grand experiment Archives - Page 3 of 4

Talkback Challenge 1

May 8, 2015 by Belghast

Avoiding a Topic

First off I have to say I am a huge proponent of the Newbie Blogger Initiative, and try my best to do whatever I can to support it. Unfortunately I do a pretty bad job of actually participating in anything that is going on the forums. This year I had told myself that I would try really hard to participate more and do more of the various writing prompts. You know that whole “lead by example” type argument. The problem is the very first topic is something that I find both repulsive and deeply scary at the same time. Izlain seems to love to revel in controversial topics, and has recorded podcasts on various incendiary topics in the past, so I really should not be shocked this ended up as a writing prompt.

The aim of the Talkback Challenge is to engage new bloggers on a topic and provide contrasting views on that specific matter. It is also designed to encourage follow-up discussions and blog posts which further widen the level of interaction. The goal is to generate discussion on newbie blogs, raise their respective profile and share traffic. The NBI has run such activities for several years now and they have proven both informative and engaging. The opening topic for debate this time round is “how did GamerGate affect you”?

The prompt itself is pretty straight forward. How were you effected by GamerGate, but the answer as always is far more nuanced. I just finished writing my Bonanza post over on MMOGames and during the course of it I ran through all of the responses to this question that were available at the time of posting. I was somehow bolstered by the fact that the majority of these posts seemed to have no real effect. The problem is… for those who were effected this is a really touchy subject. The fact that someone actually wants to be talking about this makes me realize that in truth they were largely left unscathed. All of this said, I am going to tackle this topic because I promised myself that I would actually do the writing prompts.

Talkback Challenge 1

GamerGate cycled through the community like nothing I had ever seen before. It was swift and it was obnoxious… and quickly moved into the realm of the really damned creepy. Folks were using the tag without really understanding the consequences. The claim of the movement is that GamerGate is “About Ethics in Journalism” but this claim has never really matched up to the effects seen in the community. So much so that this has become a meme and filed away in the internet as yet another meaningless phrase. What I saw instead was a lot of my friends getting really scared to speak their mind. This hive mind of hatred seemed to be going after anyone who was “different” from what they saw as the cultural norm. This meant that women and the lgbt community seemed to garner the brunt of the assault. I talked to lots of friends who considered just stopping blogging because of the fear and paranoia that was rampant.

The problem is I am by nature not extremely combative. You can make personal attacks against me and it really usually doesn’t phase me. However when you take on my friends, and make them feel less than what they are… then I start to get upset. In the grand scheme of things I didn’t speak out as harshly as I probably should have on the subject. I made a pretty general post about how I wish we would “Be Awesome Human Beings”. Which drew the attention of a Gater that followed me and proceeded to try and argue with me about ethics in journalism in the comments. I didn’t want to get drawn into his discussion and he kept trying to bring me back to his personal brand of right wing philosophy. Ultimately I ended up un-following and blocking the person on twitter. Within a few days of posting this relatively straight forward article, my blog came under fire of a DDoS. At first I thought nothing about it, since hosting companies get denial of service attacks all of the time. The thing is… it seemed to be targeted at ONLY the server cluster my blog was on.

Message Delivered

A short time after that my twitter handle appeared on a list of supposed “Social Justice Warriors” that were to be avoided. Granted half of the people I know ended up on that same list, but while it was a point of pride… it also felt a bit like a veiled threat. It felt very much like a list of people who “thought wrong” and should be targeted. When you combine that with the DDoS I won’t like it freaked me out a bit. I tried my best to exorcise my social networks of any Gamer Gate sympathizers, or at least the ones who were loudly supporting it… and I moved on with my life. I tried my best to support those who were getting attacked, but I didn’t feel like I supported the other extreme either. Ultimately I just wanted us all to get along and stop being assholes to each other. That is the mission I have kept trying to move forward. I am a tiny blue dot in a very read ocean, but I manage to get along with most of my friends, coworkers and neighbors because we respect each other not enough to try and jam our own personal philosophies down each others throats.

The problem is Gamer Gate has left me scarred. When someone new follows me on social media the first thing I do is scan down through their posting history to make sure they are not somehow a GG leaner. I don’t want to make people out to be the bogeyman of the internet, but I also don’t really want that sort of influence screwing up my relatively happy place. I have tried my best to limit the about of negativity in my world. It ultimately makes me a happier person, and GG and the vehemently Anti-GG communities both are something I can do without. That said I am by no means trying to be neutral anymore. I am not a supporter of the GamerGate community by any means, and the whole situation deeply saddens me. I don’t want to be made to feel like shit for anything I do, from anyone. So I am going to keep doing what I am doing, and keep enjoying the things I enjoy and try my damnedest to forget the negative forces still exist. You cannot get me to believe like you do by yelling at me louder, and you cannot convince me of your point with circular logic. Ultimately I hope the internet and gamers in particular mature and learn to make decisions on their own merit and not connected to some larger agenda.

Reluctant Blogger

May 5, 2015 by Belghast

My First Blog

This mornings blog post is inspired by a conversation I saw yesterday between two friends about the starting of a new blog. There are many people that have this strong desire to start a blog, but for whatever reason lack the confidence to push them over the edge to actually putting a plan in motion. Some people are gifted with a clear vision for what they want to write about, and a firm purpose to make it all happen. That unfortunately is not most of us. Most of us have this burning desire to write, but are also strapped with crippling self doubt. While I might look like I know what I am doing, I am here to tell you that every single day is a struggle to keep making content. While I have been doing this for six years now, and been doing the every day thing for two… I still don’t really know what I am doing on a regular basis. I take each new day as it comes and try and figure out exactly what I should be doing in the process.

This morning I want to tell you a story about another blog. I started Tales of the Aggronaut in 2009 with a firm purpose, and a vision for what I wanted it to be. The thing is.. I never would have gotten to that point had another blog not existed. Back in 2005 I stared a blogspot blog because I had this overwhelming desire to write. The problem being that I didn’t really know what to write about. I mostly wrote about my misadventures, and a little bit about the ins and outs of our family. But early on I knew there was a big part of my life that I just wasn’t talking about… because I felt like no one would want to hear about it. So my first blog was ultimately a failure because it didn’t really represent my gaming. Additionally Tales of the Aggronaut I feel was an initial failure because it failed to represent more than just my gaming hobby. What finally ended up working… eight years later… was a blending of both. Lots of gaming, but still the freedom to talk about whatever else happened to be happening to me.

Reluctant Blogger

My first blog was a blog that hardly anyone read, because I lacked the self confidence to talk about it publically. It was very much a private journal that I let the occasional person know about. The folks that did read it seemed to like it, and urged me to do more, but in the back of my head there was always this nagging voice. “There is nothing you have to say that isn’t already being said… and being said better.” This is the voice you have to ignore to be able to keep blogging, because it never really goes away. There is not a single day when I don’t hear it still. Every time I hit the publish button I have to hold my breath and close my eyes and click it… because even after doing this for all these years I still struggle to defeat my inner doubt. It would be amazing if I could tell you that it just magically goes away, but I can at least say that over time it lessens. The voice has less sway over me than it once did, which I guess is a step in the right direction.

You might say to yourself that you have nothing to say, and that others are saying it better… but the act of you saying it makes it special and unique. I could read fifty blog posts on exactly the same subject and each and every one would have some nugget that the others did not. While we might be espousing the same ideas… each of us is adding our own experience to that mix. Right now, before you start down this journey you might believe that you don’t have a voice worth hearing but I am telling you that you do. Be honest with yourself, and write about the things you want to write about… and somewhere in between your voice will trickle to the surface. Blogging is not about being controversial or brilliant, but instead about being honest and letting the world see who you really are and what think. This act of sharing is precious, and makes whatever it is that you choose to share more than worthy of our attention. We are this culmination of our emotions, experiences, actions and thoughts wrapped up together making anything you have to say on any subject uniquely nuanced.

Lets Get Started

As I wrote to the Wayward Bloggers a few days ago, this morning I am writing to the Reluctant Bloggers. I am addressing the folks that want to start a blog but for whatever reason are being held back from doing so. If you are watching the Newbie Blogger Initiative and feel that tiny tug trying to get you to start your own epic blog, I ask you to hop down off the fence you are sitting on and get started. The Newbie Blogger Initiative is the perfect time to get things in motion because you have an entire community waiting her ready to give you that hand up. There are an almost overwhelming number of ways to get started. Most people start with either a WordPress.com or a Blogger.com and go from there. Blogger is without a doubt the easiest way to get started, but WordPress will make transitioning to a self hosted site in the future less of a hassle. In either case, the act of getting something started is the important thing. If these seem “too real” for you to get your feet wet, then I suggest starting a blog on Anook.com and seeing how things work for you.

Some people are gifted with the ability to start writing quality content from day one. In my permission to suck post from last year I talk about the fact that I was not one of those people. I struggled for a long time to find my format and to find my voice. My blog itself has gone through so many transitions from WoW Blog, Rift Blog, to ultimately becoming a fairly game agnostic blog about me as a person and my gaming habit. The truth is that you should expect to hate the first dozen posts you make within a years time. Like I said there are the occasional folks that can crank out amazing stuff, but I personally would be happy never to see the first several years worth of posts on this blog. The awesome thing about being human beings is that we are able to change and to adapt, and expect your blog and your writing to do the same. Just like learning to ride a bike was wobbly at first, your blog will be a bit wobbly and that is okay. You are doing something that you are going to get better at, and we as a community will be here to help you. Now you simply have to get started.

The Wayward Blogger

May 2, 2015 by Belghast

Tyranny of a Blank Page

Early in the week I had this idea of what I was going to write about for Storytime Saturday, and it was something good. The problem is as Saturday has now happened I cannot for the life of me remember what it was that I wanted to write about. Jaedia says this is why she keeps notes… but I ultimately fail at doing that. I have literally hundreds of “Untitled” Google documents with only a few sentences in them, so note taking is not exactly my strong suit. Actually the problem isn’t the notes themselves but the organization. Some people can neatly compartmentalize their lives into subjects and categories and then there are people like me that are shocked and amazed if anything goes as planned… because we are constantly rewriting that plan as we go along. This is the point where I admit that I really have no prep work for my blog.

This is a curse and a blessing both depending on the day. As I could not think of anything to write about this morning it was a curse. The fact that I could start banging away on my keys and make something work as I went along… is the blessing. As writers we have to find whatever it is that works for us. I’ve always tended to be one of those “rough outline” people, that I need a sketch of a roadmap… but then prefer to fill in the details as I go allowing myself to be flexible and adjust to change as it happens. The irony of this… is that I am pretty damned adaptable, but I still end up hating change in most forms. I guess when you choose to life your life is a state of loosely organized chaos, you learn to really respect the parts of your life that you can commit to routine. Those are the stable base that you build your ever changing life upon, so when one of those things changes you notice it.

The Wayward Blogger

One of the things I took special time to point out yesterday in all of my NBI 2015 announcements… was that we are also looking for what I termed the “Wayward Blogger”. I guess this hits home for me especially because still deep within my core I am one of you. I was a Wayward blogger for years, with weeks where I was extremely active, and month long pauses in activity. If I could do this whole blogging daily thing naturally then I wouldn’t need to challenge myself by calling it the “Grand Experiment” and keeping track of each and every day that goes by where I didn’t break the streak. If you look through my blogs history you will find several six or seven month lapses in posting, and today during Storytime Saturday I guess I want to address those. Not necessarily why the lapses happened but what my mental state was like during each.

The problem with a blog is when it starts to get popular you feel like you are forced to produce content. The irony of doing the blogging every day thing, is that in many ways it is a gimmick. When you are producing that much content people are generally forgiving on your off days. Not every single post I make is meaningful or important, and some of them are going to flat out honestly suck. I’ve talked about the “permission to suck” before, but it is even more than just this. When you are blogging infrequently you feel like you have to write gold every single time you set your fingers to your keyboard. This pressure is overwhelming sometimes and each day that passes gets internalized as another rung higher your subsequent post has to be to make up for the fact that it has been six months.

Permission to be Boring

I have no stats on this, but this is something I have heard from each and every other person that has gone dormant. That they don’t blog because they feel like they simply don’t have anything to say that is worthy of that “triumphant return” post. This is the instinct we have to figure out how to subvert if we are going to be happy bloggers. Like the permission to suck when you are just starting out, you have to give yourself the permission to be boring on occasion. Writing a “return” post is often like ripping off a band aid. You need to get it over with quickly so you can get on with the normal business of writing posts. The thing you have to realize is that for most readers your blog has been shuffled into a RSS Reader along with the rest of the people that they follow. They will notice when you come back, but no one is actually there waiting every single day for that “epic post” you have built up in your head.

Ultimately if anyone is going to read a blog for any length of time, there is a transition that happens. You stop caring so much about what is being written and begin to focus on the person behind the screen. Those people, the ones that have transitioned to caring about you as a human being… they will always be there when you return to welcome you with open arms. The other folks who were only there when you were producing that thing they desired on that specific moment… they will always be fickle and aren’t really worth the heartache and frustration. You need to ask yourself what exactly do you want to write about and then focus on doing just that. So many of us started our blogs as one thing, and then realized whatever that “one” thing was no longer sustainable. We then transitioned into writing about the things that made us happy, and have kept going because of whatever that “thing” was.

I Am Proof

Essentially I offer myself as proof that you too can be a pillar of stability in the community. I was quite possibly one of the least prolific bloggers, with some pretty massive absences. The longest one that I can remember was the seven months that passed between the last blog post and me rededicating myself to doing the daily blogging experiment. Each time I felt like a complete failure for letting the blog posts stop. Each time I beat myself up for not being able to crank out content when I “wasn’t feeling it”. Each time I could not get the desire that I should be writing something out of my head, and ultimately this small amount of madness lead me to put fingers to keyboard again and start writing. Now is when I let you in on a little secret… that inner doubt, the bit of you that tells you not to post. That never actually goes away. Most mornings I have to hold my breath and close my eyes… and press the publish button, because the inner voice inside me is constantly telling me that whatever I am doing simply isn’t good enough.

I was and still am in many ways a Wayward Blogger, I am just learning how to overcome those instincts and force myself to perform. I don’t know what I am doing most days, and in truth I don’t even have a clue. I just keep moving forward and adapting to whatever happens, coming up with things on the fly as I push forward. If I can do this… quite literally anyone can. I am possibly the least qualified person to be doing what I am doing on a daily basis, yet I keep finding a way to make it happen. You are significantly more talented than I am, and will go on and make more magic than I could ever dream of. You simply have to push yourself to do it. Prove it to yourself, prove it to the community… that you can be our next shining star. The support is there, you just need to make it happen by finding what it is that you love talking about, and start writing. My hope this Newbie Blogger Initiative is not so much that we get this massive crop of new bloggers, but that instead we find a way to rekindle the fires of bloggers that have long gone dormant. If I can do this so can you.

Grand Experiment – Year Two

April 26, 2015 by Belghast

AggroChat 54 – Darkest Dungeon Show

This evening we held the third episode of the AggroChat Game Club where we talk about my pick the early access rogue-like Darkest Dungeon. I personally chose this game because so many of my friends had been talking about it, and purposefully delayed playing it in the thoughts of this eventually becoming an AggroChat title. The result is that each of us played the game slightly different, and walked away with a very different perspective and feeling about the game. Some of us loved it, but even among those that loved it… we brought with it a completely different outlook and as such a different reaction. Of course some of us absolutely hated the game, enough to actually Alt-F4 out of the window.

The end result however is what I feel like our most successful game club title to date, because it certainly spurred on some conversation. Next months title is announced towards the end of the broadcast and I am sure it will be an equally interesting discussion. As for my own feelings… I really enjoyed the game, but it seems like I might be the most heartless bastard on the planet when it comes to how I treated my dungeoneers. Some of my co-hosts developed bonds to their spelunkers and for me… they were just fodder to be thrown at the problem like minions in a Dungeon Keeper game. Of all the games we have played for the game club so far this is the one that I am most likely to visit and keep playing, but I might be waiting until it exits early access. There are certain things in the game that I don’t know if they are broken or simply that they have not been finished yet.

Grand Experiment – Year Two

Two years ago today I set about to change the nature of my blog and embarked upon what I termed the “Grand Experiment” which was more than anything blogging every single day no matter if I had a thought in my mind worth writing down on paper. Now 730 posts later I continue to question what I was thinking when I started down this road. The end result has been an interesting ride to say the least. What has happened more than anything during these last two years is that I have gotten closer with the community of my fellow bloggers. This has been more important than anything else to me, and it is through all of the various events like the upcoming Newbie Blogger Initiative 2015 that it is happened. So while I question if I did anything that really mattered over these last two years, I am thankful for every single reader and peer that I now have. There are lots of bloggers that write daily, and they have not made a big deal about it… but for me this was huge. If you scan back through my blog there are several six month long lapses in content… and very rarely did I actually make it through a month without having a week with zero posts.

It has been so much more than just writing a blog for me personally. I have allowed myself to open up more about myself and my life than I ever had to date online. I’ve talked about my personal struggles, and shared with you my excitement and joy. I’ve let you all into my life, and while I still for the most part am scant on the details… you are seeing the impression of something very real that is happening. I figured out early into this process that there would be days when I simply don’t have anything game related to talk about. There would be days that I would have something on my chest that I needed to get out there, right or wrong… and I am thankful that you all have supported me. I’ve been told that for many people my blog post is now part of their morning ritual, and if they get to work… and don’t see one they start to worry if something happened to me. The first day I was late with a post and I had a deluge of people pinging me over twitter and IM to make sure I was okay… was absolutely overwhelming.

Year Three

So tomorrow I begin the third year of this journey. There are days I question myself why I am doing this… what exactly I am trying to prove. The thing is I don’t really have an answer for either of those things. I enjoy this connection that I have to my readers, no matter how ephemeral it might be. There are days that I am doing this as therapy, other days doing it to share my excitement that I might burst if I don’t get it out onto the page… and in other days… the days I cannot seem to find the words, I am struggling forward for you. I feel like we have this contract, that I will write and you will read and together we will have this connection. I don’t want to be the one to sever that connection. I don’t want to be the one who lets down my end of this contract. So I will keep living and experiencing and doing my hack job of sharing that experience with you. This time next year I have no clue what I might be talking about… but I hope to still be talking and looking forward to our next journey.

Now I ask something of you. Since we have been sharing these moments each morning for some time… tell me about what you have done over these two years. Granted a lot of you have blogs of your own and they are in my RSS reader that I consume at irregular intervals like drinking from a giant firehose of words. But some of you out there have been with me this entire trip, and have never commented. I would love to hear from some of you, and let me know how your life has changed over these last two years. I might not even know you yet, but I would like to. What major changes has my readership gone through while I have been on this journey. I’ve upset a few people along the way, some of which have blocked me out of their lives… but I have gained several orders of magnitude more friends along the journey. That is the really important thing to me… all of the friends I have to show for my trip, and that I still keep in contact with on a weekly basis. You are the ones that give me the drive to keep moving forward, and hopefully this next year will be a fun trip shared together.