āI wonder whose novelty account THIS is,ā is a phrase Iām really glad I donāt have much reason to think anymore.
tbh one of the reasons it took me like a year to post anything on SB1 is because there was just this vibe that you were crashing an outdoor party you werenāt invited to
that and I felt like my ability to think and discuss video games was nowhere as developed as anyone elseās
this joke would be so much funnier if it didnt have the watermark (does anyone have this pic without the watermark haha) and i was 19 hours earlier and everyone hadnt explained it already, and i could be like tim is canon because you see this is a picture of me and him. and then i could say something like āthis is my reaction to me reading your postā because its an :o face. but thats not what the face actually is, the face is me doing an impression of him thats why it looks like that, im sweaty because i have anxiety and refuse to take off my ski jacket and warm hat in any climate that makes me anxious omg what if they see my sweaty hair and pitstains
hehe iām glad i committed this faux pa itās been fun and informative
i liked how researched it was, and how that research was used in the game analysis parts of the review, the historical context, and it even blurred into the personal anecdotal too. i honestly am pretty impatient with the new journalism style, like the personal-story autobiographical stuff is rarely as interesting as the prose wants to affect imo. but when this video did get into that mode of storytelling, it was, for one, cut through with enough humor so it wasnāt totally saccharine or whatever, and two, still obviously connected to the actual game or the context around it. all over, it was really impressive how little of what was in the video seemed unnecessary, given that itās 3 hours long and tries to cover so much. the actual project of āplaying all of doomā was a good hook, always love to see people go to extremes with researching games like that. iām a sucker for ambition, scope and indulgence, so yeah i liked it.
Thanks! Wonder if it is a generation thing because I disliked a lot of those same features.
But maybe I just value different things in criticism now!
I hope Bob and Korg stumble upon the video.
I have to wonder about that myself, because that was literally the first 3-hour video game review/analysis video Iāve ever watched. I always avoided them because my thought was, and still is, nothing probably needs to be that long (except for the books and movies I like). But I know more people my age who are excited for that kind of thing than who are annoyed by it like me. So maybe if it wasnāt so novel to me I would have been exhausted by it and more critical lol
I thought about writing about this before, but got exhausted thinking about it:
Tim has a highly identifiable schtick that he has spent that last two decades developing, I think compulsively; he cannot but do Tim. I think in general it is a good and valuable schtick and everyone enjoys it at some time or other. But how fun and/or insightful you find it depends upon where you are when you hit its particular curvature, and how long you follow before glancing off again.
Aww man that was such a good pic too.
What I sort of missed in the timeline is the weird mean phase that caused the creation of the Axe. Essentially it became in-vogue to make these sort of āhumorousā sarcastic disingenuous performance posts. It was these wildly juvenile stabs at being clever and disaffected. Posters affecting an absurd persona and carrying out a bit in public. Eventually the Axe was used as sort of a forum jail and pressure release system. Iām really glad that sort of thing is done with.
Tim shtick really feels like mid 90s gen-x expat / city kid blog culture. I wish I had ANY of the web addresses of the blogs I used to read so I could way-back them. Iām just happy to see it stick around and get turned into these dense reviews.
Man I remember this one about 20 somethings loafing around the mall in chicago(?) and getting into playing battletech right as the gulf war kicked off. War on TV, what does it mean?
itās honestly 100x funnier with the watermark
(although it would be even funnier if it was a āgetty imagesā watermark)
if youāve ever met Tim in person you know just how unbelievably true that statement is, lol.
and yes Timās thing is very reminiscent of the whole Vice/Gen X media ecosystem where youāre a cool outsider who debases yourself in one way or another to get closer to the story and talks openly about your life in a sort of stream of consciousness way. iām not saying that in a mean way, by the way, thatās just what it is. itās kinda cool that itās developed and stuck around in an ecosystem which is far more dominated by a millennial culture which is very much about having Definitive Takes about everything and everyone.
history repeats itself, first as new journalism, second as unboxing video
Do you mean this archive?
http://icarchives.selectbutton.net/index.html
Ah I was trying to remember the subdomain all morning
God, I had so many axes to grind back then.
anyway,
hi tim
Thatās the one! Thanks I thought I had it bookmarked, and maybe I still do, but I couldnāt remember the domain.
thereās a reason itās unlisted