness for next (?) month so that I can show off some more obscure things that people would like.

My novel-length story, The Ackscha Project, has officially started

Feb 15, 2023

Read here: The Ackscha Project

I originally had the idea for this story in the middle of last summer. After a little over 10,000 words of concepts and planning, it has officially started with a set of 3 chapters, and will gain more chapters on a (hopefully) regular basis.

There are a myriad of reasons why I wanted to write this story - self-actualization, improving my skills as a writer, fulfilling childhood dreams, proving my ability to commit to projects, etc. I can't promise that the story will be good, as it will focus on a lot of topics I've had on my mind. There will be elements inspired from childhood shows and books as well as parts from mature shows that I've seen in the past year. It'll be a bit goofy, it'll get political, and it'll probably feel a bit personal at times. The story will definitely get messy, but I want it to be true to the ideas I want to present.

My main goal is this: complete this story and include all of my ideas. If I can accomplish that, I will be more than satisfied.

Very few people are reading this in the first place, but if you are, thank you, and if you do really want to read my story, then thank you thank you thank you. I will at least make the story readable for you.

Web Wednesday: Part II

Jan 11, 2023

It returns, despite all odds. It turns out the internet is a vast space filled to the brim with interesting things, so I've made it my New Year's resolution to find every single interesting thing on the internet. After which, I will promptly stop using the internet and live in the woods as a local folktale villain. For now, though, here's some neat stuff from the Web:

• The 2022 New Years Extrafantasmabonanza: A collaborative stream project featuring the Radio TV Solutions streaming group, as well as some special guests. The director for this project, Socpens, has been known for some other avant-garde streams that he's done in the past, but I don't think anything compares to the sensory overload I felt while watching this stream on New Year's Eve. In particular, I'd like to recommend the 20 minute media collage starting at 58 minutes in. It's filled with so many references from both recent years as well as old-school YouTube cultural icons. In the background of all of it is a combination of breakcore and various "audio memes"? I don't know anymore. The more I watch it, the less I feel like I can understand this world. If you want to gain ten years of age in less than four hours, watch this stream. WARNING: THE "DIGITAL DRUGS" SEGMENT AT 2:55:00 IS ONLY FOR ADVANCED VIEWERS. (Actual warning: Lots of frantic, loud, messy audio and lights, not for those who are sensitive to either.)
• the rise of #corecore - elevating tiktoks to art?: Staying on the topic of media collages, here is a brief video essay about the rise of a particular genre of TikToks. It's interesting to see such (conceptually) advanced videos become trending on TikTok, but it makes sense considering the rapid acceleration of media consumption in the last decade. Part of the trend intrigues me, but it also frightens me to think about how people are using TikTok to get information so quickly.
• Quorators: Let's get away from overwhelming media compilations and just go back to the basics of some white guys doing a podcast. Quorators is fairly new and focuses on the many geniuses asking and answering questions on Quora. I haven't seen many videos shining light on the website, which is a shame considering how unintentionally funny it is. Quorators fills that gap a bit, and I hope more Quora-related content comes out in the future.
• Gaming and the Golden Record: Not recent, but the fact that this only has 12,000 views right now makes me think that it deserves more discussion. Especially considering the fact that it features dozens of video game essayists. It's definitely longer than the usual video, but every individual segment is only several minutes long, so I don't find it to be a bad watching experience. If it seems like your thing, try watching a bit and see what you think.
• ⠗⠊⠉⠅⠗⠕⠇⠇: Turn on captions and enjoy.
• Don't Wordle: Finally, not a YouTube video for once. Turns out trying to do the opposite of Wordle is much harder than the original, so much so that undos are necessary for the game to not be practically impossible.

Well, I'm glad that this post has a better variety than last time, and that it features some smaller projects that people wouldn't have seen through the YouTube algorithm. In the future, I'd like to keep these posts closer to this level of variety and obscurity. That definitely means this won't ever be a weekly segment, although perhaps it could be biweekly? Monthly? Or just whenever I feel like making one of these, we'll see by the time this returns.

The New Year: A Retrospective (From My Perspective) of 2022's Games

Jan 1, 2023

Happy New Year! The clock striking midnight didn't feel as impactful as previous years, but I'm still excited for this year's possibilities. Now, I don't talk about video games a lot despite it being my main source of entertainment, but I think it's fun to discuss them from time to time. So for today's post, I'd like to give a brief retrospective of my 2022 experience with video games.

For the past few years, I've been using the tier list system to rank all of the games I played each year. It's simpler and more fun than a boring top 10 list, in my opinion. One word of warning, however: the only modern console I have is a Nintendo Switch, and my PC is a pre-built Dell office computer from years ago. What I'm saying is that I do not play a lot of the mainstream titles each year, and I don't play many games in their year of release. Regardless, I'm continuing the tradition from previous years:

Some highlights and commentary of the above games:

• Persona 5 Royal released on the Switch, so I finally checked it out and after 145 hours of playtime, I think it's pretty good! There's a hundred video essays you can watch about P5R at this point, but to present my brief review: the game is obviously designed with a lot of care and attention, and it's remarkable that I was engaged in the game for about 135 out of those 145 hours. It's not perfect, but it's obvious to me why it's great. A warning to all: I will bring this game up in a future video.
• Whereas Persona 5 Royal took over my life at the end of the year, Crosscode was the game that haunted me at the start of the year. It came the closest to being in S tier, but I think it didn't have as strong of an impact as much as P5R. Despite that, it's still a really great game. The action is pretty snappy and the writing ain't bad, either. If you're looking for a more old school action RPG instead of a turn-based JRPG, Crosscode is a no-brainer.
• Some quick ones: Neon White is a great game that teaches speedrunning just by playing it, Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course was a great swansong and somehow has even better animation than the base game (that final boss legitimately felt like Fantasia), Vampire Survivors reminds me of idle games but without any of the time commitment or boring gameplay, and Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was a gratifying game for the inner child in me.
• Finally, because it took up so much time out of my life, a shoutout to the Ace Attorney series. I played five games from it in 2021, and the five remaining games in 2022. I don't know why exactly I felt so compelled to play through all of the games, as I've never played through many visual novels in the past and I've never been serious about playing through an entire series of games. I don't think all of the games are great or even good, but my guess is that I just wanted to see all of the characters grow and develop! If you're interested in trying out the games, I'd recommend either the original Ace Attorney trilogy or the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. The first three games are a more accurate representation of the series, but the Great Ace Attorney duology features many more interesting mechanics and visuals (although that means none of the other games will measure up to it afterwards, so keep that in mind).

Almost half of the games I played in 2022 actually came out in 2022, which is pretty surprising! However, I also played half as many games as I did in 2021, probably due to some much longer games like P5R, Pokemon Legends: Arceus, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, etc. I'm hoping to clear at least some games from my backlog this year, but I'll definitely be occupied playing some long games again, especially the new Zelda (when I disappear off the face of the earth starting from May 12th, 2023, you'll know why).

Website is (almost) set up!

Dec 28, 2022

After creating this website, setting up the basics, then leaving for 3 months, then coming back and working on it, I can proudly present that this website is officially OPEN! (but not finished)

Every page aside from Other and Writing have been set up and given some words for people to read if they so choose. Writing will open up soon when I'm ready, but otherwise I'm glad that this website actually exists now. Is it necessary for me? Not at all! But I like writing, and archiving my written thoughts seemed like fun. I'll try to make updating this website a weekly activity, whether it be for simple blogs or full on project updates. If you came here from me bugging you about it, thanks! Feel free to read as much or as little as you want! Just HAVE FUN!!!

Web Wednesday: A collection of stuff I like (that happens to be online)

Dec 28, 2022

What's that? I have a blog section here? I suppose I should use it for something...How about I just spam a bunch of random links?

I got inspiration for this segment/post from Tom Scott's weekly newsletter, wherein Tom shares some cool articles, websites, videos, etc. from around the net and describes them a bit. Ever since it started, I've been jealous of how he gets to share random shit he found online so cleanly whereas I just have to keep spamming YouTube videos into my friends' DM's! That ends today, so from now on the only link I'll send to my friends 100 times in a row is this blog. For this first (and maybe only) installment of Web Wednesday, have some videos:

• Star Citizen: The WAR for JUMPTOWN: It feels weird to call a channel with almost a million subscribers "underrated", but BedBananas is probably the top bar in terms of gameplay videos. I'd say his style is closer to something like "cinematic gameplay" or "game films" (like high quality machinimas). Every video is dramatic, brilliantly edited, sometimes including great composition and other filmmaking techniques. More importantly, they're all pretty damn funny. His recent Star Citizen video showcases the game with antics and action so well that I forgot that this game was a massive scam for a while.
• Big Mall Review - Shopping, Food, & a Mysterious Box: Another channel that I think is underrated despite already being well known to many. Brutalmoose is a bit of a variety channel, alternating between arcade/mall vlogs, cooking and food reviews, or looking at VHS tapes and obscure movies. But throughout all of it, the most present vibe is definitely "cozy". The light jazz and fun editing really helps each video feel light. His latest video is just a trip to a nice mall and some stores located therein, but it honestly made me a bit jealous that we don't have any nice commercial centers anymore.
• almost every time i ran from the cops (compilation): A video that I never thought would exist. In hindsight, it absolutely makes sense that high-speed racers would be able to get away from cops, but I didn't think anybody would be skilled enough to evade police multiple times (the driver can't have a license plate, right?), and to do it so cleanly every time! Lucky for us, the driver happened to be confident or foolish enough to upload footage of all of their encounters online. This is a public site, so I can't say that I endorse any of the actions in the video, but it's really fascinating to see how a skilled driver that knows the roads can easily outclass a cop and just simply get off scot-free.

Wow! So many links! If I do Web Wednesday again, I definitely want to include a bigger variety of content rather than just "here's some YouTube videos I thought were cool", but otherwise, a raging success!