The Internet is dead.

This is not a eulogy, but an acknowledgement. An acknowledgement that what I’ve come to accept the internet to be is dead. An acceptance that in the name of ease, I’ve absorbed myself into a corporatised space that is at this point not simply eating itself but eating me, us and everything that we create.

And I think: fuck it.

In 2023, when I started publishing exp. again in print, I was, I think, trying to close my eyes to it. I liked–and I still like, I love–the purity of print, the focus. I still want to make things and put them into the world. But I also just love writing, and sharing it. For a long time, I’ve relied on existing sites for my work–be that big platforms or outlets, but of course what happens is they pivot, they get sold, they get erased. And it can feel like we’re always searching for a settled high ground–Bluesky feels great now, but is it just a little rocky outcroppings in poisoned sea, bound to erode or be subsumed?

At the end of 2024 I published Every Game I’ve Finished 14>24, which I think works as a nice culmination of my last decade of writing. But as I’m not going to stop, it seems necessary in our new dead internet to do something that I’ve been meaning to do for ages, which is plant and cultivate my own space properly and invite you to visit it. Not just hope that you’ll see something I’ve posted as you scroll, but offer something that you can actually choose to engage with. Where my writing finally stays, where you can properly search and explore it, where I can expand beyond what I’ve been doing if I like.

I think there’s a danger of nostalgia here, some sort of limiting call back to the idea that you’d, like, log on the internet and type “https://www.expzine.com” in every morning after you’ve read the three or four webcomics you keep up on (wow, Superosity is still going!) but I think that’s why I’ve become enamoured with the mindset of POSSE–Publish On (your) Site, Share Everywhere–and using it to its fullest. So I’m going to be posting here, then spreading this to every part of the stupid corporatised internet I can be fucking bothered with. Let decay feed growth.

To support that, I have (sorry) started a new Patreon with refreshed tiers to accompany my currently existing Ko-fi that has been supporting the continuation of my writing and publication of my zines and books. Unfortunately, Ko-fi’s tools aren’t robust enough, so this seems to be the simplest way to offer new articles to supporters on this site first, so if you aren’t already a supporter, please check it out. 

(Something worth emphasising I’ve continued to set the lowest tier at just $1 a month–so it’s as little as $12 to support the only* video game criticism website on the internet)

*as far as I’m concerned.

If you are already a Ko-fi supporter: you don’t have to do anything. You can continue to support me on Ko-fi and I’ll be sharing articles–in full–over there a week early as usual. But if you’d like to move over to Patreon, I’ll be sending you a free month of the tier your current donation is equivalent to, so you don’t feel like if you want to switch over you’re being double charged or anything.

If you don’t want to support, that’s fine! You could just sign up for the newsletter, which is going to remain free and collate the posts of the week plus some extra waffle. Probably, I haven’t really planned them yet.

And if you don’t want to do any of that, I’m not entirely sure why you’ve read this far. But the point stands: if you don’t like our dead internet, grow your own.