Month: August 2021

In the year 1993 Midway Games released an arcade machine by the name of “Mortal Kombat,” which sparked a public outcry against video game violence in American culture. The outrage was so profound that it not only drew the attention of the United States federal government, it also led to the creation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, that would rate video games based on content, similar to how MPAA would rate films in the US. This controversy would plague the video game industry for decades to come, culminating in a backlash that prevails to this day.

Then in 2005 a pair of teenagers opened a YouTube account and proceeded to make light of the games controversy by lip synching to the lyrics of the theme song to the game, (“Techno Syndrome”, by the Immortals) while acting in idiotic and outrageous fashions. This video, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMf40daefsI Smosh, Mortal Kombat Theme Youtube) would not only launch the internet sensation, Smosh, it would spawn imitators such as the infamous “Numa Numa” video.

Internet memes are a fairly recent phenomenon and are at their core difficult to explain. On the surface they appear to be nothing more than fads that have shorter lifespans. However there are some differences between a fad and a meme. The most obvious is their lifespans, fads tend to spike after a few years and fade away, while memes can be popular for a few weeks and then forgotten as swiftly as they arrived. A second difference between a fad and meme is the trend of how they get started. Typically a fad is begun when a celebrity does something different to stand out and their fans begin to imitate causing the fad to trickle down to the masses.

On the other hand Memes work in a different manner altogether. They do not necessarily begin with a celebrity and they do not enjoy a top down disbursement. Instead what you see is often someone who is presumably anonymous puts a video, photo, or other type of meme on the net and it sort of spirals outward and then fades back in on itself.

What makes a meme funny is mostly subjective, as with any form of humor. Take the Smosh video as an example. Here you have Mortal Kombat, the central focus of violence in our culture spawning ridiculous accusations and outrageous reactions, and then along comes a video that makes light of the situation using a combination of irony and satire. The presentation is mostly childish, these two teenagers are lip synching to the lyrics of the theme song to one of the most notorious video games in history. They accompany this with crude behavior and funny facial expressions. The irony being that the game is supposed to be inappropriate for children.

It could be argued that these types of internet videos are not memes but merely viral videos. So then what is a viral video? A meme is defined as something that spreads from person to person in a culture. A viral video is something that is shared through non-traditional means of marketing, also called viral marketing. This can cause some confusion as to the very definition of a meme, and the relationship between a meme, viral marketing, and a fad.

There are subtle differences that distinguish a fad from a meme; however the differences that distinguish a meme from viral marketing are even more subtle and difficult to define. Typically the term viral marketing applies to a commercial product that is dispersed through the use of what is called word of mouth.

The way it works is one person becomes aware of said commercial property or product and then tells another and so on and so forth. Memes are also spread by word of mouth. There is somewhat of a contrast, they do not necessarily have to be commercial in origin. This is complicated when a viral video that starts out as a meme, such as the Smosh video, turns into a commercial enterprise. Just as the “Numa-Numa” video began as a meme and turned into a viral marketing tool for a new commercial property. This type of reverse commercialization is not very typical of memes, but something to consider.

Viral videos and word of mouth are valuable tools in which commercial media enterprises rely heavily to get their products to the public. It could then be argued that a meme is nothing more than a fad that doesn’t stick and a viral marketing effort that fails to turn into a viable commercial venture. This definition alters the entire perception of what is a meme. Perhaps then a meme is merely a viral marketing fad that does not catch on but goes against the establishment? At the very basic essence then a successful meme is really just an unsuccessful fad.

Therefore it can be concluded that a meme is only a meme when it fails to turn into a profitable venture, at which point it transforms into either a fad, or a viral marketing campaign.

Before the internet viral marketing was limited to word of mouth. A single member or a small group within a community would hear a story, see a movie, attend a play or some other form of expression and they would pass it along to their peers. With the advent of the World Wide Web it now has become much easier for these ideas to spread from person to person.

Without the internet memes took longer to spread and this could be the cause of their longer lifespans in previous generations. Now they hardly have time to enter our consciousness before they are wiped from our memories. In a way it is almost their lack of longevity that contributes to their humor, it is spontaneous and therefore does not leave time for one to contemplate why they laugh, just that they found it funny and moved on to the next without giving it a second thought.

The only logical conclusion is that memes, fads, and viral marketing are all intertwined into a modern internet culture that is difficult to explain.

*DISCLAIMER: This essay was written for a political science class while I was still in college. It was written by a student with a lot to learn.

When communism was first thought up by Karl Marx, it was a new system supposed to bring about total equality to humanity. The rise of capitalism, due to the industrial revolution, created a large working class of people. These workers were often forced to work for barely livable wages and in dangerous working conditions.

The communists asked Marx to write up a plan that they could implement to bring about changes in policy. The communists were instantly divided into two philosophies, those who wanted to bring about slow changes through laws in the existing system, and those who wanted to bring about radical changes by over throwing the old system and implementing an entirely new order.

When the workers originally sat out to create the communist manifesto, their original intention was to improve working conditions for the laborers. They mostly wanted a world where each person “worked according to his ability and was rewarded according to his need.” The idea was basic needs would be met of all citizens and that everyone would be equal.

In order to make this happen they needed to take control of the production of goods in order to equally distribute those goods. They also needed to take control of the government in order to put their policies in place since most countries had laws protecting land owners. They also felt that they would do away with religion and unite the people together under a secular world view that would make everyone feel connected to one another and further reinforce the idea of total equality.

There were several reasons why the communist model failed to achieve what the visionaries had hoped. First of all people were not exactly ready to just abandon their faith. Another factor that led to challenges was the United States set an example by introducing safe working conditions, a minimum wage, anti-trust legislation, and other measures that were designed to bring about similar results without removing the personal freedoms that their citizens came to expect. This showed the leaders of the world that some reforms could be introduced into a capitalist system without the need of violence and without the need to sacrifice liberty.

Perhaps the most troubling factor that had the biggest impact was the tyranny that communists countries resorted to in order to maintain control of the people. The systems were put in place to make their lives better; instead what they got was a system that threatened their very way of life.

If you consider the model of the United States it becomes apparent that communism was not necessary to create better working conditions. The system that was developed in the early part of the twentieth century created a well off middle class society with enough disposable income to purchase commodities in large quantities. This increase in wages of the middle class created new demand for additional goods and created even more wealth.

The economy of the United States became the model of the western world where capitalism quickly became the dominant economic system. By creating a middle class system where the wealth is spread around naturally through competitive wages and fair taxation policies, the people of the United States were able to enjoy many of the envisioned benefits of the communist model, without having to sacrifice their individual liberties along the way. This provided a model for the rest of the world that would ultimately see the fall of communism for the most part near the end of the century.

The world has changed since the rise of capitalism and the fall of communism. Both systems proved to have their faults. The main fault with the communist system was the inability of the ruling class to take total control of the people. Human nature is to be free, and when a people are subjugated they tend to fight back eventually. The most glaring flaw then with the communist governments was in assuming that people would willingly trade freedom for equality, even perceived equality.

After it was all said and done the communist economies were no better off than they had been prior to implementing the policies.

Because of the long period of time that communism was allowed to reign, it is difficult to predict how much longer it will take to repair the scars left on their people. Only time will tell if the communists countries can ever recover and fully embrace the policies of the free market system, or if they will eventually revert to their previous ways.

*DISCLAINER: This was written for a political science course while I was in college. The assignment had specific parameters. I got a B- on this one so it is cringy but clearly written by someone who is not well informed yet.

Is America really so unique? In the course of nearly two and a half centuries the United States of America has stood as a shining force for Democracy and the world. Having built up an ideology based on a belief of superiority, the United States has attempted to install Democracy in regions that have failed to embrace the principals as tightly as they would hope. Yet this begs the question, how democratic is the USA really? Also to what benefit does installing democracies benefit the United States as a world power?

Before you can look at other democratic regimes propped up by the U.S., you must first look at how Democracy is practiced in the States. When the British colonists first settled the region they encountered indigenous people already settled on the land they had laid claim to. The same British Empire that established colonies in North America, colonies that would later become Canada, and the United States respectively, had also established colonies on the African continent, particularly due to the need to get into the coveted slave trade.

Once the British forces were toppled by the American rebels they quickly turned to tightening their grip elsewhere to hold onto the empire they had built. Seeing the British as a threat to freedom the United States began providing assistance and support to any colony of Great Britain that sought independence. In doing so they set a precedent that would be a beacon of hope for the entire world. Sadly the United States was not entirely equipped to be such an example, for they had a cancer that was eating at their entire soul.

During the colonial period the British settlers actively engaged in the same slave trade with the very African nations they would latter attempt to befriend. Even after abolishing slavery it would be another hundred years before the United States would extend equal rights to their black citizens. There was a culture of suppression and racial inequality as it related to the people of African descent.

After the end of the Second World War, the British Empire began to fall piece by piece. The colonial remnants began breaking apart into their individual states once again and were looking to establish a democratic system that would bring stability and order to the regions.

There can be no mistake that the scars left over from the slave trade, and then colonization of their continent by white settlers, has had an impact on their perspective of democracy. This is further evident by the small minority of Whites in South Africa who were able to establish an Apartheid system that went even further than the unfortunate “Jim Crow” laws of the U.S.

Apartheid allowed a small group of individuals, backed up for a time by the US and British Governments, who strongly enforced policies that would suppress blacks and gave the white elites power to rule unopposed. There is obvious racial motivations for what happened in South Africa, yet this does not explain the situations in other African countries where race is not an issue.

A more likely explanation would be the lack of a central cultural identity. In the countries with the strongest forms of Democracy, their citizens tend to share a strong cultural bond. Even though there are fifty unique states that make up the USA, and citizens come from all over the globe, they share a common history as well as common goals.

The USA has always been famous for their ethnic diversity and open door policies of letting immigrants from all over the world enter their borders. They have had different levels of regulations over the years, but essentially they have always been ethnically diverse yet culturally they tend to share common beliefs such as Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

In addition to their strong cultural bonds, Americans enjoy strong institutions that shape their culture from the National Football League, American Red Cross, to the Boy Scouts, all of these and more tie the Americans from the farthest stretches of their territory, “from sea to shining sea.”

However this is not the case in Africa, where they are still dealing with their colonial past, their tribal people, and different ethnic groups often unwilling to cooperate. There is no central African authority that ties all Africans together and the small scale countries still have to contend with different tribes all having to get along. Africa perhaps is what the United States would look like had not the Europeans intervened? It would take a strong government with the support of the people to establish binding institutions that would unite all Africans under one banner.

How do you know when a joke is funny? The measure we use to gauge if something is humorous is laughter. Laughter is the basis of all humor, without a spontaneous outburst of laughter a person does not know if their humor was appreciated. It is one of the most basic humor emotions and without it humor would be meaningless. If laughter is a spontaneous, emotional response, can human beings be programmed to laugh on cue?

When a person hears a joke they know to wait for the punch line before delivering their laughs.

Humor is a form of commerce and the laughter is the currency. With all commerce there are indicators of success, in the case of humor success is when the mode of humor being delivered invokes an emotional response from the person receiving said humor.

Can a comedian charge for their services by enticing their audience to laugh? Let’s take a look at the practice of canned laughter in the use of TV Sitcoms. Many television programs are filmed before a live studio audience. The audience laughter is presented alongside the performances of the comedians being filmed and the home viewing audience is subjected to both the performance and the pre-recorded laughter. In a way this can be seen as telling the viewer when to laugh as a way to ensure the comedian receives their expected payment, in this case the viewer’s laughs. As long as audiences reward the comedian they will continue to oblige.

Although there may be some monetary exchange in the case of tickets sold to see a standup comedian, it is different with television comedies. The source of income for a television performer is through the sale of advertising space to be aired during the programs run. In the case of sitcoms there is a high cost of production therefore there is a high risk involved. Advertisers expect a return on their investment as such they often employ tactics to increase audience participation, one method of doing so is canned laughter.

Canned laughter is when the production company will add laughter to the recording after the fact. It is different than recording in front of a live studio audience and recording the natural responses, instead pre-selected audience responses can be inserted into the recording at any time. The logic is that if the viewer hears an audience response then they will feel a sense of participation in the program and should be more likely to find the comedy humorous and enjoyable.

Upon further examination additional questions arise which need to be answered. One such question harkens back to laughter as a currency. In order for the comedian to reach their audience, their program has to broadcast. If nobody is watching the show then the comedian fails to reach their audience and their reward is withheld from them.

Generally speaking people tend to be social creatures. As such it is important for individuals to adapt to their surroundings. When a person behaves as expected in a given situation this is considered a social norm. There is a social norm that explains why when one person hears another laughing they will tend to chime in, out of fear of being outside the expected behavior.

Sticking with the analogy of laughter as currency, then humor is the product being exchanged. As a product it is the responsibility of the person delivering the source of the humor to ensure that they do so as intended. This requires getting the punch line just right, pacing the slap in the face for the right moment, or knowing when to hold back a joke to maximize audience participation. As such, using any means to artificially inflate the laughs could be seen as undermining the works for the comedian. This causes the entertainer to have to work harder for their laughs because not only are they vying for the audience responses; they have to reach a level adequate to discourage the insertion of canned laughter.

It’s a part of life. You have people you trust in your world and you have people who trust you. Sometimes that trust is broken. Sometimes you’re the victim. Other times…the monster. 

I have been both victim and perpetrator. I have been sexually assaulted and propositioned in ways I was not comfortable with. Likewise I have skeletons in my closet. I’ve hurt people in ways I deeply regret. Even now I don’t want to open up. I won’t say who did what or to whom, that’s not my place. What I will say is I have people who hurt me. There are people I hurt. 

Why do I bring this up now? What does it profit me to come clean? Clarity? Clear conscious? Attention? No. Simply it reminds me I am human. Human means flawed. Human means imperfect. Human means selfish. We’re all selfish at birth. We have to be trained otherwise. Some of us are slow learners. I talk about how I am trying to be a better person. I talk about how Stephanie doesn’t want to be held accountable for things deadname did. Unlike my sisters with DiD who can claim it wasn’t them, entirely, I can only blame deadname for so much. I’ve been told the past is the past. To let it go. I try not to dwell on the past. Most days I don’t even bring it up let alone think about it. Every once in a while, those ghosts come back to haunt me.

The things I did as a pre-teen or even teenager I feel no guilt or shame. We all do stupid shit when we’re going through the agony of puberty. In some ways it’s a right of passage. You have to discover what boundaries are. You have to learn what mutual consent means. You also have to accept, sometimes we fuck up royally.

I don’t talk about my sex life because my experience is fairly limited. There is another reason. I don’t talk about the things I did, even those I blame on my youth or deadname trying to figure shit out, because I did hurt people. I made mistakes. I don’t mean petting a girl when she wasn’t in the mood or groping a girl during a game of spin the bottle or even grabbing someone’s behind while slow dancing to a sexy R&B song at a school dance. Those things happen. Their not things we brag about and I have atoned for my sins. I confessed to those I hurt. I forgave those who hurt me. I apologized and asked for forgiveness when it bore necessity. I paid my dues to society. I accept the sacrament of reconciliation from the church. So why bring it up now? I didn’t answer that question earlier did I?

I won’t name names. I won’t give details. But I will say this. Someone in my family did something to me they shouldn’t have done. I did something I shouldn’t have done to someone in my family. It is true pain begets pain. Suffering spreads to others. Fear feeds darker emotions. The truth is I wasn’t a good person. When I say I am trying to be better, what I mean is I am trying to atone. I am trying to right the wrongs of my past. I am trying to correct the mistakes I have made. I am trying to forgive those who hurt me. I am trying to forgive myself for those I hurt. It wasn’t deadname, it was me. I was hiding behind his mask. I did things using his face, his hands, his body, to make sense of the world. To bury who I was. To forget what I was becoming. 

I hurt people. I lashed out because I was afraid to cope with my reality. Another person did something to me again without asking my permission. I wasn’t sure how to respond so I let it go. I tried to steer into it. But I ended making things worse. 

I will say this. I often feel like I deserve the suffering that invades my life. I often feel like I have failed to earn the right to feel joy, love, happiness because of the pain I have caused others. Sometimes the guilt eats at me. Other times I push it down and shove it out of my brain. Then there are times I look it square in the face and we have a stand off. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose. Sometimes we draw. Tonight I realized I haven’t forgiven myself for the things I did because at least one person has failed to forgive me. I also failed to forgive one person in particular because I refused to accept what happened was wrong. I felt shame, guilt and of course too embarrassed to talk about it. Therefore I never coped. I buried it. I ignored it.

I was a very bad person. I just hope someday the universe will forgive me and let me seek my own peace. Until then I will leave you with this. Nobody is fucking perfect, least of all me.

Just go for it. That’s literally my motto. I am the type of person that once I set my mind on something it’s damn near impossible to change it. I am flexible and susceptible to suggestion during the decision process, but concrete once my mind is made up. This has helped me achieve so much in my life despite so many failures. Even the failures I view as tools that taught me how to move forward.

Today I want to focus on the things I have accomplished. It’s not about bragging look at me see what I did. It’s about finding your own strength. My goal is to encourage you to say hey maybe I can do something too.

The first time I wanted to get something my parents told me no was when I begged my mom for to buy me a G2 Optimus Prime. It was pretty expensive for a toy and it wasn’t Christmas. I was not an outdoor person. I spent all my time in my bedroom avoiding the outdoors. She wanted me to go outside more. I made her a deal if I spent time at the pool learning how to dive off the diving board you have to buy me the toy. She agreed. Three months later, I had my Optimus Prime. I was 11 years old. I learned if you want to get something in life you have to say fuck the rules what else can I do.

I applied this at age 12 when  wanted to buy a game for my Sega Genesis again funds said not till Christmas. I pulled weeds in neighbor gardens, mowed the grass, shoveled show, raked the leaves and sold Kool Aid to construction workers. I got the game I wanted.

Two years later I wanted to start a band, I told my dad to buy me a drum set, he said nope too expensive. I sold my band new N64 I just picked up launch day. Took it back to the store, got my refund, went to the pawn shop and took home a drum set. I started my band with my sisters and two friends. It was short lived but I wanted it, I found a way to do it, I did it.

This became a pattern for my life. In high school I figured out how to graduate without taking the nasty ass math classes or stinking ass P.E. classes they were trying to force me into. I took all the classes I wanted, took 1 SAT prep course and used what I learned in that class to pass my GED and finished high school ahead of my loser friends who played by the rules.

I went dumpster diving to get the equipment I needed to start my DJ service. I sold or traded toys, comics, favors, work, anything to get the things I needed to put it together. When I went into the radio station with my demo and they laughed me out of there I went back home, cobbled together a recording studio, mixed a track with a girl singer in the area who had a great voice, go it played in the local club, sold in the local record store and low and behold the radio station played my song. There were behind the scenes things I can’t talk about here that led to the downfall of my record company. But during that brief period of time,  9 months or thereabouts to be real, I released FIVE underground albums. Two techno, and three hip hop. I had other artists I was working with. I won’t, I can’t go into what happened but needless to say I ended up not going to jail, others not so lucky.

When I left the newspaper in 2018 to head west and try to start my transition I found myself out of work. I applied for a newspaper that said nope. I got on freelance with another one and then started my own. I went around town sold enough adds and created enough content to get one issue out. I even started a Facebook page and a website for the community. That became a bullet point on my resume when applying for jobs.

I’ve told the story how I got my exclusive interview with Congressman Beto O’Rourke. I set my sights on a goal, made a plan and achieved that goal. When my sister and I failed to secure the funding to open my comic book shop from the SBA I made it into a website and sold things out of my car, through Craigslist, on ebay. I did 6,000 worth of sales that first year. I kinda suck at mat so money got tight but also that was around the time right after Carmen so I wasn’t in a great mindset.  But I did it.

Whenever I find myself out of work or desperate for cash I find a way. Whenever I get an idea to do something, no matter how big or small, I ask myself what do I need to do and I get started right away. Luck has played a role for sure. I was working at the newspaper when WWE Professional Wrestling Superstar Sam Houston walked into my paper and gave me a pretty good story. He also invited me on a road trip to se the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in Wichita Falls. On that road trip I saw an opportunity to make a deal with him and he hired me on the spot to make a music video for him that he showed to his buddies at Wrestlemania.

Sometimes I get an idea given to me in casual conversation and I run with it. Before YouTube, when Game Trailers was the place to be, my friends casually mentioned someone should make video guides like they do on G4 but not just showing secrets showing how to beat the games. The next day I had already built a website and found us three sponsors. It lasted only about four or five months before money ran out and complications prevented us from going forward but it was a hell of ride in a short time which yes we did utilize the brand new YouTube as part of our plan. Hell we even formed a content partnership with two other websites, and the aforementioned G4 network. We got too aggressive in our expansion for our other partners who walked away, and then of course G4 went extinct so that deal ended. But I did it. I reached out to their corporate licensing office explained my plan, they agreed and gave me a license. It was pretty cool.

When I was forced to finish school early I failed to complete my cinematography course. So I had nothing to show prospective employers. I decided to take my camera, shoot some scenes, do my special effects and made a movie I showed the person who gave me my first job in the business.

I have had failures but stop and take in all the things I had to do to get to those failures. I never talked to bankers or tellers, I went straight to the president of the branch. I never talked to the radio DJ, I demanded to speak to the program manager. I never settled for customer service, I reached out directly to corporate. To this day I don’t beg for a job. I let my work speak for itself. Yeah I have had to take some temporary and seasonal jobs along the way to pay bills but I always find a way to do what I set out to do. You can to. Transposed was one example. Robin just casually told me one day a friend of hers suggested she do a podcast. She was hesitant. I pushed her into it and now look at it, she’s doing great things with it and all without my help. In that case I saw the strength in her and said hey if you wanna do it just do it don’t make excuses for every excuse there’s an opportunity. The ONLY thing holding you back is you. For fucks sake that’s the legit truth. If you need help, ask for help. Do your research. It wasn’t easy going into the SBA asking for a loan, getting rejected and then starting it myself with nothing. I just did it.

These are the stories I talk about. Believe me, I leave plenty out. I never talk about Bim Dizzle, my comic book I tried to publish, my incomplete books, the video games I started developing, the photography business I did for two years. Hell I didn’t take a class on computers I got a book from Hastings, learned to program, got a CD called Anime Studio, learned to animate, got another program to make 3D models, and then I gave up once I realized I couldn’t do it all. But I started. I tried. I got off my ass and said what does it take to make a video game, I did the parts I could then I recognized I needed more people failed to secure those people and shelved that project. But I did make one game using BASIC as a test.

Here’s one for you. In 2009 I drove my car to Nebraska to live with my baby sister for a summer. As I was rolling into town my car broke down. I had no way to find a job, no way to get to work what did I do? I took the broken limbs from her trees, took some tools out of her shed and started building clocks I could sell at the flea market. My uncle taught me how to do wood working. Oh, I left out the summer I made planter boxes and sold them at the flea market with my uncle. Yeah that’s my point, I have done more shit in my life than most people can find the time to day dream about. I have forgotten more things I have done than most people will ever try to do. Here is my advice. If you want do something, just do it. Don’t make excuses, don’t worry if you fail. If you fail, you learn and try something else. If you succeed congrats. I’ve had failures, I have success. I have had in betweens and I have had projects fail to get off the ground. You know what I don’t have. Regrets. I don’t regret the things I didn’t do, I did them. I left out the part where to test the market before going to SBA for my comic book shop I talked the local video store owner into letting me sell comics in his shop on consignment. I also did the same thing with a local used video game store selling my action figures. It didn’t work the SBA was impressed but wanted sales projections again without knowing real math I wasn’t able to give those accurately. But fuck if I didn’t try. Get off your ass and follow your dreams. If you need help, advice, encouragement talk to me. If you’re gonna make excuses don’t bother I don’t hear excuses.

I have a confession. I never learned how to do math in school. On the surface this sounds like a similar claim most Americans might make. We all hate math. But I didn’t even do take the class. I was moved into special-ed for math in the 3^rd grade. I hated being isolated from my peers and treated differently. Obviously, they picked up on it and used this as fuel for further bullying.

It didn’t take long before I discovered a flaw in our education system. While in grade school, and this includes junior high, you can fail three subjects before they hold you back. I did fine in history/social studies, I had fun in art and excelled in band/music class. I even succeeded fairly well in science class and of course back then I got straight A’s in English.

I discovered if I could fail to classes and still move head I just gave up on Math and resisted in PE so there I was, my two F’s on my report card year after year. This sorta worked all through elementary school but of course it became more difficult once I made it to high school. Naturally going into 9^th grade having skipped getting a proper education in math leading up to that put me in a bind. Since I had literally given up I did the bare minimum, often guessing answers and not even doing the homework most of the time. I was decent enough at recognizing patterns I could trick the standardized tests into scoring me high enough to pass but this was before those metrics were required for advancing.

Once I was in 9^th grade I took a course called general math. I struggled. Ended the first semester with a D-, and I killed myself to get that. I finished the school year with yet another math F on my record. I had given up. By this point my fear of math had developed into full blown phobia. No, more like a deep seeded loathing for the stuff. Needless to say, the state I was in at the time, Nevada, changed the requirements to graduate beginning with my graduating class. Instead of having 2 math credits you had to basically take four years of the stuff to get a diploma.

This was the last straw for me, the breaking point. I made my decision I would drop out and just get my GED. Sure, I had teachers, guidance counselors and other adults begging me to stay the course to no avail. I shifted my high school trajectory. I dropped all core classes, replacing them with classes I found more useful like publications, home-ec, band, choir, music appreciation, art, creative writing, etc. All the fun classes. And I did it. I dropped out got a GED and thought I had put that vile math behind me. I knew how to punch a calculator and how to work a cash register. I figured this was all I needed.

Fast forward over ten years. I am in college trying to earn a degree in broadcasting. Low and behold they want me to take algebra! I was dead set against it. Fortunately, they let me take a class called “math for liberal arts” which is code for the everyday math artists use not the tricky stuff smarter people than myself use.

Now, ten years after that first semester I have lived 39 years on this rock going out of my way to learn or use any math beyond simple addition and subtraction, which to be honest I kinda suck at. I am currently finding myself in job that requires I work with numbers quite frequently. But, I am afraid my lack of math skills is going to catch up to me someday. Here I am, weeks away from 39 years old and to this day I have the math education of a 3^rd grader at the standard taught in 1993. I am not going to lie there are times I break down and cry how negligent I was over not learning something so many take for granted. It’s easy to make fun of someone who lacks math skills but sometimes, for one reason or another, a person just fails. When the system fails to pick that kid up off the ground, wipe of their tears and encourage them to try harder that’s when the system failed.  I often feel like Penny did on the Big Bang Theory when she broke into tears the episode Sheldon tried to teach her basic physics. I know I am not stupid and will bitch-slap anyone who says I am. That doesn’t change the reality that I handicapped myself at an early age, now as an adult I am paying the price for that. The moral of the story is this. If you have a child that is struggling in math don’t make their life harder by hounding them. Ask them what makes it so scary for them and get them help. I started out saying my story is unique, but I fear it might be more common than we realize.

I’ve been contemplating this for a long time. I sold my NES, along with most of my video games, earlier this year. I did it in fact to raise money because I lost my job and the unemployment check was a ways off still. Letting go of all those distractions eating away at my finances was one of the best things I could do. There’s more to this story than that.

I am not going to go so far as say I am completely done with video games. Even though I sold ALL of my retro consoles and handhelds, of which I had too many to list casually here, I kept my Playstation machines. There’s a reason for that.

This isn’t about me becoming an adult. I am not making the claim I have outgrown Nintendo. Far from it in fact. I am also not making the claim I will never buy another Nintendo product again, we all know I will. What I am saying is I am letting go of collecting the physical carts and machines from days long gone, and why I think you should too.

There are a lot of factors that went into this decision. On a personal note I felt like a fool spending money on retro carts to justify the ROMS I had downloaded. Listen, I bought enough games from Nintendo multiple times to not give a crap about snatching a digital copy of Super Mario World off a torrent site. Its not like I am going to buy the game again. I also realize buying the carts is a fallacy. Again it went back to conscious. I felt like I owed somebody money for those ROMS so I bought carts, also to collect but I’ll get into that shortly. Once I realized I was giving my money to scalpers and resellers I realized I was actually feeding a broken system that rewards scoundrel’s who pray off people’s nostalgia. Clearing my conscious I decided I would stick to the emulation and leave collecting carts to fools with more money than I have.

What about owning a tangible thing? Or playing on real hardware for the experience? Oh you mean sinking extra money into repairs, cleaning supplies and special tools to replace batteries and worn cart connectors? No thank you.

This isn’t a sermon on why you should emulate. I own physical Playstation games and consoles. It’s a lesson learned on the aftermarket value of nostalgia, fueled by Youtubers such as the Angry Video Game Nerd, Pat the NES Punk, Norm the Gaming Historian and the like. Nothing wrong with collecting or collectors, per se, but I think there is something broken with fueling a capitalist machine that preys on emotions.

Putting that aside there is also the space factor. At the time I was living in an RV with very limited space. I had already made the decision to throw away all my CD DVD and Blu Ray cases opting instead to store the discs in CD wallets. This system has worked out well for me mostly. There isn’t an easy way to consolidate a stack of NES or SNES carts though, save for loading the ROMS onto a flash cart and reselling the old “tapes” as my mother used to call them. I decided that also wasn’t for me.

Then there is the act of collecting itself. Going to the video game store and burning fossil fuel driving from one store to the next hunting for deals and scouring for that missing game. All in order to buy a piece of plastic I was literally going to place on a shelf. Like I said I turned to emulation back in 2001 and never looked back. Here I was contributing to the further destruction of our planet in the name of reliving a piece of my childhood. Oh was that selfish or what? The guilt of knowing once those carts outlived their usefulness the would end up in landfills, or worse yet polluting the ocean, really jolted me.

This isn’t about environmentalism either.

What I realized was not only was I contributing to a destructive system system that is wasteful, harmful to the environment, predatory to its customers and overall dangerous to my own mental health, I came to the conclusion there is no justifiable reason for me to continue buying NES carts. Not to mention the failure rate of the hardware.

There is a part of me that thinks it was irresponsible for me to throw away so much money chasing after games I already had on my laptop. What sealed the deal for me is once I realized I was buying games just to own them, games I had no intention to ever play, I had to change. With DVD’s I will watch all the movies I have in time. I do have streaming but they offer value outside the film alone as many come with special features worth visiting.

I am not against collecting nor am I done entirely. I plan on buying a Gameboy and Nintendo DS family of consoles in the future and focusing my energy collecting for those. Mainly because emulating those is rubbish and because I can store stacks of GB and DS games in a fraction of the space as a handful of NES and SNES carts.

Nostalgia is absolutely a powerful drug. Once you realize it is a drug you can free yourself from it’s grip if you try hard enough. I am not saying everyone has to follow my decision nor do I mean to say disparaging things towards those who do collect. Do what makes you happy but keep in mind there is a real impact to the environment and our society when you make those kinds of decisions. I will try to be more responsible in my habits while also finding a more productive way to spend my limited resources. I LOVE Nintendo. I am easily blinded by nostalgia. I also know it is time I realize there is a better way to “collect” and enjoy those old games, and I don’t have to feel guilty over my chosen method. I don’t condone piracy in the slightest. I can, however, show Nintendo multiple receipts of Super Mario World if they care to get butthurt I keep a copy on my laptop I don’t share with others. At the end of the day we are all dust. We need to remember our time is short. I don’t want to devote my energy to the Cult of Nintendo Collecting anymore.

A photo says a thousand words. As a former photojournalist that phrase rings very true to me. I never pursued a career as a photographer full time. I did it on the side or as a part of another job. I was a wedding photog one summer but I’d never do that again. I’m too old to deal with that nightmare. 

I am like trans people in that I didn’t like getting my picture taken much before transitioning. One of the reasons I don’t often participate in Throwback Thursday is I literally don’t have a lot of pictures of me to show. I do have a photo album and couple of frames that hold multiple photos but overall there’s just not a ton of images of me that exist. Not good ones anyways. So why do I cherish the ones that I have despite hating how I looked as a kid?

This is complicated and might be triggering for some but the truth is, I was always there even in those images. That kid, that scared little girl pretending to be a boy, she might have had boy cloths on the outside but she was wearing panties underneath. She was listening to Spice Girls in her headphones at those family outings. Even though the world saw a young boy, in her mind she was always a girl. And so even though pre-transition phots of me are triggering I keep them around as a reminder of how far I’ve come. It shows me what I went through. What I endured to get here. 

I don’t plan on sharing a ton of pictures of my pre-transition self but I intend to put a few out there that are meaningful to me. Those are just as much my memories as they are deadnames. I can reconcile the fact had to live a double life to survive into adulthood. In a way I can write them off as Halloween costumes I wore year round. No matter how I look at it I can’t completely bury my past entirely. I would rather spend my time and energy making new memories than dwelling on things I can’t change. That being said I can at least look back fondly on the good times I had. I can cherish the memories that were helpful and bury the ones that were harmful. In the end it’s a reminder of how much change is a part of our lives.

I don’t keep them on the display where people can see them. But I am not going to throw away all the old photos of my past. Life is too short to hold onto hate and regret. I’d rather move towards my goal of finding true happiness, whatever that looks like. I carry my battle scars with me everywhere I go. They define me. I have no shame in who I am, or who I was or what it took to shape me into the woman I am today.