What am I Doing, Where am I

I Miss Writing.

When I was 20 waaaaaay back in 1999 I discovered epinions.com, a now-dead website that offered Consumer Reports styled product reviews and opinion. It was there I discovered my love of writing, though at the time it was more about whether or not I liked the newest Madden football game, and mostly in harsh, mechanical tones that you might expect from a dry product review. Still, I really enjoyed the writing, and managed to become a so-called “Expert” in the video game category. I wrote other stuff, but gaming was my Wheelhouse of Confidence at the time, so I stuck there. I also remember a website dubbed writtenbyme.com, which was more free-form and less rigid. One of the problems with Epinions back then was its user base frowned upon any kind of “free thought” so a lot of those folks went to this other site to get their wildness out. In a moment of immaturity I did too, and really regret it.

(Ironically, one of these more wild souls was a republican politician who was trying to run in a democrat-dominated district and was actually a good friend of mine, but when looking him up in recent times he’s an unrepentant MAGA, so I dunno what happened to him over the last couple decades.)

I parlayed this into working - for free games, not money, as by then I was in the workforce and it was a hobby - a tiny website known as gamingtarget.com, which was founded by Matt Swider, who eventually became pretty well known for helping people find PS5s on Twitter when it was nigh-impossible to find one. So, yes, I knew him before he was famous. Famous-ish? I did this for about a decade before falling out of love of writing about games all the time. A few of us left to found a new website. warpzoned.com, but I was not there long. Life took over and I just stopped cold turkey.

The irony for me is that I really wish Epinions had thrived beyond its initial run, because it was in many ways a prototype of the social media we see today. I get that nobody wants to read anything when a YouTube video would suffice, but I think it would have found an audience of people tired of watching video reviews that lack the substance of a good, solid review. Selfishly, I would be running around the house finding stuff to write about, like an addict getting a fix after being clean for 10 years.

Anyway.

Nowadays, I miss writing. I spend a lot of time at Bluesky talking to myself mostly, but the character limit is just too restrictive for really getting my thoughts out. So I decided to start a Substack. I’m not an idiot so I will keep it free, as just a hobby. I don’t have the hubris to count myself as a great, life-changing typer of words on a keyboard, but let’s see what happens, yeah? I have a lot of interests, be it the aforementioned video games, pro wrestling, technology, books, sports, movies, etc. I keep my political thoughts to Bluesky mostly, but I’m a mostly liberal-leaning independent, and there’s enough viewpoints from that perspective on ye olde Substack. Most of those above subjects do have more narrow perspectives, like trying to be a gamer on a fucking Apple computer, fantasy wrestling booking / complaining, theoretically absurd golf takes, Stephen King, and Airplane! & Spaceballs quotes. If you can math, I provided my Generation X age in the initial sentence.

Which is why I can say welcome, but also, if you leave and never come back, whatever, I don’t care. If you subscribe, cool, whatever. You’re free to do what you want, I won’t hold your hand and / or force you. But hey if you stay, let’s talk about stuff, but in a cool, indifferent way.