KneeOfJustice99

why does big the cat fish like sure cats like fish but they dont like water thats their whole thing (they are fire-attuned)

I might be a little sleep-deprived at the moment, and it is coming quite close to 1am, but I'm genuinely beginning to wonder whether Thursdays hold some particular power of some kind. Sort of.

Basically, I'm not sure whether others associate "patterns" with nearly everything (I'm told it's an autistic thing) but one of these "patterns" is the nebulous and difficult-to-explain concept I like to call "conscious importance". Basically, the idea that everything has a certain degree of importance in the cultural consciousness as a whole - for instance, Mario has a high degree of "importance" compared to Bubsy, the number 2 has a higher degree of "importance" compared to the number 917, and so forth.

Imagine it a bit like a search engine, where the most "searched" (or, in this case, thought) thing is ranked higher on an arbitrary scale. This can change, over time - celebrities like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson are more "consciously important" to our modern society and culture at this moment in time compared to someone like acclaimed (1930s) actor Katharine Hepburn because the former is more commonly "cited" in terms of thought. It's not to be conflated with pure recognisability, but Johnson is more "searched" than Hepburn for instance. If I were to perform an identical thought experiment in like, 1934, then Hepburn would of course be significantly more "consciously significant" primarily because of Johnson not even existing yet.

So here's the thing. Whilst celebrities, characters, other things like that, do have "importance" - they're not cultural mooring points. You could probably find people that don't know what a Mario is. But they do know what the number 2 is. See, "conscious importance" can also apply to wider concepts as opposed to just singular things, and one of the single most prominent and important things in modern society is the concept of the day. It's a fundamental force on the planet, it's existed for as long as culture has, and we assign "importance" to certain days.

Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, Wednesdays, Tuesdays, Thursdays. Odd order at first glance, but I think this is the reasonable decending order of "significance" of each day - Monday is dreaded more commonly than Friday is celebrated, Wednesday is a "halfway point" but not really as significant as Sunday in multiple cultures, etc. And yet Thursday's at the bottom. It's near universally-accepted that Thursday is different to nearly all other days to the point that SmashBoards ****posts and acclaimed science fiction author Douglas Adams can agree on it. Thursday isn't quite the same as Monday or Friday not purely in terms of the fact that it's another day of the week, but in that it fundamentally feels different on a level difficult to even conceptualise.

What is a Thursday? Thor's Day? Why Thor? Why would one Norse farmer from the 9th century naturally associate the ferocity of storms with a day recognised near-unanimously for its complete and utter lack of substance? The natural conclusion is one of two: either that there wasn't enough days to go around (which is why Reddit invented Cake Day) or that Thursday wasn't always considered as "nothing" as it is. So where did it change? I feel the importance of my idea of "conscious importance" is interesting because Thursday probably hasn't had a particular "thing" happen to it that's made it less notable, but rather, a lack of things that's happened to it. A statistical void of notability compared to other days - whether it be Sunday due to its association with Christianity, Monday and Friday for their connections to the working week, even Wednesday purely for its placement in relation to that. And what is a day, anyway? In terms of a week, why is it Thursday 7 days after it's Thursday over and over again? Well...

Thursday is a void. And what is a void but a lack of being? Entropy is naturally associated with the state of being, but the paradoxical state of un-being that Thursday exists within ironically makes it more "consciously significant" than even days like Tuesday because of its sheer lack of notability, which causes a paradox, because how can something be un-notable if it's notable for being un-notable? For comparison, if I post where the least-thought-about place on Earth is, the second I think about it, it's no longer notable for being the least-thought-about place on Earth because of the fact that I'm thinking about it in the first place.

The problem is that this causes yet another fallacy because of the simple nature of searches. For every page of Google searches there's billions of others that nobody really cares about - some having not even been clicked in literal decades. Even me knowing about something being "un-notable" makes it instantly more notable than the vast majority of "things", because in the grand and scarcely comprehensible list of "things" there is inevitably - purely by force of probability - a vast, equally scarcely comprehensible list of "things" that nobody is, has, or ever will think about. Links of the mind that will never, ever be clicked, in a sense.

That's not even getting into what a "thing" is in the first place because I could fold up a handkerchief into the shape of a crane and call it "a handkerchief", "an origami crane", or "fabric" and technically never be wrong in the first place. What is a "thing", after all? Something that can be catalogued as "existing"? If we were to make a genuine, citable list of everything we know about - a physical representation of the conscious importance index - that massive void of things we don't know about wouldn't be added, would it. Are they still "things?"

Is a Thursday a "thing" in the first place? It's a concept related purely to terms of reference, after all - a constant keeping-of-count of one planet spinning around as it spins around a star as it spins around a galaxy as it spins around a universe. From an external perspective, a Thursday doesn't only just "not exist" but it doesn't even have a need to be conceptualised. It's fundamentally, utterly redundant - not even being notable for its lack of notability. But what would look from the outside? This brings up a question of space. If we leave our solar system, what do we use to measure "time"? Thursday is, after all, a product of Earth-centric "time" in pure relation to our complete and utter lack of spatial awareness. Would Thursday - and indeed nearly any other unit of time aside from the SI units of seconds and so forth - become utterly pointless, archaic-at-best systems with which to even consider time?

The issue in this case is vagueness. Humans are utterly ****ing terrible at categorising anything. If I take sixteen atoms of your black forest gateau away, it doesn't suddenly become classified as a main course. If I attach an infinite number of legs to a chair, it doesn't stop being a chair. The fundamental rules of what "is" are almost completely dependent on point of view, context, expectations, and a massively simplified observation as to what I'm trying to show you (either physically or metaphorically.) Even then, we're limited by a language system that only has a finite number of methods with which to describe concepts, relying on mechanics like metaphor to continue maintaining relevancy as a means of conveying ideas.

When it comes to days of the week, Thursday is the least notable. It's a void. It lacks substance. But because of that, Thursday becomes notable. It draws something from nothing, a fundamental violation of the basic laws of thermodynamics. What is a Thursday but an anachronism, a series of infintisimally small coincidences that perfectly lined up in that vast and unknowable storm of entropy to form a group of apes citing the name of a god nobody cares about and laughing because it's spelt wrong on their light boxes?

Thursday is nothing because it is something because it is nothing - recursive. That's why it has power. Oh, and one more thing - if you ever did that thing as a child where you kept asking your parents "Why?" whenever they explained something and they'd eventually get pissed off and shout "BECAUSE IT IS", this is... yeah, pretty much it.

concept: isekai where the main character is killed. they wake up and look to the sky. above them, an angelic choir... and a formation of clouds in the shape of the words "the simpsons"

bo birmingham fans when he sings about the rise of the television show pawn stars during the 2008 economic crash (so funny! so quirky! so relatable!)

mario.

Everyone's going soooo crazy about Ohio, not realising that Ohio was a social construct developed by the citizens of New Jersey to direct attention away from them

Random thought experiment: if someone handed you the reins to add a Space Invader (from Space Invaders) into Smash, would you have their key design be based on their in-game sprites, a future redesign seen in later media, or on their design on the cabinet art? Also, why exactly?

Just out of interest!

what if shrek was a factual documentary

Hello all! I've been giving some thought to a pretty interesting topic and something's occurred to me that I think is pertinent to ask, even if there's a reasonable argument that I'm about half a decade late. Specifically, I'm going to pose a question:

Can you think of any character redesigns (in gaming ideally, but elsewhere if you like) that felt good, appealing, or natural?

A lot of people talk about really bad redesigns - Spyro's look in Skylanders, Crash's look in Crash of the Titans and Banjo & Kazooie's look in Nuts and Bolts spring to mind - but I'm kind of interested to see what people feel is a particularly good instance of character redesigns either in terms of modernisation or just a generally changing artstyle over time. For context: I'm not talking about full-on reboots of character design like in the case of Dante in DMC: Devil May Cry where characters look very distinctly different on purpose so as only to invoke the original, I'm moreso thinking about evolutions.

The main one that I know people seem to like is Pac-Man's from the Pac-Man World series, but I'm interested to hear your points!

I reckon, personally at least, that the best way to handle an Atari crossover of some kind (especially in the case of older games like the 2600) would be by featuring characters as they appeared on boxart - even if they never actually appeared in the games themselves. Obviously there'd be some exceptions - Centipede and Yar spring to mind as obvious inclusions from within their actual games - but there's some picks I think could potentially be really cool, like the Commander from Missile Command, or the Escapee from Breakout.



And come to think of it, using a similar redesign philosophy to that seen in the Recharged series for each character feels like it'd be a lot of fun. Keeping aspects of their original designs whilst giving them a fresh coat of paint seems like the best way of handling these in some cases, because it'd even let you come up with characters for games that otherwise might not get represented (such as Asteroids and Missile Command) due to the lack of in-game characters!

I imagine it'd be unpopular to some due to a percieved "lack of respect" for the original source material, but I feel like a prisoner with a hammer and a ball and chain would be way more interesting than a paddle with someone presumably inside it, for instance. Even then, you could still represent key aspects of gameplay through things like stages - a Breakout stage feels like it'd be fun, and likewise seeing interesting takes on concepts like the Caverns of Mars as a stage would be awesome. It'd still be unquestionably Atari - just not quite in the way you might expect!

I feel like this would end up being the best way of doing an Atari crossover fighter if you were to go ahead with that. Whilst there's a certain charm to the original box art (or even, in some cases, sprites), I think recontextualising some aspects of the characters whilst paying effective homage to the original source material would be an effective way of making it all work - whilst keeping things fresh and interesting across the board! (I think these kinds of redesigns would be cool even for later inclusions, such as stuff from the 5200 or even as far as the Jaguar, even if a lot of Atari's most popular and prominent stuff is either arcade releases or 2600 games.)

Come to think of it, even aside from Atari's own catalogue, there's a ton of potential for some interesting guest picks here. Characters like the Robotron Hero, a Space Invader, and Mrs. Pac-Man feel like they'd all be really fitting, even if you'd need to see whether Warner Bros., Square-Enix and uhhhhh presumably Namco, AtGames and Midway??? are willing to play ball. Oh well!

AI discussion in the 1960s: "AI could be used to automate gruelling work that, currently, is performed by humans. It could lead us into a bohemian and colourful age of art and expression, with work still existing - but taking a backseat compared to a life of leisure and creativity. Wouldn't that be a fabulous evolution of the human race?"

AI discussion in the 2020s: "I have been working at McDonalds since I was 15, get paid a pittance for 12-hour work days, and now I can't even make art or music because computers do it all for me. Life is hell, it gets worse every day, and I have absolutely no power or direction because of it."

oh~ the future is delightful!~

I feel like one cool take on the "indie crossover" concept that I don't think we've seen yet could be a puzzle game! Using basic puzzle games as a basis as to how it could work, I imagine it'd have some similarities to something like Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo or the Puyo Puyo series, with characters having special abilities of some kind that aids them in-game. For instance - someone like Welltaro could have a beam-like attack that eliminates all tiles on a vertical line, whilst alternately I can imagine something like a SuperHot character having the ability to only make time tick down whilst tiles are moving. Not sure whatsoever how balancing this would work - but it feels like it could be a lot of fun!

So was nobody ever going to tell me that there was a Street Fighter game released on PC which was controlled only by a mouse and actually only featured like 5 Street Fighter characters, 2 Rival Schools characters and an original pick, as well as several characters from novels written by Chinese wuxia novelist Jin Yong in like the 50s as well as like four characters from Cyborg 009 and then ****ing Barack Obama as a Valentine's Day DLC addition



This reads like a ****post but I'm dead ****ing serious

imagine pitching chess today

"yeah so you have 16 pieces each with unique functions"
"okay so presumably you have to unlock a piece through lootcrates"
"no you just get them at the start of the game"
"oh through like a shop system with microtransactions?"
"no you just have them all like there"
"not interested, next pitch please"

imagine being in the netherlands and its like 1772 and you're the very first person in history to buy into tinned food and then realising you'd have to wait for like nearly 100 years for the tin opener to be invented

Come to think of it, given Warner Bros. hired Ronald Reagan back in the late 30s and he'd act in a number of B-movies around that time period, plus the fact that they own the rights to MAD Magazine, it's not unreasonable to suggest a parodical interpretation of Ronald Reagan (likely with a deliberately caricatured design based on the magazine itself) could hypothetically be a character in MultiVersus. I imagine his moveset would mostly centre around him being a nuclear-powered madman with particularly powerful attacks, most prominently one in which he utterly wrecks the economy around him and results in the opponent falling into deep poverty.

Unrelated but my sleep schedule is wack lmao

Is it just me that finds the existence of the WikiReader so annoying because of how much missed potential lies right there?

For context, the WikiReader is a device released in 2009 that's basically an offline Wikipedia machine - which allows you to update it yearly and was released for around $100. It runs on AA batteries and lasts for around 90 hours, has the option to load other Wikimedia stuff, eBooks and custom articles, and is small enough to fit into a pocket - all whilst containing the sum total of mankind's knowledge in your pocket.

Why the hell was this released exclusively as a consumer device?

Consider for a moment the other options we could consider here:

- Shipping them out to still-developing countries to utilise as a part of schools with next to no money behind them would be essentially a world-changing use of the device, and considering how small and relatively cheap it is for an "online device", it'd be a perfect pocket way to bring technology to people without having to create complex internet systems for more than one central computer (for updates to the Wikipedia database and the like.)

- Using them in schools and the like would alleviate concerns surrounding the classic "WE CAN'T USE MOBILE PHONES BECAUSE YOU WILL BE DISTRACTED" argument (which I think needs rethinking anyways but ech) and would act as a valuable educational tool - note also that there's plenty of parental controls on the device such as password protection for certain articles and the like too, and that the relatively low consumer price point is actually a quite enticing offer for schools even now, let alone the potential lowering of prices due to buying in bulk

- Use in things like hiking or exploration groups as a valuable resource when used out and about! Albeit, it'd be ideal if it were a little sturdier, but still!

Releasing it as a consumer-only device feels like a huge missed opportunity because it would work so, so much better otherwise, and it's kind of funny because its legacy - rather than being recognised for putting the sum of all human knowledge into more hands than ever before - is one of being utterly forgotten or simply laughed at 10 years later. It's a shame, and yeah. It's huge missed potential.

Hear me out here: I think it'd be cool to see someone eventually release a modern take on a cassette player. I'm not talking just "Walkman but again", I'm thinking like a solid number of additions that still keep the classic vibe - add things like a rechargable battery and Bluetooth support and the like, but then also keep basic cassette features like an autostop and stuff. I think it'd be really cool (even though it probably already exists and utterly flopped.)

Come to think of it, there's probably a reasonable argument that physical music releases are technically now considered a form of merchandise. I mean, whilst I suppose you could argue something like a CD still has a "practical use" as a form of media storage, I feel that releases on things like cassettes or maybe even vinyl are by nature less intended to be "a method of listening to it" and more "a collectable item" in a sense.

Aside from that, I love that the concept of "new thing on old format" still exists, whether it be in the form of music or other things like modern physical releases on older consoles. It's awesome!

Not gonna lie, 90s-era Sony are so interesting to properly delve into - because for every "design for design's sake" product they have that has absolutely no target audience and would never sell, there's an oddly forward-thinking and really interesting concept to match it.



Pictured are Sony's "Digital Block" concepts, which is basically a modular "gadget" with a number of different things you can freely add to it. I find this particularly interesting because the idea of a modular mobile phone is something that's still kinda being kicked around even today, whilst this specifically has been at least conceptualised since the mid-90s! Sony's design documents suggest that, amongst other things, their central concepts were:

• A "Battery" module, which would exist on everything and would act as the central source of power
• A "Radio" module, which allows you to access FM/AM band radio
• Something referred to as an "MD Recorder" (probably Minidisc?), which apparently basically turns your device into a Walkman
• A "Speaker" module, which allows you to use an actual built-in speaker as opposed to headphones
• A combined "CCD & CCU" module, which is basically a digital camera of sorts (that would apparently use the MD Recorder's screen as a display?)
• A "CD Player" module, albeit one of those really dangerous-looking open-faced CD players

I feel like something like this, even now, could have a lot of potential. From what I can tell, it seems like this never actually released - which is kind of a shame if I'm honest, it'd be really cool to get a hold of it. I'd love to imagine people even now homebrewing some interesting module concepts such as a microphone/dictaphone, some kind of touchscreen integration, a "storage" module for SD cards and so forth - though, I imagine this would never really have caught on due to how weird it is (especially with how long a single unit can become if you stack together a number of devices for the sake of getting as much use as possible, very "Tower of Powery".) This lowkey seems like it'd be so much fun to just screw around with, and I think it'd have been awesome to look at had it ever come to market.

Not really sure why I've latched onto this so much

I had this bizarre dream last night that Smash 6 was announced (with "Smash 6" as it's working title) but it was like, weirdly realistic, and I literally woke up this morning like "yo is SmashBoards gonna have an article on this??" because it was so bizarrely real somehow

It was like a really early build and the first five characters were Mario, "Beast Ganon", some weird knight who looked a little like Black Knight but wore red, fleshy armour (I guess they looked a bit like Nightmare from SoulCalibur or maybe someone from Monster Hunter in the Rathalos Armour?), Pyra but on her own for some reason, and "Stalfos, returning from Melee" because for some bizarre reason like apparently Stalfos was a clone of Link in Melee or something (specifically in the OoT design), and then some 5th character who I unfortunately forgot (but they did show an image of Mega Man and Bayonetta for some reason) and it was really weird because the character select screen had like Mario on one side, Beast Ganon as the biggest icon in the centre, then "Red Knight" in the top corner and Pyra below them

Then like they revealed three stages (but there were actually 6 in total) and like one of them was this big field that looked a bit like Rathalos's boss arena and they showed gameplay of Beast Ganon against Mario, before revealing that they would release music tracks through SoundCloud of all things and saying that "this is a really early beta" and then I woke up and it was so weird

I really don't know what to make of this because I've not had such a "realistic" dream in ages and it genuinely felt really weird waking up and realising it wasn't real

I feel like Tony Hawk is in this bizarrely unique situation where he's one of the most well-known people in a number of spaces for different reasons and has continued to be relevant for like, 30ish years, and yet barely anyone knows what he looks like

So, like, something that just occurred to me this morning whilst I was in the limbo state between dreaming and awake (the greatest high, as DIO would call it) was this:

If every single human were to shrink to half their original size with no other effects, positive or negative, would house prices remain the same due to their actual quality, location and size not changing, would they increase due to a relative "increase in floor-space", or would they decrease due to a general lack of accessibility and difficulty in interacting with things like light switches?

Random concept I just had: it'd be so cool if there were some kind of emulator for VR, but like, you know how the Genesis Collection had that thing where there was the 3D-modelled room and the like? So like, you're in VR, and you can interact with the room or the world or whatever (and maybe make a custom room!) as well as having 3D models of the console, television, games and so forth, and then being able to emulate games through the TV in the game world.

That probably already exists, but screw it, I can dream

Random thought I just had: I think butterflies would be an awesome addition to Minecraft one day! But, well, why? We already have bees, right? Well...

Butterflies would also come with caterpillars and cocoons, which would allow for a unique mob that - unlike any other - can take on multiple unique forms (that aren't just growing up!) They'd also be able to interact with flowers, but would primarily be focused on providing ambience to biomes such as forests, plains, and so forth. Not only this, but butterflies would provide a valuable educational tool for younger kids, specifically in relation to the unique life cycles of animals! They don't break the rule about real-world hostile mobs, and I can even imagine cocoons having some use as a decorative block in some cases. Plus - it'd be really cool to have a wide variety of different colours (or even designs!) to really bring a splash of colour to the world!

I had this bizarre dream last night where I was involved in a massive argument as to whether Estonia was better than Norway, and then I was pushed over and woke up in Oslo, and I knew it was Oslo somehow but I was actually just in a massive field filled with trampolines built into the ground and with a giant transmission tower in the distance but the argument kept on going so we ended up going to an Italian resteraunt and they checked if we were drunk the moment we walked in but like, the resteraunt was incredibly narrow and long I'm talking like corridor length and they had us all do this weird memory puzzle in a 4x4 grid and because "Malcolm" got it wrong we got kicked out but then they gave us a lifetime supply of ravioli but it had tons of pigeon feathers in it because all of the birds from Oslo were trying to eat it before we did so we had to run away from all the birds and then we tripped and fell into this massive cavernous chamber and it was actually a Minecraft redstone machine but we couldn't figure out what it did because when we pressed the button it didn't do anything and then the birds broke in and ate all of my fingers, of which I distinctly remember having at least 20

I have never been to Estonia or Norway, know nobody named Malcolm, have not eaten ravioli in too long, and only have 10 fingers.

Help.

"oH yOu CaN't SeE aN aToM wItH tHe NaKeD eYe" my brother in christ I can see billions of them at once, get on my level

This video, and this entire concept, really intrigues me. However, it's not just because of the effect at play. See, I want to suggest something potentially very interesting that has a high likelihood of developing down the line.

Picture, for a moment. Say, a 90 or so minute film is painstakingly replicated with millions of maps, frame by frame. Note blocks are used to replicate music and sound effects, and you could potentially have a minecart rig to allow the player to move along slowly enough for it all to work. For argument's sake, let's say Bee Movie were replicated in Minecraft. And, for context - this isn't even an impossible thing, it'd just take ages. (And, realistically, Shrek is more likely anyway. Sorry.)

What the hell would the legal response to that be? Like, unlike something along the lines of the Library of Truth (which was made illegal only because of the external documents held within it), or traditional Minecraft computers which have never really gotten much further than playing something like Snake or calculating the age of a black hole, this would be essentially an entire piece of media that's technically being pirated utilising Minecraft as a software with which to do so. Would Mojang be held responsible for providing a form of software that can be used to commit piracy? Would they be forced to somehow fundamentally alter how maps work to prevent effects like this from happening, purely so that companies like Disney don't bring out the Mouse's Guillotine upon them? How would Microsoft respond?

Whilst, logically, it's unlikely anything might happen - I think it's interesting because it might bring about genuinely really important questions about sandboxes and creative tools. If Minecraft is able to be used as a platform on which "pirated" content can be "broadcasted" (using the terms very loosely here because it is literally just a tech demo), even if it's against Mojang's TOS to sell content from within the game (which presumably would include film tickets), the idea of a potential lawsuit over sandbox games being required to prevent copyrighted content from being replicated in such a way feels like it'd be a massive blow - and potentially one of the single largest things to happen in gaming in the decade. It'd literally result in creation tools in games being forced to either vanish, or come under massive scrutiny - and that's not even getting started on how it would affect mods and the like. Obviously, this is like, a worst-case scenario... but it's still really interesting to think about.

“The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So, wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes.”

one thing i feel like doesn't get talked about enough is the really weird and specific minor changes between an american "thing" and how it exists in other countries, and then how the rise of youtube (a us-centric platform) gives this bizarre sensation of not-quite-deja-vu mixed with sprinklings of mandela effect type stuff because it's being described as this universally nostalgic experience when it somehow feels just a little bit wrong

good examples of this to me are things like claire's, weird experiences with teachers, arcades, malls/shopping centres, the sega "genesis", terrible school lunches, flash games, fast food places and supermarkets that don't exist outside the us, and comics as a whole. like you never see anyone talk about like, plug from the bash street kids, but EVERYONE knows the big wheel, right? idk its weird is there like a name for it? please don't just say "being british" i'll cry

if you water water, it grows

Okay, I'm not a CEO or a web developer or some kind of sociologist, but here's my three takes in regards to YouTube that need to be considered at some point by them.

1. Videos being retroactively affected due to policy changes is fundamentally ridiculous. Having half your catalogue of videos being demonetized, or god forbid outright removed, because it's not acceptable by the modern playbook, is farcical unless it's a situation where that genuinely makes sense. Sure, if it's stuff like people being racist or whatever - I totally get why it's getting demonetised in that case! - but if you've, like, got footage of Call of Duty in the background and you say "crap" exactly once in a 20 second video nearly a decade old and get your channel nuked for "violent footage" and "excessive profanity", it's utterly ridiculous.

2. Some form of more consistent and accessible communication from YouTube, both in regards to its communication within its own company and with its communication to the public, is absolutely necessary. It's ridiculous that we're less than 24 hours away from 2023 and the best possible way to work out if there's a policy change is to dig up a Twitter page that would just respond with a bot message instructing you to purchase YouTube Premium. It's ridiculous that said policy changes are seemingly unknown even by YouTube. And honestly, I think this comes down to the fact that YouTube these days is a skeleton crew of humans running an array of bots, but what that means, is that nobody is ever in the loop.

3. YouTube Kids exists for a reason. Please, for the love of god, put it to ****ing use.

I'm by no means an expert. But these feel like simple, fundamental flaws. And you know what? I think I know exactly why this is. Monopolisation. YouTube is literally fundamentally unrivalled in the online video space. You think you're going to get an audience on Vimeo? DailyMotion? I mean sure, you could trundle off to somewhere like Twitter or Instagram, but the former's going down in flames and the latter's barely any more open about what the hell it's doing. I don't know what the ideal solution to this is, given how expensive it is to run a video site like this (and given YouTube's running at a loss), but the fact that there isn't - and will never be - a solid enough alternative to YouTube as a platform, means they can do whatever the hell they want and the service they provide is... I'd go as far as to say below subpar.

So, what do I suggest you do? Well, what can I suggest? I'm not a CEO or a web developer or some kind of sociologist.

Giving it some thought, though this is something I'd probably never actually bite the bullet and do, it'd be incredibly interesting to see how a roster for purely British comics looked. I originally thought it up when I briefly imagined a Beano vs. Dandy game of sorts, but the roster for a British comic game could be so utterly bat**** but interesting - picture, for a moment, people like Dennis the Menace (UK), Dan Dare, Judge Dredd, a Manga Shakespeare rep (preferably Macbeth but that's pure personal bias), Desperate Dan, Sonic but specifically from Sonic the Comic as a guest of some kind, and so many others? Seems like it'd be really fun to me.

Also the entire Manga Shakespeare series is amazing you should totally check it out

I'm just going to say it right now and I don't care what kind of a negative response I get for it.

Mobile phones could have been one of the single best platforms for video gaming as a whole, and the mobile game market is a perfect example of massive, scarcely comprehensible missed opportunity. The fact that it's become an utter cesspool of the same crap being forcefed to you over and over again, with the same putrid, algorithmically curated artstyle and the same constant forced sexual tension and gameplay that keeps stealing from games that were released on god damn Nokias, and that there's no such thing as a "curated mobile app store" that could push high-quality, interesting games because Google and Apple make too much money from the Google Play store and the App Store respectively, has resulted in stagnation so great that it genuinely infuriates me.

The very concept of not just the "mobile game" but the "mobile phone" could have been fundamentally shifted to be a universally better experience, but all we get is torrid rehashes of concepts introduced in the 2000s with a ****ing Squid Game coat of paint because god forbid it stops printing money, and god forbid publishers don't just steal rights and take over 50% profits for pushing a game because of marketing budgets larger than the GDP of some countries. I have to genuinely ask how the hell mobile games have gotten to the point they have, to the point where advertising is a fundamental gameplay mechanic, and how governing bodies are more concerned with the nearly 40-year-old, long since disproven argument of games supposedly causing kids to commit homicide as opposed to genuinely predatory tactics that are tearing an entire industry apart.

It's utterly infuriating on a fundamental level, because we had that - back in around the early 2000s, before smartphones took off, and games had to be high-quality and interesting in order to succeed. Hell, even the early smartphone market was at least reasonable. (For a time.) It's genuinely deeply saddening.

"In the future, all stores will just have screens in place of shelves. You'll order using your online accounts, and can leave without paying!"

Me waiting for 20 minutes for the ****ing adverts on the store shelves to end so I can have a chance at buying the milk (sacrifices must be made to fulfil the dream of a capitalist utopia. is it worth it? nobody knows. i can feel my life passing me by with every single second i see the face of that corporate mascot. even whilst i'm buying, i'm being sold to. i feel lost, alone, crushed by the everpresent force of money, that beast which controls my every move. and yet, i am powerless to leave this system, for this system has defined me.)

I wonder how SmashBoards would handle a deeply political & philosophical experiment

Hey gamers! If you're listening to Slide from Super Mario 64 for the millionth time, I sure do hope you're doing so correctly - that is, by utilising either the soundtrack feature in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or Super Mario 3D All-Stars on your physical, genuine, unmodified Nintendo Switch hardware as opposed to committing terrible crimes such as listening to unauthorised rips of the soundtrack on YouTube! If you are, we'll be sending someone to check on you, so just rectify that for us. Remember, it's your duty to report all unauthorised rips! It might just take a few months off your prison sentence.