It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for another column. Actually, the next column / video is a couple of weeks overdue by now. I got distracted by my programming project and abandoned the next column mid-paragraph.
Except, I haven’t been doing much with the program lately, because I got caught up writing about the program as opposed to working on it.
Except, I got sidetracked from that when I realized that it’s time to do my end-of-year writeup like I always do. The year is winding down. Cyberpunk 2077 comes out in 10 days. There’s not enough time between now and the end-of-year to give Cyberpunk its due, which means I’m done playing games for 2020. Anything from here on belongs to 2021. It’s time to look back over this train-wreck of a year and try to put things in some kind of order.
Except, I’m not really doing that because I got sidetracked playing last-minute 2020 hopefuls Carrion and Teardown.
Except, I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with them because I spent last week hanging out with my oldest two kids for the first time in years. But now that they’re gone, it’s time to finish playing Teardown + Carrion so I can do my end-of-year series so I can finish my next programming article so I can reach the next stage of my programming project so I can shelve it and work on my next column.
Except…
Over the weekend I was watching old Strong Bad emails, which got me thinking about the Strong Bad TellTale games from 2008, which made me realize there are two entire episodes of the game I never got around to playing. I’ve owned the series for a dozen years and didn’t realize I’d somehow missed out on 40% of the available contentTragedy: The games are no longer available for purchase now that TellTale games died.!
So in this incredibly busy season with a huge backlog of work hanging over me, I spent the last couple of days playing point-and-click adventure games leftover from the PS3 / Wii era of gaming. This means I don’t have any content for you right now. Instead let me offer you this stupid random image that’s partially interesting…
This jumped out at me when I was scrolling YouTube last week. Nothing special. It’s the usual avalanche of thumbnails for stuff I’ve watched a dozen times, sprinkled with the occasional new content. Give it a gander and see if anything seems strange to you.
No? Normal? Nothing amiss? Maybe it’s just me then.
Here is what I found interesting: The juxtaposition of the Tom Scott and STYX video. Now, Tom Scott doesn’t really look at all like STYX keyboardist / lead vocalist Dennis DeYoungBoth men are in their 30s in their respective pictures, but the picture of DeYoung was probably taken in 1983. DeYoung is in his 70s today., but something about the angle of the photo makes them look similar. Even the outfits look similar. If I saw the STYX video in isolation I probably wouldn’t think it was Tom Scott, but by placing it beside a Tom Scott video my brain makes the connection and I can’t NOT see Tom Scott.
There are supposedly 500 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute. Which makes it all the more baffling that it keeps suggesting I go archive binge established creators. They still have a (well hidden) search feature that will let you see fresh uploads, but I wish there was some middle ground between “Corporate Approved Internet Television” and “The 4Chan Chaos Feed”. Like, it’s really hard to find creators in the 100-10,000 subscriber range. You can either watch the algorithm-approved superstars, or the random uploads of a thousand burner accounts. (Or in rare occasions, both.)
Ah well. Once I finish this Strong Bad game I’ll get back to doing… whatever I’m supposed to be doing around here.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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