A fat guy talking about video games on the internet!
Arguably the subject that would most “make sense” in a simplistic sense for me to blog and vlog about would be video games.
And I am positive I could create decent video game related content. The usual stuff, reviews, news, stuff you can use. My theories about what makes a game good.
But I don’t really want to. My vlogs and blogs are how I get away from my video game addiction and have some time when I am not involved with them at all.
I’m trying to wean myself off gaming, so far with little success. It’s still how I spend most of the time I don’t spend making and editing videos and writing on this blog o’ mine.
That’s why the videos are a good innovation. They are one more non video game related thing for me to do with my day. Something even vaguely productive.
I mean, people DO see my videos, both on YouTube and on TikTok. And I am pondering posting them to Instagram as well.
What the hell, it’s not like it’s a lot of work.
And the fact that there are people who see my vids who don’t even know me personally expands my “reach” compared to this blog, where I can greet my readers by name.
Hi Julian! Hi Felicity! Hi spuug! Love you all! *enormous hugs!* Thank you so much for reading my “not written with entertainment in mind” blog.
The youths call that “shitposting” but I’m far too refined and sophisticated motherfucker to call it that.
This very circuitously rings me back to the subject of taking my videos more seriously by trying to make them seem professional and even telling people to like n’ subscribe.
I’m still divided on that. I kinda like that my videos don’t pester people like that. Being so needy and pushy with promoting yourself is very anti-Gen X. We’re the generation that hated being advertised to or at.
Like, fuck off. Seriously. I don’t give a shit about your stupid craptacular product.
Stop trying to engage my non-existent enthusiasm.
So it feels really wrong to become a carnival barker for my own “brand”. I would much rather just do what I do and say what I say and if the power of my self-expression and my ideas and my vision attracts followers, great.
But I kind of also want money.
The usual Gen X dilemma, just reached far too late in life : money versus integrity.
I could make merch. Step right up and get your very own “I’m a fat guy on the internet” T-shirt. Hot off the Cafepresses!
Actually, that might catch on. Hmm. Add some cute (and non-hateful) aimage of a fat dude bathing in the glow from their monitor and typing.
He could become my mascot.
But it’s so hard for me to imagine picking one aspect of myself and going with it as who I “really” am. No matter what I chose, it would feel like I was killing a big part of myself.
And I don’t think I can do it. No matter how I try to frame it in my mind, it still feels like I would be choosing one version of me to survive while jettisoning the rest into space.
Hence my never ending quest to come up with a single identity for myself. It seems hopeless sometimes. How could one unify so many aspects of myself?
Just the contrast between my warmly loving side and my coldly calculating side seems to make unity impossible.
I guess I’ll always be somewhere in between.
More after the break.
On the other hand
Maybe it’s okay to have no idea who you are.
It certainly leaves your options open. Which might be the point. Maybe my lack of ability to decide who I “really” am really comes down to not wanting to be “trapped” in one identity and therefore not be able to shapeshift into what I need to be in the moment.
That kind of makes sense. In my own warped way.
And very patient readers know I have trod this road before. Talking about being “goo” and not wanting to be stuck in one particular form, but also knowing that my lack of internal structure comes at a very high cost in terms of stability and security and having a freaking skeleton to my embodied soul.
And yet I can’t imagine having that structure or that skeleton any more than I can imagine choosing one of my many sides to be “the one”.
I think I have always assumed, way WAY in the back of my mind, that life would somehow choose for me. That I would putter around doing this and that and eventually one thing or another would catch on with people and that’s what I would become.
I’ve read celebrity bios that went something like that.
But of course, that kind of assumes that you’re putting your work somewhere where it might be found. And until recently I have not been doing that.
The videos, though, are at least discoverable. When I have the wherewithal saved up, I will try to make them at least a little more than that.
Somehow. In some way that I can live with. Le sigh.
It’s hard being Gen X if you have literally any ambition. We’re the Slacker generation, ambition was for idiots and corporate drones and lick-spittle keeners and preppies and type-A yuppies and other kinds of undesirables.
In that sense it’s kind of a wonder that any of us got famous.
And yet, we did. Presumably without ever looking like we really cared.
In fact, I was always a tiny bit of an outlier in that I did show open enthusiasm for some things. Maybe us Gen X nerds were the exception, I don’t know.
But no generation can resist getting married and having kids and thus having to get your shit together and get a real job so you can raise them right.
When you think about it, it’s kind of amazing how nobody is forcing us to get married and reproduce and yet we do it anyway, almost universally, all of us making the exact same decisions for our own individual reasons.
Some things no amount of individualism can erase and our need to pair-bond and have kids seems to be one of them.
We think we’re so autonomous and individual yet we all end up doing the same things.
It’s something to think about.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.