Author: J T. Ramsay

Can We Talk About Forks?

As a 45-year-old sud­den­ly adrift on the job mar­ket, the “Forks” episode of The Bear hit dif­fer­ent. Sure, “Fish­es” was an absolute tour-de-force, cap­i­tal “P” per­for­mance, and “Hon­ey­dew” was a pow­er­ful med­i­ta­tion on growth, but “Forks” spoke to me so direct­ly and hope­ful­ly. Watch­ing Richie trans­form from a lov­able, but deeply flawed dirt­bag liv­ing in an eter­nal present into per­haps the most self-actu­al­ized char­ac­ter on the show was com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed and absolute­ly wel­come. The moment Syd says “Dri­ve,” he’s a man pos­sessed and ful­ly in his ele­ment, con­fi­dent and self-assured, will­ing the team forward.

What I think I espe­cial­ly love about this on a per­son­al lev­el is how Richie and oth­ers are giv­en oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow into them­selves. Carmy sees their poten­tial and puts them in spots to real­ize it. If you’ve ever been stuck or lost in your career, it res­onates deeply, espe­cial­ly when you know what you’re capa­ble of doing, but won­der if you’ll ever get the chance. That’s why Richie’s sto­ry has meant so much to me. The pur­pose he seeks is the anti­dote to “qui­et quit­ting,” or if you’ve tak­en an entry lev­el soci­ol­o­gy class, alien­at­ed labor.

Is there a show I’m more con­cerned about falling apart as col­lat­er­al dam­age of the writ­ers’ strike? No, not like­ly. Maybe it’s just me adopt­ing the Indiecast mind­set, but I lost a taste for most pres­tige TV when Mad Men end­ed. Most of it just feels too self-impor­tant to be gen­uine­ly engag­ing. Like, I know I’m sup­posed to like it, but what even is pres­tige TV in 2023? Is Myth­ic Quest pres­tige TV? I liked that. Are FX shows still pres­tige TV? Is pres­tige just swear­ing and sex on basic cable? Or is it just TV from pre­mi­um services?

The Bear was engi­neered in a lab for young Gen X. “Strange Cur­ren­cies” was my nation­al anthem in 1995. Mon­ster, as I’ve writ­ten else­where, is a cul­tur­al touch­stone with­out equal from my teenage years. The yearn­ing expressed in that song con­nects so per­fect­ly with the mood of sea­son two. But nowhere is it more real­ized than in Richie’s tra­jec­to­ry from “Forks” for­ward, cul­mi­nat­ing in his Jesus-take-the-wheel moment in episode ten and his lac­er­at­ing tough love for Carmy, trapped help­less­ly in the walk-in.

Some­thing I thought about, espe­cial­ly dur­ing “Fish­es,” was Bunuel’s Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie, where the din­ers await a meal that’s nev­er served. In that sense there’s a real poet­ry to The Bear end­ing before open­ing night and I can be hap­py if it does. Mean­while I will be absolute­ly floor­ing it down back alleys to “Love Sto­ry (Tay­lor’s Ver­sion)” from here on out.

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Breaking Up with Twitter

Yes, I’m already on Mastodon. I knew I joined back in 2016 when it was clear Jack had no idea where to take Twit­ter next. Mastodon is fun now that more peo­ple are join­ing. I don’t hate that it’s hard to find peo­ple; that was part of the fun of Twit­ter orig­i­nal­ly. What’s bet­ter is that it’s 2023, not 2008.

My approach to Mastodon is sim­ple: how can I rebuild the expe­ri­ence I had with ear­ly Twit­ter, focused on smart peo­ple I actu­al­ly know who might even be local to me and sec­ond­ly, musi­cians and music crit­ics I enjoy.

This expe­ri­ence has been chas­ten­ing. I com­mit­ted unrea­son­able hours to relent­less­ly refresh­ing Twit­ter. Now that I’ve quit cold turkey, I’m embar­rassed I did­n’t do it soon­er. More embar­rass­ing is the recog­ni­tion of all the paraso­cial rela­tion­ships I built as an out­growth of my career.

Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, it has­n’t made a dif­fer­ence. There are oth­er tools to let me know if some­thing is hap­pen­ing at work. I don’t need to be on the bleed­ing edge of break­ing news — for every­thing — around the clock. What I’ve been able to gath­er from peers is much the same as my expe­ri­ence: Twit­ter has long been a low-per­for­mance social plat­form for most brands, espe­cial­ly those that don’t have a cus­tomer ser­vice function. 

How many brands start­ed chas­ing their “Dunk in the Dark” moment 10 years ago and it nev­er hap­pened for them? My viral tweet is lit­er­al­ly about tak­ing down a Christ­mas tree! Why did this seem so vital for so long?

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Remapping My Digital Footprint

Twit­ter’s volatil­i­ty has me rethink­ing every­thing. Words like “inten­tion­al­i­ty” spring to mind, but also, I don’t need to be on the plat­form quite as much as I have been since 2008. It’s offer­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rethink how I show up online and where I choose to cre­ate and con­sume con­tent. Not the first time, cer­tain­ly not the last, but one of those, you know, inflec­tion points that gives you a moment to pause and reflect.

Have I been doing it wrong the whole time? Maybe I have.

I’ll unpack that. I just logged into Feed­ly for the first time since Google Read­er shut down in 2013. It was like open­ing a bunker that closed the moment the war end­ed. There were blog posts wait­ing for me from cor­po­rate sites I used to fol­low for work and thou­sands of unread music and tech news items from near­ly a decade ago. It was rev­e­la­to­ry. It was the web we lost!

Flash for­ward a decade. We’ve been con­tend­ing with algo­rith­mic feeds at every turn. Even a glimpse of a pure­ly chrono­log­i­cal time­line made me thing: what if I just go back? I can’t pre­tend any­one will fol­low suit, but how can I make my own expe­ri­ence of the web better?

For starters, I’m going to sub­scribe to Feed­ly. I’m using Dis­cord to keep in touch with com­mu­ni­ties I’m part of on Twit­ter that are dis­pers­ing. I’m play­ing with Red­dit more inten­tion­al­ly. I’m lov­ing Patre­on and Mix­cloud and pod­casts. I’m obsessed with Tik­Tok. I just edit­ed way back on Insta­gram fol­lows and pro­duced a bet­ter expe­ri­ence. And I’ve joined Mastodon.

Mastodon? Isn’t that just Twit­ter all over again? Maybe it is? But maybe it’s not. I am being very selec­tive about how I build com­mu­ni­ty there. I’m not try­ing to build what I’m leav­ing on Twit­ter. I’ve built an audi­ence around loca­tions and jobs, first as a music crit­ic in Philadel­phia and then as a cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tor there and Detroit, across three indus­tries. The effect is like watch­ing those chunks of the inter­net per­form Google search­es in real time around the clock. It’s exhaust­ing. It’s self-inflict­ed. It’s over.

What I’m lov­ing about onboard­ing to Mastodon is how slow it is. I’m remind­ed of those ear­ly days on Twit­ter when you saw every­one’s @ replies and you held on for dear life. But this isn’t like that. I’m look­ing for some famil­iar faces and then look­ing at who they’re fol­low­ing and who’s fol­low­ing them. What I’m try­ing to do is build some­thing around my inter­ests in music and cul­ture and leav­ing work to LinkedIn. There’s a slow­er web if you want it!

If you’re feel­ing com­plete­ly wiped out by the expe­ri­ence of try­ing to repli­cate what you feel you’ve lost, build some­thing bet­ter slowly.

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How Do You Game in 2022?

My pro­gres­sion into gam­ing was pret­ty straight­for­ward. I start­ed with a VIC 20, fol­lowed by a Com­modore 64, then an Apple IIGS, got a SEGA Gen­e­sis for Christ­mas junior year, then off to col­lege with a Hewlett Packard Pavil­lion. My PlaySta­tion 1 got me through grad school and a PS2 got me through years of under­em­ploy­ment. I dropped my Sony loy­al­ty, get­ting an Xbox 360 when we bought our first house. I upgrad­ed to a Forza Xbox One when I went to Ford. We added a PlaySta­tion 4 Pro a few Christ­mases ago, then to an Xbox Series X last spring. My youngest got a Nin­ten­do Switch some­where along the way, too. This Christ­mas we added a PlaySta­tion 5 and an Ocu­lus Quest 2.

It’s at once embar­rass­ing and over­whelm­ing to try to man­age four gam­ing sys­tems simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and eval­u­ate which games make sense for which plat­form. I’ve tried to sim­pli­fy things with Xbox Game Pass Ulti­mate as part of the Series X pur­chase. That’s been help­ful from a dis­cov­ery and every day play stand­point for count­less titles that would­n’t have been worth $60 or more to prove disappointing. 

Where things get trick­i­er is know­ing which Switch titles are actu­al­ly good for a 2nd grad­er. He’s a good read­er, but some of the games ask a lot of the play­er. Addi­tion­al­ly, try­ing to stay on top of PlaySta­tion exclu­sives may be a chal­lenge. I’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly been an EA devo­tee, so sto­ry-ori­ent­ed games are a bit of a blind spot for me. I’ve pur­chased so many games I nev­er had a hope of fin­ish­ing once we had kids. I did­n’t do a great job man­ag­ing across plat­forms on the last gen con­soles we had pri­mar­i­ly because friends had PlaySta­tion and the prospect of play­ing togeth­er online in the pan­dem­ic was attrac­tive. It has hap­pened maybe a hand­ful of times.

Final­ly, Ocu­lus Quest 2 is new ter­ri­to­ry alto­geth­er. I’ve been gen­er­al­ly bear­ish on VR with the excep­tion of some indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions. What I’ve seen in the last week are some pret­ty sim­ple games that are fine, if not espe­cial­ly immer­sive and fun. Look­ing at this list from the Verge, it looks like there are few com­pelling options for a sports-for­ward kid.

What’s com­ing in 2022 that’s worth look­ing out for?

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Another Hex-mas Miracle

I can’t remem­ber if I’ve ever been able to lis­ten to as much of Jon Solomon’s 25-hour #WPRBX­mas as I did this year. It was fan­tas­tic as usu­al and pro­duced some great quotes from my sister-in-law.

But the real Christ­mas mag­ic hap­pened on Christ­mas Day, as the Fall set wrapped up with the debut of Chica­go Now’s Hex-mas Enduc­tion Hour.

When I tell you I could­n’t buy it fast enough. I was spell­bound from the open­ing notes of “The Christ­mas­si­cal.” A must for any Fall fan!

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