Weekend Lounge ~ The Last Renting Space

Welcome to the weekend!

The end of August is finally here, and we're heading into the last third of the year! One last stretch to go and we'll have made it. Until then, let's have a little fun as we usually do on the weekends. Today will be a more straightforward one.

Considering recent topics, I wanted to go over one we've touched on a bit, but one that seems to be coming back with younger generations: the rental experience. What exactly do we miss about rental stores, and what can we get back?

For one, obviously the preference for a long time has been to own. When DVD first came in during the late '90s and became standard in the early '00s (almost two decades ago) it became a lot more common to buy what you wanted. Rental stores themselves (the chains, particularly, though some smaller ones did this too) cleared out old stock cheap, some even offering classic games that go for hundreds on the second hand market for peanuts. It made sense why that was popular, sometimes favorites disappeared and you would never find them again. You had to grab what you could.

That era passed quickly, however. and the '00s changed as they went. By the end, social media was standard, cheap DVDs were common, and this new thing called streaming and even YouTube had taken over by the late '00s. Blockbuster died, becoming a corporate monolith pumping Hollywood product at the expense of local scenes and lack of variety, showing that the customer could have more than the hobbled selection they were left with by the end of that behemoth.

I know there are younger people (particularly '00s kids, Millennials) that don't believe me, but Blockbuster was a corporatized monopoly that replaced local industry, no different than pretty much everything we complain about today. It choked out variety, (local stores had their own selections not mandated and supplied by Hollywood directly), local filmmakers who used to have incentive to share their wares at their local store, and turned the rental experience into a bland facsimile of what it once was. Everything you complain about today in regards to places like McDonalds, Walmart, and even the recent Cracker Barrell disaster, all started with Blockbuster. Make no mistake, if it was alive today, it would be just like them.

That said, Blockbuster was not without merit, even if a part of the decline of the industry itself. There is something missing in the entertainment space without renting around. In fact, there is something missing in the entertainment space in general, as we have finally accepted it all as throwaway and interchangeable, and as we've done so we've begun to crave that missing piece we've been missing. But what exactly was it?

As the above video shows, it's all the little things, the touches of humanity that have since been lost to interpersonal Consuming and hiding away from the world.

Just think of how much the medium of cinema has changed, for the worse since the 20th century. One can also throw television in here too, and even aspects of gaming (like multiplayer). It started as a public activity in a high trust society, and ended as a private affair in a low trust one. It doesn't matter whether you "hate people" or think your taste impeccable and beyond reproach, but an activity that once included sociality as an important factor which is now completely stripped away signals something important has indeed been entirely lost.

Some might say we cannot get that back, that "progress" is inevitable and time marches on so we must adapt. While the latter is true, the former does not understand that every single change that happens in life is not automatically "progress" and needs to be kept around. We now know that something behind "new" does not preclude its quality, a lesson we had to learn after that decade of disaster known as the 2000s and the rot to come of the 2010s.

There are things we lost, important things, and we need to bring them back. We cannot keep pretending we can go on as we currently are.

Streaming has its uses: online gatherings, meetings, and even video sites, have their place. What it cannot do is replace real life needs, like social interaction. For example, online multiplayer has never come close to replicating the feeling of playing in the same room with someone you can directly interact with. Even when the games were better, they never matched up due to missing that important feature earlier classics took for granted. The cinematic experience is the same.

It goes without saying that the solution isn't to bring Blockbuster back, or to get another company to replace what it did. The corporate era is over now, and it's clear we cannot bring it back. Much like how McDonalds hanging its awful modern design wouldn't change how choked out the fast food industry has been of fresh blood in decades, just putting up logos and chanting old sales pitches and advertising lingo won't repair the larger problem.

It has to start locally. It just does. There is no other option. If one really wants the rental experience to return, it is going to have to start there. It is going to have to start where it began, in small mom and pop shops serving the local community. People are going to have to drive out of their way, even from the next town over, to scope out your wares and spread the word. Just as it once was, this is the only way it can be.

That being said, it isn't like just offering rentals will change the social climate. Telling someone to just start a business to fix social problems is a recipe for disaster. But we have to start somewhere with an idea, and that is closer to the ballpark than wishing for the return of corporate control of an industry again. That is just plain never going to happen and not a path worth traveling down. We do not need another Netflix. We do not even need the current one, to be brutally honest.

So I'm not going to make this post anti-Blockbuster or anything of the like, because it really doesn't matter at this point. However, there is something to be gained from such a simple industry being lost purely for automated digital distribution.

The arts and entertainment in general have been losing their connection with society, with real people, and it isn't a new phenomenon. We've trumpeted anti-social "leaders" and artists for decades as the people whose example is worth following, and it's led us to where we are now. We can't go any farther in this direction as it it has done little but foster acceptable mental illness in the mainstream and confuse the abnormal with the normal. All standards have been lost.

To go forward at this point requires going back. It isn't a suggestion, it is simply reality. We've spent too far mindlessly plowing ahead and ignoring the road signs while plugging our ears and repeating "progress" like it's a religious mantra of some kind. Continuing to do that, despite its very clear failure will not just magically work now, because it never did to begin with.

This goes beyond just renting, but I think that much is apparent to anyone reading this, so I'll just stop right here. What is more important is that we're aware of past mistakes so that we don't make them again just in more ridiculous ways.

That's all for today, I hope you've had a good August and I will see you in September! Let's charge into fall in style.

Thanks again for all your support. 2025 has been a weird one, but there are still many of cool surprises ahead of us. I can't wait until I can show you what I've been working on.

Until next time, have yourself a good week.

I've started a second podcast on the Patreon, the Drifter Mindset, about my storytelling and works. I also just put out a new episode about the difference between normalcy and the status quo! Check it out and join today!

Weekend Lounge ~ Human Vs Robot

Welcome to the weekend!

We're back with another one of these, this time on a subject I know we're all thinking about. The question is in just how artificial is everything right now?

This week let us tackle some questions based on this well discussed subject. What exactly is artificiality in art? Where does it come from, what is the source of it, and how can we move past it? Lastly, why does it feel like everything around us is artificial even when we know it's made by real people? We can't answer them all today, but we can scratch the surface before we can even think to strike at the heart of all this craziness.

What is really going on?!?

We're all well aware nothing in the arts or entertainment sphere is "natural" anymore, in that the ideas being expressed aren't deeper than surface level and rarely do they go beyond cliche phrases and unambitious characters or plots meant to rehash Current Year dogma. What we also don't address is that we also reshape this in the form of digestible Content meant to satisfy all the bots and algorithms that allow us to see anything anymore.

In other words, not only do we deliberately talk down to others in order to satisfy social demands, we also morph our language and alter our approach to our robot overlords so they can even be seen by anyone in the first place. In effect, we aren't actually working for customers: we're working for robots and filtering our "Content" to get it past them

The idea of "Working for the robot" has already affected video makers on YouTube and heavily filtered what they want to produce. If you wonder why so many channels have videos with wildly different view counts on their videos, this is the reason for it. They simply aren't doing what the algorithm gods demand of them. What these means is that they tailor their videos and thumbnails and advertising to be deemed worthy for acceptance by the algorithm (be it YouTube or any social media site) in order to maybe have an audience to watch their videos.

The robots aren't on your side.

This also is why so many bigger creators now have multiple channels (some focusing on livestreams, for instance) because it will not negatively impact their original one. This is because they have to work around (and for) the robots who are their real employers.

Author David V. Stewart talks about the topic in the video above. Since he is a YouTuber going back many years, he has seen trends come and go, as well as channels and creators. Whatever worked back in the day no longer does, making it more of a hassle for viewers to find channels and for channels to get viewers. Essentially, much like everything else, it's been flipped on its head backwards from its original purpose and intent. Check out the video above to see how that is.

It is difficult to blame so many video makers on YouTube since, well, there isn't much choice, especially for those doing this for a living. However, it does not change the fact that their work is being changed specifically for an entity that does not care about them or their audience, and, in the end, will negatively impact the quality of what they do. It's a Catch 22 situation, and the only way to fight it is to risk angering the very gods you are meant to placate.

Basically, as they are, the customer is not the person engaging in what you do: it's the robot sentinel watching you overhead like a hawk and ready to blow you away like an armed satellite should you fail to meet its demands. Not exactly a healthy position to be in.

The only solution, as always, is to take a risk.

We're diving so deep into artificiality we no longer even remember the purpose of producing for people isn't to pump content out like industrialization taught us. It's not to make tons of money, either (though of course that's nice), but to create something that can reach people and show them something a little higher and leave them in a better position than where they started. We can't do that if we're too busy being distracted, terrorized, and ruled over, by things that simply don't matter.

And artificiality doesn't matter. This sort of "Content" will be forgotten. It will come and go and disappear as quickly as it came into the void with the rest of it. It doesn't matter how much the "Content" mimics the real thing--it has nothing to say that isn't surface level or has been repeated hundreds of times by people who have already said it better before. This artificial product can't aim higher or show anything new.

But we can.

Hopefully sometime in the future we can build a scene that has this focus of connection at the forefront. It sure would be nice. Until then, enjoy "Content" being pumped out into the pipes, because that's all we're going to get as long as we work for the robots.

Personally, I think we've all had enough of it. Audiences want something real, something they can believe in. That said, all we can do is wait for enough pushback on how things currently are in order to find another path out of here. Until that happens, we're simply stuck waiting and in neutral, hoping for a new way.

For a post-Cultural Ground Zero society, I'm pretty sure we're used to that by now. After nearly three decades of stagnation, what's another couple years? Hopefully we won't have to wait much longer.

In other news, I recently introduced a new podcast series on the Patreon called the Drifter Mindset. This one is specifically about my writing and storytelling. I read a story, talk about where it came from, the meanings, and the themes, and what it meant to me as a writer. The usual podcast will continue on as always, but this one will be another bonus for anyone who wants to join. It's going to be as in depth as I can get it to be, so the episodes will be longer than a usual episode of Letters from the Wasteland. I have been publishing for nearly a decade, after all.

All that aside, I hope things are going well for you all out there, and I'll see you next time!

Have yourself a good end of August.

Read a story of mysterious radio broadcast in the middle of nowhere from a young man stuck in the '00s! What is waiting out there? Find out in  "Lightning Jim" in the brand new Mistcreek Tales!

Weekend Lounge ~ The Gen Y Experiment is Over

Welcome to the weekend!

We've talked about the lonely generations reaching middle age and what we can do about it, but how about going back a little and seeing where it first became visible? Today I have visual evidence of the originating point for an entire generation, the one most well known for being trapped in their memories and nostalgia. I'm, of course, talking about Gen Y. An entire generation that came of age during the eye of the hurricane that cracked during Cultural Ground Zero and bottomed out during their early adult years in the '00s.

We all know how that story went in that first quarter block of the 21st century. But what was it like being Gen Y before everything collapsed? Well, I can actually give you an example of what my generation was like right this very second!

The above video details the rise and fall of Generation Y centered on one figure who was infamous in the early popular era of the internet. This was the early '00s back when social media was just getting off the ground and Gen Y was learning how to use YouTube to express themselves. In case you haven't realized it yet, the subject is about the Spoony One himself, one of the early wave of those internet reviewers. While it might seem odd to bring up this one figure and his downfall, and you might even consider him an outlier to that generation, there is a very good reason that his rise and fall endures as a cautionary tale despite the countless internet figures that come and go everyday. No one is waiting for the Gamedude to return, for example.

It's been nearly two decades and yet still people think of Spoony. Why is that? Why of all those figures is he the one that elicits the most nostalgia for that specific time and place that is gone now, more than others from the time? Even the above video maker, being a younger figure, was a member of his audience who looked to him to learn about certain things. Even now he still thinks Spoony has something the others didn't. Let us look into why so many think so, and ponder if that is truly the case or just wishful thinking.

The Angry Video Game Nerd is still popular. He's still working at it. It is the same with the Nostalgia Critic. James Rolfe and Doug Walker are the names everyone in these circles knows. These two are still among the biggest in their niches despite the passage of decades since their early beginnings. Most of the others have disappeared, some have imploded, some have even died (RIP Armake21), but despite it all, there is one critic that so many await a return for to this day to resume his career as if nothing has happened. That is Spoony. If you know anything about the era, you are even probably nodding your head along with that, even if you might not understand why. Why is it that nostalgia for Spoony remain over all the others?

The logo you might remember

Unfortunately, there is a realization here, and one his audience all knows deep down. He cannot really return, and we will get to why that is soon. I promise, we will discuss it soon enough! First let us discuss his initial popularity to set it up.

The early era of internet critics back in those early days of YouTube and social media were mostly just AVGN rip-offs. We all know it now, but we also all knew it at the time. There was a demand for over the top deconstructions of childhood favorites, and boy oh boy were many Gen Ys ready to fill that niche. There were almost as many angry reviewers as there were stars in the sky, and none of them really lasted beyond that initial year or two.

Most of these figures are watched for nostalgia's sake today, ironically, though they are an interesting window into an era of the internet and culture long gone today. Despite that, however, there were a few that stood out in the crowd. Aside from the above big dogs like James and Doug, the one that almost reached their level, and many would say even now was their equal, was Spoony of the Spoony Experiment. But he wasn't just an angry reviewer. Unlike the others, he wasn't a character, he wasn't overblown or cartoony, he was just himself and really excitable and personable about what he covered. Spoony loved cool things, movies, games, TV shows, wrestling, whatever, it didn't matter. His excitement was palpable, whether he liked something or not and it was always fun to hear him talk about what he enjoyed.

In those days, it was like meeting a friend and talking about things you both had in common, and it was refreshing. For Gen Y guys, we all knew someone like him, or had a bit of him inside us, or understood where he was coming from even when we didn't agree. For younger audiences he was like an older brother showing them obscure and wild entertainment from the fringes you might never have seen otherwise. Even now in the modern corporate and "professional" YouTube world there isn't really anyone else like him. The world to Gen Y was exciting, there were cool things to be found everywhere, and those things were going to be good in the end.

And then they weren't. This is where we get to those days of the later '00s where the bleakness started to take hold of the generation. Spoony was not only not an exception to this: in many ways he was the posterchild for it all. Those were rough times.

Spoony's downfall was a tough one to watch, even at the time. Though he became an internet punchline, unlike many other early internet figures that crashed and burned, Spoony's was different. Even as he faded away, to this day a not-insignificant amount of people await his return. There is a good reason for that, despite everything that happened, many still wait for him. It will probably never happen, and it should be discussed why.

As mentioned before, check out the above video for details on what exactly happened. In retrospect, his "controversies" are actually quite tame (and water under the bridge at this point), but one part sticks out more than all of those. There is a moment in Spoony's rant at the end of his Ultima series, the last large project he did before he flamed out, that tips his hand. One can feel his despair over everything he loved turning to shit, getting worse, and imploding, and that there was nothing he could do about it. This was clearly meant to cap the video off with a gag, but his clear disappointment over his precious memories being destroyed and being forgotten by the passage of time and corporate avarice, and how nothing will ever be good again, ended up reflecting the feelings of much of his audience at the time. The elephant in the room is that we all knew it was true, and we all knew we lacked the power to save anything at the time. It was the source of Gen Y's despair at the time.

That rant is a good example of that era of Gen Y existence when the warmth of youth has finally faded and left us in the empty cold of the late '00s/early '10s, a hopeless era where loneliness and alienation became common, and it did not feel like any light was coming. The realization was that everything we thought we loved was purposefully being destroyed (and it was), and that without it our generation did not think we had meaning otherwise.

Infamous, but not the low point.

This is why Spoony will not return. Not because he cannot get past that despair, he can, (we very much all can) but that the realization is that those products are not what made those times great. It wasn't the IPs, the logos, or the carboard boxes and jewel cases. Those could be cool, but they weren't the source of enjoyment. When the nostalgia fades, what remains are the ideas, the spirit, the connection, and the sense of higher purpose al the best art and entertainment points toward. At this point, Gen Y is not reveling in the past: they are moving forward using the past as a way to shine a light into newer unexplored territory of the like we never imagined back then.

The reason Spoony can't come back is because there's no more nostalgia for him to mine, and he doesn't need to do that anymore. It's been recorded and shared with the world. His part in that Experiment is over. So now what? If Spoony wanted to come back, it would have to be to move forward in the same way his cohort is starting to. He wouldn't be able to do the same thing anymore.

Were Spoony to return, not only would his demons have to be beaten, but he would have to be in a better place to show those waiting for him a better way out of the pit not only he, but his entire generation, had been trapped in. Some are still there, too. In essence, they may think they want Spoony to taken them back to the past, but what they actually want is to be brought to the future, and they still think he has the ability to that. Maybe he does.

Does the above sound strange? Are members of Gen Y, or his younger watchers in the Millennials, really still waiting for a reviewer who stopped reviewing years ago? They are waiting for something, and probably more than they think they are. Well, the audience waiting for him is waiting for him because he reminds them of themselves. Spoony has always been a reflection of who the audience thought they were, wanted to be, or knew someone like. They live in the same fallen world as he does and wish desperately for the parts of them left behind in that nostalgic haze to also be saved with the rest of them. If he can make it, they all can, essentially.

In the '00s we were told everything old sucked, was useless, and had no value. Now, in the '20s, a quarter of a century removed, we realize how wrong that was. If it had no value we wouldn't have been able to connect with any of it, we wouldn't have huddled around YouTube comments on videos and pages (until those were removed) had countless response videos, or taken to forums and social media to talk amongst ourselves over it. We ad it all in a cloak or sarcasm and irony to detach ourselves, but we all knew it mattered. That is why when it disappeared, a level of despair fell over us all. We didn't realize what we had until it was gone. It was the connection itself that mattered, and that is why we still talk about these things even so many years removed from them.

The old days were good, not perfect, but good. We salvaged what we could from them to bring what mattered forward, but those days are gone and over with now. We can't just marvel at and swim in the past. We need new ways to look forward. We don't need dead IPs, franchises, or corporations, to rule our future. We need to be able to look ahead to something better than what we grew up with. Spoony himself is a relic of that era, but he's also a person. He's a human being who can't live there any more than we can. You can visit the past anytime, but no one else is there anymore.

It is the same when a new multiplayer FPS comes out and people hope against hope for it to be a draw for multiplayer. They want desperately to return to the good times. They want the "community" to return, be it Call of Duty, Overwatch, or even Unreal. They all know it won't happen, it can't happen, but they desperately desire that lost connection again.

But what was the essence of that connection? Playing with strangers? No, it was a variation of an earlier phenomenon.

When one looks at old photos of LAN parties over two decades ago you just realize none of these new games will ever compare, and they don't. Part of the appeal has always been friends, acquaintances, and neighbors, getting together to have fun over the same thing. We all desired that connection. We don't have those anymore, though. There are no communities, no one has the time, and everyone is off in their own little spaces, which means there will never be anything that lives up to the way it once was. That's just the blunt truth.

Waiting for Spoony to return is a lot like waiting for those local communities to return. They're gone and not coming back. You can go back to the past but, again, no one else is there anymore. One can build something different, perhaps something better, but it will only come from taking in what came before and applying it to the future. That is what Gen Y's job will be: to be the preservers and the ones carrying the memories forward to apply in new situations. Our job is to not linger and drown: the hour is much, much too late for that.

At this time, I think most of us have figured this out. We are building, working, and striving for something better. The age for lingering and pining is over and done. That's a good thing: we can always improve and grow.

If Spoony does come back I would hope he's a completely different person, like the rest of us, finished with living in the past and hopeful for a better future. I would hope he could escape those demons of those darker years and build something new. They are over for the rest of us now, but it doesn't mean we have to leave everything behind. We just have to understand where we are now, and what we can offer that no one else can.

Gen Y's worst days are behind us. It won't be perfect going forward, there will be a lot of rough waters and tough times, but we're finally moving out of the pit of the past and ready to carry ourselves forward. It's about due, but we finally know what we can do now. We don't need permission, we don't need to bend the knee to people who hate us, and we don't need to fade away. We won't be defeated. In fact, we will win.

You can just do things, you know.

It's pretty great.

Check out my new story "Lightning Jim" in Mistcreek Tales! The paperback version is out now, and even includes some spiffy art! Check it out here!

Weekend Lounge ~ Lonely Days and Nights

Welcome to the weekend!

As we head into August and the later days of summer (where hopefully the heat finally begins to taper off), lets take one look back at the loneliness epidemic plaguing the modern world. We've discussed it plenty of times before on this blog and elsewhere, and have gone through plenty of examples both in the arts and in general where it remains prominent, but I don't believe we have ever compiled it in one easy to digest source like the above documentary from ColdFusion has. Where did it come from, and where is it going? And how do we escape?

Suffice to say, everyone is aware of the overall problem on some level and many even realize the cause, but attacking the source is a whole other ballgame that is going to take some time. It's not going to vanish overnight. It's not country exclusive either, as it has roots in not only the West, but also other areas like Japan, China, Korea, and is even starting to grow in places like Africa. Alienation and atomization is quickly becoming the legacy of the 20th century, and it's not one we should be proud of.

At the same time, there has been a vibe shift in the overall culture. This goes beyond politics and voting habits, though those have obviously changed as well, and moves more into the space of the intangible. As someone who was around in the nadir of materialistic nihilism (the '00s) it is very easy to see the change in the way the average person sees meaning and the purpose in their lives. The snark and the irony poisoning is finally falling to sincerity and hope, something we have all needed desperately since the pit that was 2001. Sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better, after all.

Part of admiring the past today comes from hating the present, but it should never be forgotten that said era is also what lead us here to where we are now. We cannot mindlessly ape it, but take what we need to move forward and understand the context for it all.

It's over and gone.

It's been said before that the middle is disappearing, but outside of the context of the middle class it also refers to the neutral ground on the purpose of your existence. Lines are forming everywhere that we had once deliberately blurred. You either believe your life has meaning and that we can fix things, or you don't believe it does and will fight to destroy everything while fooling yourself into thinking you're helping. The two attitudes are very different, one straightforward and one backwards, but the latter is dying as materialism has been exposed to be a dead end ideology. Only by realizing what we lost can we hope to make it better.

I don't tend to talk politics here because I don't have much to say on the topic. There are too many talking heads, grifters, and opportunists to count, most of which share and don't share aspects of my views. However, the default in that segment of modernity has changed so much that I think it is worth mentioning at least a little in regards to this topic. It's also another area where neutrality has disappeared which is probably a good thing because no one caring about the overt self-destruction of everyone and everything is how the problem outlined in Bowling Alone went unaddressed for over a quarter of a century. We all saw it coming, but we did nothing.

This piece by Dave Greene, also known as the Distributist, outlines in detail how the default thought of the 20th century, materialist progressivism died. I'm not going to go into it here as it is very long and in depth, but as someone who came from that place and knows others still there, he goes over where the ideology is, why it's dead, and why the sooner we finally give up on it the sooner we can finally build something better. Institutions like Hollywood, big business and big tech, and those with skin in the game are also starting to realize it, but they are behind on everything. This is the big reason why independent creators and artists have seized control of the arts and entertainment so abruptly: they see the writing on the wall. It's just up to the people in charge to finally process it.

Of course I'm not claiming to know all the answers, but as someone who has been blogging for over a decade now I can tell you things are most definitely not where they were back what I started. It's been a long time coming and the shift is very subtle, but the small things always add up. Within the next decade we will finally escape the grasp of 20th century materialism and despair and build something better. It's inevitable now, it's just a question of how much you're willing to let go of to make it happen. People like you are already helping with that right now simply by supporting NewPub, independent, and smaller artists, writers, creators, and entertainers, and contributing to the undeniable vibe shift currently occurring in the culture. Again, you might not have noticed it but the change is real. We just have to be engaged in it. Soon enough we will be able to form new connections and leave this present behind for better things.

It's only a matter of time.

In other news, I recently did a podcast on the series Cobra Kai and looked at just why it resonated where just about every other cash grab reboot and remake failed, and the answer turned out to be quite interesting. It might also be a sign of change, just not in the way anyone might think. We all realize what a waste the early years of the 21st century are and now we need to make up for it with something more than we had.

That is what the reason anthologies like Rock and Roll Mercenaries exist for: they highlight part of the 20th century we loved that is currently fading away. Those days are gone, so we must take what we learned, celebrate them, and move on into the new times ahead. We need the past to move into the future, but we also cannot live there, not forever. The last 25 years spent clinging to the previous century has told us that much.

I was also on the Scifi4Me podcast about a week ago with some of the guys in the above anthology. We talk about writing and stories in it! It's well worth the watch though we only show up in hour two the whole thing is worth it. Watch it here!

Like I said, there's a big change coming. Nothing will be the same again.

So what comes next? I guess we're about to see.

Check out Mistcreek Tales featuring my story "Lightning Jim"! 14 stories of weirdness highlighting what makes the world so full of wonder.