A Little Bit of Everything Lately

The Decline of Best Buy

Here's a little story.

About five years back, a Best Buy was finally built near my hometown. Before this, I always had to wait for trips to distant cities to get to go to Best Buy, which was one of THE go-to sources for movies, anime and video games. I mean Wal-Mart does its job, but Wal-Mart only stocks mainstream garbage. Best Buy was diverse, and had a large range of interesting titles. So of course, I loved having one close to my home, which meant trips were more frequent.

And what trips they were! I could go in there and explore for hours, looking at the shelves upon shelves of movies, video games and anime. Even when video games got to the point where I stopped caring, I still had the other two. Best Buy was awesome.

But then, about a year ago, the place changed. I went in, and noticed immediately that something was missing: Where were the shelves of movies? Instead, they had... backpacks. Freaking BACKPACKS. Clothing, accessories and other uninteresting stuff. And I looked for the movies. And I found them... they had now been reduced to one lone shelf near the back of the store (Technically two: DVDS on one side, Blu-Rays on the other). The Anime section was now just the rightmost section, TV in the middle, movies to the left, and their selection was limited to mainstream stuff. I mean, their "anime" section was basically nothing but Dragonball. I mean, I like Dragonball, but I already have every episode of the anime and every volume of the manga, so if all they have to offer is something I've already got, forget it!

I went back to that Best Buy two or three times, but the situation never changed. Just one shelf of movies, and they never had anything I wanted. Best Buy had jumped the shark.

Now, the official excuse is that online sales are killing brick-and-mortar. It's simply more convenient to go on Amazon, and often, the prices are better too. But here's the thing:

Shopping isn't about convenience. It's about adventure.

It's like exploring a dungeon in an RPG. The dungeon itself isn't that interesting, what makes it interesting is wondering what treasure you'll find. You go out of your way to open chests because you never know if it'll have gold, items, fancy new equipment, and that thrill of discovery is just amazing. Two of my favorite anime--Ranma 1/2 and Devil Hunter Yohko--are anime I picked up purely on a whim, based on nothing more than that they sounded interesting. Not like today, where I would've gotten on TV Tropes and Wikipedia and in seconds have known everything there is to know about both shows and would thus have lost interest because now that I have all the information memorized there's no need for the actual shows anymore. No wonder kids today are bored of everything.

Dethroning Moment of Suck

Speaking of which (and you should realize that this particular blog post isn't about anything in particular, its just me getting a lot of things off my chest) I've actually been having fun reading one section of TV Tropes, the "Dethroning Moment of Suck" entries. Link here (WARNING: Addictive!) Now, I've made it clear in the past that I do not hold Tropers in high esteem, and this section is a very good example of why.

Take, for example, this entry in "Web Original" (Note, for some reason entries about Spoony sometimes occur simply in "Web Original" and other times occur in the TGWTG subfolder. The one cited below is in Web Original):

Near the start of his Ultima IX review, Spoony explicitly compares professional video game reviewers to prostitutes, and then has the gall to declare, "I give it to you straight". Um... no. No, you do not, Noah (and remember, part of the point of the Ultima Retrospective was that, in most ways, this was Noah, not the Spoony One character). You are an Internet-based Caustic Critic who is paid to Accentuate the Negative. You do not "give it to us straight". You are paid to mock and insult games regardless of actual quality. Pull your head out of your ass and deflate your ego. This is the point at which Noah Antwiller lost any and all credibility.

... Did this fool somehow miss the rest of the Ultima Retrospective, throughout most of which Spoony was overwhelmingly positive, up until he got to the games that had genuine flaws? This guy seems to think that Spoony only does negative reviews (which is nowhere near true) and always goes in looking for things to complain about (which is also far from true). This guy comes off like he just wants to bash Spoony, logic be damned.

Actually, any time I read entries on Spoony, it feels like Tropers don't really understand him. There's this constant assumption that he's "playing a character" which... the sense I got is that this is really only true in the storyline bits where he's fighting a video game character or whatever, and even then that's still 90% Noah. The main reason he started this series was to vent about things he felt were personal disappointments, and for that reason there's a lot more honesty in his videos than in, say, The Nostalgia Critic (who really is just playing a character). Also people tend to forget that he has done positive reviews (witness the above) and will even praise certain aspects of games he otherwise pans (Final Fantasy X-2 for example).

Okay, now here's a gem that's not about online reviewers, but rather about an "Ask Pony" tumblr. This one is located in the "Fan Fic" subfolder:

Speaking of Ask A Pony, there's Ask Princess Molestia. I enjoyed the bawdy humor and the art style (especially the facial expressions) believing all the way the series' disclaimer: "If you take this site seriously, you really do belong on the moon." But then this came up, during the most heated period of controversy surrounding the blog in memory. The "Down With Cake" line makes it clear this was JJ himself using the comic as a means to weigh in on the matter. The message he wanted to get across was unclear, however, it's pretty obvious he had no understanding of the reasons people might take umbrage at the blog. Plus, it's in response to a question that hadn't even hinted at having a thing to do with the affairs. I'll admit, I'd been looking for reasons to not like John Joseco, but this is a much better excuse than any I could come up with.

Cutting-and-pasting doesn't preserve links so I had to add it back in, and I'm linking to it again just for good measure.

Now, I personally do not actively follow any tumblrs, so I only see entries when someone points them out to me. So from my perspective, it looks like the troper is getting worked up about.... Molestia banning cake? What? For such a thick paragraph, the troper didn't really say anything informative. He keeps making vague, unhelpful statements. "JJ was using the comic as a means to weigh in on the matter" What matter would that be? Why was this a "heated period of controversy?" What "question" was this "in response" to? This is like a lot of Tropers--he talks a lot but doesn't really say anything.

I know someone will probably explain the situation to me in the comments, but my point is that the guy putting the DMOS there should've explained it so people who don't follow tumblrs will understand, instead of being vague like he was.

Incidentally there was another entry that picked the "Ask Pun Pony" tumblr, and again their complaint made no sense and the comic in question didn't seem anything like what they were portraying it as.

Bottom line: DMOS is to be taken with a grain of salt. Oddly enough, most of the entries for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episodes are valid complaints, with only a couple that I don't agree with (and those being for episodes I personally dislike, just so you know).

You Know You're Arguing With a JAYNIUS When....

Okay, let's get away from the Tropers for a second and move a bit closer to home (meaning FimFiction).

Recently, I twice noticed a very stupid lapse of logic, from two different people--the first was a dude named trekee (all lowercase), and the other was Roarin Thunder, a guy whose avatar is a pair of Super Saiyans as drawn by a five-year-old in MS Paint.

Let me start with trekee. The actual argument was about whether or not humans would win in a hypothetical Equestria vs Earth war. I said Equestria would win, he proceeded to make some lame-ass post that was all flames, no legitimate counterargument... and then, five minutes later, he posted something like "Nothing to say? Thought so."

Yeah, that's right... he expected an instant response. Not only that, but when he didn't get it, his immediate assumption was that he had owned me good. Which, frankly, showed the world that he was a stupid little basement-dwelling brat who likely had never interacted with a real flesh-and-blood human (outside of family) and probably rarely set foot in the outside world. Cuz, see, it was like I told him later: the real reason I didn't respond was because I have a life. Some stupid debate on a forum for a children's cartoon isn't exactly high on my list of priorities, especially when I'm debating with an obvious idiot.

With Roarin Thunder the situation was slightly different, in that I was actively ignoring him during a debate about the voting system (which you'll remember I made a blog entry about). He was basically just flaming and name-calling and agreeing with anyone who disagreed with me just out of spite, in short saying nothing of value... and he assumed the reason I was ignoring him was because I was "afraid to take him on."

I should mention here that I won the Voting System argument in a couple of big ways. First of all, Roarin and some of his pals had gotten so butthurt that they created a similar topic just to passive-aggressive snipe me, which a mod immediately got onto them about. That, and their general behavior in both threads, revealed them for what they were: a bunch of cowardly, childish bullies, which only helped feed the stereotype that anyone who was fine with how the voting system worked were just like them. Which probably helped me score the second victory: See, my main beef was that, at the time, excessive downvotes could hide a post, making it essentially censorship. Since then, things have changed: downvotes no longer cause posts to be hidden.

If that's not winning, I don't know what is.

That is all. I thank you all for allowing me to ramble and clear my head. Hopefully I won't need to make a post like this again anytime soon.