Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

Regardless, it's still better than Threads. 😂

And then it's not like that brand isn't trademarked by a million other companies already. X is Def original. Gonna give it to ya. Marks the spot.
This is all just another "Elonism"; hes doing dumb crap for attention because everyone worships him for failing upwards. He Needs the media attention or he'll starve.

@Cordyceps I read that he tried to rename Paypal to 'X' years ago but the board or shareholders or whoever stopped him. Unsure if that's factual or not but it's a shame that's not the case here though. 😅

He tried to change PayPal to X back in the late 90s and it was hated so much that he was ousted. The man’s a genuine, bona-fide idiot. All it shows is that if you have enough money inherited from your apartheid emerald mine then you can buy up companies that you had no hand in creating while fooling people into thinking you have a creative bone in your body.

@Kidfried thank you for checking in with me! I erm, don't know to be honest!

Specifically with regards to the game club, i've done it for a few years and I've really enjoyed it and I'm extremely proud of it but I have come to think of it more as an unpaid job now rather than a fun hobby, particularly since it's been promoted in articles on the main website.

I know that's probably quite a lame thing to think because a lot of us do fun stuff for the community without even a thought for that kind of thing but for some reason, maybe because I don't have much else going on in my life and because I've been doing it for so long, I've just come to think about it that way and I guess the power balance has just made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

I am also just having a bit of a hard time balancing what I get out of the internet as a whole and I was seriously considering disabling the browser on my phone so I can just get away from some of the more insidious advertising and deliberately polarising news articles that are so common these days. I guess I just feel particularly vulnerable at the moment. I'd still use certain online connected apps like eBay and LinkedIn, I just wanted to get away from social media and I guess just like news websites that I have a morbid curiosity in scrolling through.

I think that built up to the point where I was considering deleting my Hookshot account as well. But I don't feel like I can because it would nuke the game club thread. @RogerRoger actually calmed me down a bit and convinced me to take a less scorched earth approach to my online presence so I just decided to step away from the bulk of the admin of the Game Club thread and see how I get on with it. I might still go off grid in a couple of months if I feel it all building up again or I can't get a grip.

That said, I am actually really sad about relinquishing control of the Game Club. It does kind of feel like the only good thing I do with my life these days so I feel a bit stupid for giving it up but maybe I just need to step back for an indefinite period and see how I feel down the line.

I'd also be really sad if I decided to leave Hookshot entirely because the community is so bloody brilliant, on both Push Square and Pure Xbox. To think about cutting out such a positive influence and source of support, just to get away from the rest of the internet, it just seems barmy and is making me well up just thinking about it. I suppose the fact I even considered it and perhaps am even still considering it, probably goes to show where I'm at in my own head currently though.

This isn't amazingly relevant but I suppose it has contributed to my disillusionment. I am a bit miffed by the NL side of Hookshot too. Both PS and PX are really good with not putting spoilers in the headlines and NL used to be too so you can normally just scroll past articles about games that you want to go in blind for. But on release of TotK, NL just kept posting headlines that detailed all the nice little details of the game that you'd want to discover for yourself, especially when that was the best aspect of BotW to me, the sense of discovery. They did the same for the Mario movie too which thankfully I saw on opening night. I know this is my fault in many respects but I let that ruin the game for me. I don't get that excited for new games normally but TotK was the rare one that I was excited for. When I did play it, I just couldn't shake this overwhelming sense of sadness I had throughout its entire run time and i just let it ruin it for me and I couldn't enjoy it. I just became too cynical. I know that's my problem and I should just be a bit less sensitive but unfortunately I guess that's just where i've been at this year. Playing TotK should have been a positive experience for me, I definitely needed it but I didn't get it and I will never get another chance to have it.

So yeah in general, I suppose I'm just too invested here and I care too much and things are bothering me that probably shouldn't bother me. Maybe a step back from some things will give me some space to get some clarity of mind.

Sorry for the long reply! How are you doing at the moment?

@ralphdibny I get exactly what you mean with regards to Game Club, it does get to a point where you’re essentially doing work and it’s not entirely sure that you’ll have the engagement from the community on a given month. It’s more work than other users probably realise! If you want to feel any better then I was supposed to have a job interview at 12 today and was in an absolute panic that the phone call never arrived and it turned out that my email confirming the interview never actually sent. I’m sure you have more to be proud of on a day to day basis than I do with organisational skills like that 😅

@Kidfried yeah it's a bit of a weird one re: the spoilers. I pretty much logged off of NL as soon as they started appearing and deleted it from my quick links on chrome so I wouldn't be tempted but unfortunately, the damage was already done. I did ask Ant about the possibility of some sort of game filter option so we can choose what we see on the front page but it doesn't sound easy to implement.

That's not at all condescending, I think I'm quite aware of it. It just makes it difficult to know what battles are worth fighting. Because if you are aware your vulnerable and being oversensitive you could say that's the case for everything even though some gripes are legitimate. Obviously the other end of the spectrum is if you lack self awareness, you will fight every battle and make yourself very unpopular in the mean time lol.

Didn't know you were a lurker! Honestly makes me really happy when people from here admit to lurking in the PX game club. Even Kyle popped up for some chit chat at one point 😅. There's polarity and binary thinking in most aspects of life these days anyway but I suppose with games, the fostered "console wars" is where it rears its ugly head so it's always good to hear people cross the line to read discussion about the actual thing we have in common - the love of games themselves.

Youre probably right. Now's as good as time as any to step back. I think the fear of not being allowed back in to run it again has made me put it off for a while too but overall the pressure is outweighing the love so. I wish Balta the best with running it and obviously I will still be doing the thread title changes for the time being. I think if I just enjoy it as a fan for a while and maybe get something else going on in my life in the mean time, then I may see it differently and want to come back to it. Of course, it could go the other way but I'll never know if I don't try.

That's not a bad idea actually re: the password change. I'll see how I feel when it comes to it. I think the temptation could be too great but I'm not at that point of account deletion yet anyway. Well I was, but Rog talked me out of it like a champ lol. I might try and get a few more people from here and PX on PSN/Xbox at some point so I can infrequently keep in touch even if I do drop out of the forums.

Do you reckon you will move back to your home city? Either try and work remotely from there or get a new job? I see your comparing city to city rather than city to town but I guess the only thing I have to relate to is that I used to work in London and I hated it. Even just spending the 8 hours a day there. It just never gelled with me. If I ever have to show a visiting family member around as a tourist, it's so groan inducing it's untrue. I'd rather show them around the suburban parks I used to hang around as a teenager because it has more relevance to me than some tourist trap in the city itself.

Do you go back home a lot? I find it helps in staying grounded. My partner is from way out in the sticks though and struggles a lot more because of the time/distance to see her parents and friends. We do do a lot of activity together, either by ourselves or with friends or family but I do think the feeling of being alien does get to her a bit. I mean it gets to me too and my most of my friends only live an hour away 😅. I actually left my whatsapp group with my oldest friends a week ago for various reasons. I think mainly it was just making me feel sad that I didn't feel like I could say anything in the group. But yeah, sorry I'm rambling on lol

Hope you stay well enough and don't hesitate to get in touch, I very much appreciate the ask and I'm also just a tag away if you need to unload about anything ✌️

@nessisonett haha, I'll never feel better about myself because of your misfortune 😂. Have you managed to reschedule your interview then? Thanks for the reply and the sentiment. It's very true!

there anything good on Hulu like horror movies?

@ralphdibny Rescheduled for tomorrow but man, I must not have made a good impression at all 😂

@ralphdibny where you living these days, London somewhere isn’t it?

So, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about the correct way to eat a KitKat and, to my horror, he has told me that he eats a KitKat without splitting it in half first and eating one KitKat finger at a time? Please tell me I'm not in the minority here?

I'm also really tempted to get some more KitKats imported from Japan. Some of the flavours they have over there are majestic.

@KAIRU I always eat a kit kat bar the normal way that everyone else does when eating a candy bar

only morons break it in half if they think the commercials make it look cool or whatever

@ralphdibny Sorry to hear you're having a tough time of things at the moment. One thing I did years ago that really helped at the time was to delete the Facebook app off my phone. I almost never use it now but found at that point that I was opening and scrolling through for ages out of habit with nothing productive coming from it. Yeah, I could have gone in through my phone's browser but the effortless of just opening the app made it too easy.

Perhaps bookmarking the forums for this place would be useful as well, rather than coming through the home page? My bookmark for this place is still on the main site but the vast majority of the time I just open up the forum first anyway.

@nessisonett good stuff! Well ya never know tbh, hold your head high, have some good natured humorous remorse and hope they see the funny side of it! Best of luck with it today!

@kyleforrester87 Surrey at the mo, been here about 18 months. I did used to be in SE. The commute into town is a real pain in the neck from either location though.

@KAIRU if I ever do a KitKat I'll do it in various ways. Chunkys pretty much always get the chocolate bit off first. Same with the fingers I suppose but sometimes they'll get munched in one or two mouthfuls. If I am ever in possession of a four finger bar, I like to take a careful bite out of the whole thing, trying to not break any fingers off. I like to look at the chomp mark across all 4 fingers.

@Thrillho thanks mate. I'm Gona do a thorough clean up of my FB in the near future. I've downloaded all my data from it and I'm going to start deleting all the photos and comments. I have to manually back up any pics people have uploaded of me though and I think I have to manually delete individual messages in messenger or they'll stay there, tied to my name.

It'll be both sad and liberating I think. Sad because most of it is really good natured stuff, lots of good times, conversations and relationships between friends. Liberating because the odd off colour joke I may have made as a teenager will have less chance of coming back to bite me in the ass now. Also liberating to be out of the constant doomscroll cycle that I found myself in.

But yeah I'm exactly the same, open app, scroll, watch vids, read strangers/bots comments (which actually make me feel awful quite regularly for some reason). Overall a waste of time that I would say makes me feel worse than better. I want to do a thorough scrub before I delete/deactivate/leave a skeleton profile up though. I think it will just niggle in the back of my mind that all this stuff about me is online if I don't erase a lot of it.

I'm not sure what I'll do about these sites yet. Defo Gona stay here for now. I think I've just ended up caring too much about how I appear here and it's bogging me down a bit. With that in mind, I might try posting more but less filtered and see what sort of response I get, if any. What have I got to lose if I'm considering leaving anyway?

Bookmarking the forums is a good idea though. That said, my initial reason for coming to these sites all those years ago was for news. I still want to keep abreast of the latest I suppose, but maybe I don't because it just results in me spending more money 😂😭

That's lunacy! I couldn't ever comprehend doing that! I have to eat them one at a time. I don't know if it's some particular OCD I have but I genuinely couldn't just take a whole big chunk out of it. 😅

@KAIRU 😂 it's probably OCD that allows me to do that. Only a four finger bar would get that treatment and the cross-finger bite mark is so pleasing to the eye. Generally I deconstruct chocolates. Bueno is a particular favourite. Bite the bottom off and well, I won't go on because the innuendo is too great.

But on any bar that has multiple segments or bag of chocolate (like buttons or minstrels) or multipacks. You can fulfil every desired way to eat something, bit by bit, all at once, melt slowly in mouth, slowly remove parts of it. I think my OCD likes it a particular way but that particular way I like it, is every single way imaginable.

How about a Twix @Kairu?

Do you eat the biscuit first and then chew a snakey bit of chocolate caramel at the end?

Or do you bite off the caramel first and clean it out of your teeth with a hard biscuit after?

@ralphdibny I'm usually not a 'deconstructing' kind of person, to be honest. I just eat a Twix one finger at a time. Though, with a Kinder Bueno — which are absolutely elite, by the way — I will eat one square(?) at a time. Same with only eating one triangular piece of a Toblerone at a time.

@KAIRU fair play, my next question would be have you ever been able to separate the white chocolate from the milk chocolate on a kinder egg? I can see that doesn't apply but I will say it takes some nimble nibbling! I'm not entirely sure it's still possible as they've changed the kinder egg a bit in the last few years

@ralphdibny I can't say I've ever even attempted to do that! Sounds like a challenge though! 😂