Introducing 'Off The Radar'

I’ve spent a good number of years not sure what I’m doing. Some of those years have been spent with me doing something despite being disenchanted by that uncertainty, and the last few have had that fog taking precedence over any actual doing. A good while back I talked about how I hate the phrase “content creation” and was becoming disillusioned with the internet as a whole. This virtual playground I’d spent a lot of my life basking in was being taken over by increasingly vapid corporate interests and outright weirdos yucking the yum. The last few years since I expressed that sentiment had only made this entire thing more dour through my lens. That said, I wasn’t really examining that lens either.

For quite a lot of my life I’ve pointed to myself as my worst critic without really understanding the depth of that statement. I’ve spent a majority of my time since stepping back from uploading to MykonosFan really examining every aspect of myself. At some point the dam broke and my thoughts about the de-personalization of human beings through the broad scope of the internet reflected back to me, and there could be no more looking away. Through all my lamentation about how we were unknowingly shedding ourselves through a thousand unconscious cuts, I was an adult who was out of touch with himself. I was identified with my automatic thoughts, and many of my automatic thoughts were conditioned patterns of anxiety, worry, and fear. I questioned if anything I “put out there” was of any worth. I would imagine specific people wondering when I would improve, hearing their internal monologues of ambivalence as they closed the tab and went on to do anything else. This was my personal filter and it was the only way I could view anything related to myself.

It turns out you can operate through that filter for many years, but eventually you either break down from it or get so sick of it that you finally look for a way out. I can’t speak for others, but for me, all of this “struggle” was wide out in the open for me to recognize. I simply never took the single moment it would have taken to step back and really think about any of this. I’d been “me” for so long, it never occurred to me to attempt viewing “me” from a different perspective. I’d question the worth of what I did through the lens of imagined others, but whose judgment on that should really matter aside from my own? I’d hear the judgments and critique of others far more than I focused on what I wanted to do, but it wasn’t them in my head saying those things. Every problem I reaped was sown only by me. Frankly, people have largely been incredibly supportive, kind, and patient with anything I’ve ever done online. I have been granted time, opportunity, and connection beyond any measure I could have imagined as it is. On some level I felt I was just disappointing others and didn’t know how to not do that, but that was peanuts compared to how frequently I’d occupy a state of anxious paralysis and dwell there while completely unaware.

Without prattling on and on I suppose the simple way to put it is that I was looking for glasses that were on top of my head the entire time. I’d identify all of these things that were “wrong” about me that I couldn’t fix, things that were keeping me stuck…but my focus on their inability to be solved was the only thing keeping them in place. I spent some months reckoning with that, and forgiving myself for years of wreaking that. I then spent some months getting comfortable with bold notions such as “forgiving myself”, because yes, I was so out of touch that even things like that felt foreign and boldly uncomfortable. Reintroducing myself to myself and figuring out that there was never anything to figure out has certainly been a process. My intention is that no one but me had any clue about any of this, and I’d say I accomplished that. I trust that to anyone else I’ve just seemed a bit more aloof at best, and less outwardly productive at worst. Since last May I have had the best year of my life spending my time on myself and with myself. It’s possible that I have never felt more at peace than I have in these last few months. Maybe not as much as when I was like, 4 or whatever.

I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, though. There are about 10 half-written MykonosFan videos that will be great when I return to them. I do not promise timetables anymore for reasons that are entirely evident by now. I started one of these about 2 years ago, for reference. A few weeks back I figured I had nothing to lose and meditated on this. I asked myself some questions and received some answers. The next day the words “off the radar” came to me out of the blue and felt correct immediately. In recent months I’ve had many instances where someone would remind me of some video game that seemed to completely come and go. Sometimes these would even be titles that would get shown at some big game showcase. Other times a game would come up in conversation, one where there was huge fan fervor for it within its niche the week it came out, that then doesn’t get mentioned in my bubbles again for months or years. I’ve enjoyed that “oh yeah, that game” moment every time.

I’ve also had plenty of instances where some ridiculously neat looking game randomly comes into my sight. I love that moment of fascination each and every time, to know that something so interesting has just been out there the whole time without me knowing. Just earlier today I had this with Petal Runner, which seems laser-focused on pushing every button of mine in the right ways. It apparently got shown off at Summer Games Fest last year and I completely missed it. If someone like me can miss out on a game like this shown off at such a big event like that, then something has gone awry. Additionally, if I enjoy these moments of discovery so much, surely others would like another avenue to experience that themselves. I’d been letting ‘Off The Radar’ roll around in my mind and decided it was time to go in with no inhibition.

See, it’s that whole “state of the internet” thing I rehashed at the start. There’s nothing new in my assessment of it. We each see at least one post or article about how much the internet sucks in a new way every day. We then see at least one person echo that sentiment with a personal anecdote. Here’s mine. Over the last year I’ve spent some time on reddit helping people in some subreddits with their sense of self and anxieties. Just speaking from my perspective and doing what I can to help lift others up. All from an anonymous burner account, of course. It has been an interesting experience, but so often in those communities I would see so-called “life coaches” spring up from fresh accounts with randomly generated usernames. They’d immediately start posting ChatGPT-generated “feel good” sludge to any applicable subreddit to farm karma.

The advice was rarely rooted in any form of healthy reality, but was painted with a user-prompted brush aimed to stroke the ego and lower the guard of those reading. They’d then start pestering these vulnerable people to DM them or offer “life coaching” with vague promises to help them “fix” whatever issue had brought them to their current state. To a calm mind this is clearly a scam. However when people are in the throes of emotional despair and perceived helplessness, they are much more ready to part with their money. I’ve hated to see this blatant profiteering through such hollow, fake means. These aren’t people who want to help while being paid for their time, these are merely people who recognize easy targets. Nothing new there, but seeing how AI has so neatly facilitated this process in this incredibly specific niche made me more confident than ever that this has seeped into many avenues below the surface, causing harm we won’t be aware of for many years still. I’ve done my part to push back against it in this specific case, such as suggesting to mods of said subreddits that, hey, perhaps we ban fresh accounts offering paid services. No dice. Ultimately, complacency will engender a lot of pain there. That sucks, a lot.

I brought this perspective back to my public corner of the internet. If everything sucks, then what does it really matter if what I do sucks? So what if my poor grasp of English is apparent to those with a greater command of it? Who cares if I can’t consistently capably convey myself to my own satisfaction? I don’t ask these questions to build momentum toward any solution that tackles any of these broader issues. I have none. All I aim to indicate is that, twee as it sounds, being clumsy in a sea of stiff machine generated bullshit is great. As more and more of that garbage is put out there, anyone who takes the time to express themselves in any way is offering something that can’t be replicated. Especially if what they’re doing is conventionally “incorrect” in a way that an AI would pass over. That’s a tell that someone actually did that. (I drafted this post and called it a night just to wake up and find a piece with similar sentiments, highly recommended)

Being over this trash is a bit ahead of the curve right now, so pat yourself on the back for setting the trend. Going by the Reels that Facebook pushes on the top of my feed when I do visit that website, plenty of our weird uncles are really into these AI generated “podcast” video clips of like a dog talking about The Woke or whatever. That novelty will fade. The tech will improve but the use cases will not. We’re increasingly seeing awareness grow over how pointless it is, as well as growing sentiment that perhaps putting our phones down and getting away from all of this actually feels pretty good. When everything registers as overwhelmingly fake and procedural, there will be a shift back to appreciating the human element. I’ll acknowledge that this is a naive viewpoint, but it’s the one I’m going to operate under going forward. It coincides with my personal journey and I’m on confirmation bias like a pig in mud.

So look, ‘Off The Radar’. There’s no huge announcement. It isn’t grand. It’s simple and of meager means. It’s just going to be me writing about a game I played that seems cool that I’d like more people to know about. Crazy. I’m likely not going to be talking about games literally no one knows about. Just usually games I think others would like to know about that they may not already be informed of. As an example, the ‘Katamari Damacy’ creator has a new game out this week. In my view, everyone should always know what Keita Takahashi has coming out. Most people I’ve mentioned this to have had no idea, though. I’ll also record myself speaking out what I wrote for those who’d prefer to listen. Maybe sometimes there’ll be a video form produced and uploaded to MykonosFan since that much of the “work” has been done already by then. There’s no set frequency I’ll hold myself to. It won’t be perfect and may not even be functionally interesting to anyone but myself. Objectively there is not a single thing unique about what I am going to do in terms of its structure or aim. In this current climate, however, doing something generic is still doing something that came from the physical and mental realm. Frankly, I’m increasingly an idealist when it comes to people taking the time to cultivate their own weird little corners right now. I myself subscribed to a newsletter just last week, I’ll have you know. So to continue my pattern of not doing that myself, because of myself, seems incredibly doodooheaded of me.

‘Off The Radar’ is available on Beehiiv in text and audio form, on your podcast service of choice, and will be delivered early to my Patreon supporters when no embargoes are in the way. Speaking of, a special thanks to Adrian, Buckles Chucklo, Harry Baker, Hiro, James Boss, GoldStorm07, Svendelica, Jeet, TheCrazyEven, Patrick Thompson, and Cooking Mama for their support.

In line with the spirit of this post, let me pass along a few things to consider hopping to next. Similarly, most of it isn’t about video games.

There’s been an increasing wave of “Your phone is why you feel terrible all the time” videos in recent months. I linked to Eddie Burback’s in the main post, but this one is more concise. We all know it’s bad and yet we keep partaking. Make today the day you put it down and focus on something else. Then check in with yourself later on and realize that putting aside the muscle memory to check, you actually didn’t miss it that much.

If you aren’t already taking time to be in the present moment, I’d recommend a channel like ‘Breathe With Sandy’. In a similar vein to “stop looking at screen so much”, we all know we should take time to get out of our mind but rarely do so. I used to be someone who would think meditation was only for Enlightened People and that my mind raced too much to ever see any benefit from it. I put aside the preconceived notions and it is now one of the best parts of my day. There is a spiritual slant to this channel specifically, but by no means should that deter you from trying it or another one altogether.

To round out recommendations, there was a neat indie showcase just the other day from ‘Six One Indie’. Looking it over is where I found ‘Petal Runner’ and plenty of other games to stuff my Steam Wishlist with. Plenty of them have demos you can try right now, much like ‘Cast n Chill’ here, so I’d recommend seeing what suits you. I’ll be keeping an eye on plenty of these to potentially talk about in the future.