Metal Monday

YouTube Obsession

I wish I didn’t love Vine.

I miss it. I really do. Just long enough to get a in joke or be incredibly absurd but too short to really flesh out any real context. Is this a exploitative video I’m laughing at? Who knows, we’re already on to the next one.

RIP sweet Vine, we hardly knew ye.

There have been some “Vine Stars” who made the crossover to YouTube, tiktok or even mainstream music (Riff Raff, Oliver Tree, etc). Of the crossover successes, my favorite has been Drew Gooden. I only knew him as the “Road work Guy” until a couple years ago when I found his YouTube Channel.

His videos have always been funnier-than-average white-dude vlogs about bad Christmas movies, bad life hacks and weird internet goofery. But recently he’s been injecting a bit of social commentary into his videos and, for married cis white dude from Florida, we have very similar takes on things.

If you have the unfortunate mental disability of enjoying sports on television, you may have noticed how sports betting has slowly taken over broadcasts. Absolutely wild that there are betting adds during college sports games now considering college athletes are one of the most exploited groups.

All accessible from your phone and linked directly to your bank accounts. As Drew points out, the insidious nature of push-notifications is a perfect storm of neuron firing to create a serious gambling addiction.

You don’t have to be an addiction specialist to understand this either, the problem is very clear. As shown in Zvi Mowshowitz post The Online Sports Gambling Experiment Has Failed

As someone who works with a lot of recovering addicts, I’ve lost count of the times when I heard someone started their relapse on alcohol and other drugs with gambling. It just clicks our brains. Hopefully, there will be some regulation coming soon but I am doubtful considering how much money everyone on top is making.

Reading

It took me almost 20 years but I finally got around to reading the first Hellboy spin-off B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs comics. The story goes that Mike Mignola was trying to write a team comic book about ghost hunters, when stumbled upon the character of Hellboy and made it a solo-ish comic instead. The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.) is the team comic he had always envisioned, mostly written and drawn by other creators. Much like Lobster Johnson, BPRD exists as a testament to the powerful world building Mignola did with his run of Hellboy comics. They are fun, pulpy and a few are genuinely scary.

Playing

One of the reasons I enjoy watching LPs of video games is because I used to watch my friend play games. Helping out with remembering locations or when to use items. It is a very fond memory and one of the games we played this way was Metroid Prime for the GameCube.

I only watched my friend play partly because it was his GameCube but mostly because, in 2002, I was not fond of twin-stick FPSs. My brain was still hardwired for Goldeneye 64’s single stick control scheme.

Well, with decades (gulp) of gaming experience behind me now I am finally ready to take on Metroid Prime Remastered for the Nintendo Switch.

Not only has it snapped my out of BLOPS 6 obsession but it is easily on of the best games I’ve played this year. I had forgotten how much this game trusts it’s players to use all the tools available to solve puzzles or to advance progression. To the point that when I am stuck I have to pause and make sure I’ve read everything. This makes for a very satisfying progression that -only rarely- feels obtuse. Also, every game needs a scanning mechanic omg I love to scan shit.

It definitely has flaws that I think are more reflective the growing pains of a fledgling genre than any willfully poor designs. The HUD, though immersive, is cluttered and even on my modern flat screen is claustrophobic. The controls are a bit confusing: Where changing weapons today would have just been a DOOM 2016 style weapon-wheel, in MP, it is a convoluted multi-button press (After 10 hours, I’m still not 100% sure how to shoot super missiles.). Oh and the map…dear god I have an aneurism from map controls for some reason being inverted and the overworld icons being indistinct hexagons.

Surprisingly, for an early 3D FPS, I never felt lost. The path forward always felt clear and when it didn’t it was because I was overlooking something obvious. A great game and I hope they remaster the sequels ASAP.

Other Notables

** “In 2019, billionaire hedge fund mogul Ken Griffin paid $240 million for a Manhattan penthouse—the most expensive home ever sold in America. Elon Musk could buy 625 of these penthouses, set them on fire, and still be the richest person in America.”

** One more and I’m done talking about Vine I swear…