- Pronouns
- He/Him
You remember that Sears commercial? You know, the one where the guy is so miserable in the summer heat that he proudly declares that he’ll call Sears tomorrow only for his wife to adamantly redirect him to call now? If you don’t, then I’m just going to assume you’re a child person who grew up with a Wii or, God forbid, a Wii U. Feel free to close this tab and return to speculating about whether or not, like, FlingSmash is going to get remastered to launch with the Nintendo Switch 2.
(Don’t really close the tab; I’m an attention-starved monster. Please stay and listen to the old man talk about commercials for a minute.)
If you’re still here, then congratulations on being old enough to be a part of a generation that is doomed to remember commercials the same way other generations might have remembered nifty stamps that were attached to postcards sent by people having more fun than them. The Sears commercial is a kind of communal experience we all endured between reruns of Dexter’s Laboratory and, uh, Aaaaah! Real Monsters(?). There were no ad-free streaming plans, so we just sat there like idle ducklings while capitalism gave us a tongue bath. Some of us grew out of this habit. Some of us let it consume them for a lifetime. I’m here because I’m still drowning in the saliva of big business. I’m still soaking in the acidic bile of corporate scum trying to sell me air conditioning units and Polly Pockets and Light Bright Cubes. I’m sinking, and I’d like to take this opportunity to bring you down with me for just a couple of moments to make a point.
A commercial that has been rattling around in my mind for 16 years is this advertisement courtesy of Pizza Hut:
In case you’re the kind of person who (like me) is reticent to click on video links solicited by strangers on message boards who write overly lengthy essays in an attempt to seem sophisticated while actually being a lowly gremlin, let me describe it for you: A group of seemingly well to do socialites gather at what they believe is a four-dollar-sign caliber restaurant to break bread(sticks). After declaring their appreciation for the cuisine presented to them, the chef emerges from his chef hole to inform his patrons that they are eating Pizza Hut, actually. The people rejoice, and Pizza Hut is declared the champion of affordable gourmet food. The linked video’s description indicates that this was a very real thing that wasn’t at all staged with fast food crisis actors, but we of all people know that this is a false flag operation designed to put Pizza Hut pasta in all of our mouths. We of all people know that when presented with the fact that this otherwise fine eatery had not four Michelin Stars but one half of a half of a quarter of a Michelin Star that shit would hit the fan. Words would not be as minced as the garlic in these pastas. Heads with tiny little chef hats would roll into the streets as a warning to any other fast food establishment attempting to defraud passersby into having a good enough time when they could instead be having a good enough time, but expensive.
People like numbers. People really like numbers that are bigger than other numbers. When people see that the restaurant they’re eating at has more numbers than the restaurant their peers are eating at, they feel like they’re a part of some kind of secret club that lowly small number stans could get into if only they had better, more gargantuan appetites.
Me? I like numbers. Heck, I make my living talking about numbers! I have a favorite number (8, for symmetrical purposes) and a least favorite number (4, because I like the way it looks on my keyboard but my hands are too dumb to render it that way in real life). Sometimes I ruminate on really fun number combinations on license plates.
I don’t have a lot of friends.
Numbers are good, but you know what? Numbers are bad, actually. Numbers were once an additive sprinkled onto the delicacies of life, like cilantro. Now, numbers are an additive sprinkled onto every delicacy of life even when we, the consumers, are begging for the man with the condiments to lay off a little bit (like cilantro?). Numbers are overwhelming our senses and making us incapable of seeing the truth in front of our very eyes: Video games are pretty neat.
Numbers must be stopped.
Not to be confused with Numb3rs, which did stop.
I make a living waxing poetic about numbers to a captive audience of disinterested youths. Every so often, one of the victims of my innumerable numerical ballads will stop me to ask a genuine question: Who invented math? It’s a question that is understandable for a small person to ask, just as it would be for the same small person to ask a dentist who invented the drill that is currently boring its way through their oral cavities. It’s also a question with an answer that is far too long for them to possibly maintain interest, especially given my aforementioned proclivity for agonizingly tedious exposition.
Are you still there?
So, anyways: Who invented math? People invented math, of course! Mathematics has been used for a majority of human existence to help make sense of a world that otherwise doesn’t make much sense at all. Its application is informed by reality! Or, at least, it was. The roles have reversed; instead of taking cues from reality, reality has begun taking cues from math.
Working in education, I’m often victimized by numbers. These numbers are ostensibly designed to measure things like student growth and aptitude. But do they? I don’t think so! I think these numbers have replaced valuable, qualitative data with something a lot easier to put on a chart and display proudly (or disappointingly) to a bunch of clueless suits who have been foolishly entrusted with guiding the decision making of the institution in which I toil. These numbers are the ultimate rhetorical shortcut, one which can be implemented at any given moment to replace nuance with a routine inequality.
Alright, I’ll talk about video games.
Me when someone complains about games that run below an "acceptable" frame-rate.
Enthusiasts in this industry have become wholly dependent on numbers to have even the most pedestrian of conversations. An inquiring soul might ask a simple question, like “Did you play Penny’s Big Breakaway, the latest game from the fine folks who you might remember from such genre-defining classics as Sonic Mania?” In a more decent society, you might expect replies about the mechanics or the level design or the merits of the humble yo-yo. In this quantitative hellscape, the answers to that innocent inquiry will probably fixate on the fact that the game runs at 30 frames per second when it should instead run at 60 frames per second. Someone might mention a number indicating the resolution of the game and then indicate that that number would be a lot better if it were also bigger. An especially statistically-savvy type of individual might chime in to say that the game is selling small numbers, implicitly suggesting that only games that sell bigger numbers are of sufficient merit for discussion. At some point, the conversation will get so heady that you might be tempted to fiddle with an abacus just to keep your head above water. But you can’t! You will drown in these numbers, and when you’re done drowning in these numbers you’ll wander to another nearby water cooler to drink enough numbers to kill God.
Who needs God, anyways? Numbers are the new God.
I’m loath to reference South Park, but it seems appropriate to do so here: In the twelfth episode of the tenth season of Comedy Central’s longest-running FCC fine accumulator, Eric Cartman really wants a Nintendo Wii. The only problem is that it isn’t out yet! To solve this dilemma, Mr. Cartman freezes himself until such a time when the Nintendo Wii is readily available. He overshoots the mark a bit and finds himself in a nightmarish future where what’s left of humanity is at war with sea otters. Also, everyone worships science. Literally! They say things like “science damn you” instead of “God damn you.” Hilarious!
Yes, I do hate the 1 and 2 buttons!
In some ways, this is our present. For one, the Nintendo Wii is readily available! I could play one right now. I could even emulate one! It’s wild. For two, science (and, by extension, math) are kind of like a religion. And I don’t mean good science and good math! I mean the bad kind! I mean the kind that your coworker uses to justify why they eat three pieces of bark and a dollop of pine tar for every meal, or why they keep blasting Essential Oils in your face whenever you appear to have even the most minor of ailments. I mean the kind of math that leads people to think that it makes sense every time their football team goes for it on fourth down, or the kind that makes the worst people you know buy and trade imaginary quantities in the hope of making the most money.
I mean the kind of math that has made it impossible to have a good conversation about, well, anything. But especially video games!
I understand the inclination to quantify enjoyment. I do! But, at the same time, I don't! How can numbers possibly be used to represent the immense number of feelings I have about THE Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy? What integer could hope to signify my lifelong attachment to a mustachioed plumber, a tie-wearing gorilla, and a musically-inclined boy with pointy ears who also happens to be the most important person in the entire world? I assure you no number big or small can explain why I feel strongly enough to write this call to action about video game discourse on Famiboards dot com.
I pine for a simpler time. I long for a time in which people can have serious discussions about this industry without also making a line graph to quantify the relative value of a piece of software. I yearn for a time in which people might once again play games that maybe don’t run super smoothly but do have something interesting to say, be it from a mechanical perspective or something more narratively impactful. I pray for a time when conversations about art don’t feel like a pissing contest about which developers are the most prolific at compiling the biggest numbers.
To put it more simply: I want the people to legitimately enjoy the Pizza Hut pasta. I want the chef to keep his head. I want the patrons to go home and happily discuss the grease sponge they foisted upon their digestive system. I want the man to say “I like it even more now”, and I want him to mean it.
(Don’t really close the tab; I’m an attention-starved monster. Please stay and listen to the old man talk about commercials for a minute.)
If you’re still here, then congratulations on being old enough to be a part of a generation that is doomed to remember commercials the same way other generations might have remembered nifty stamps that were attached to postcards sent by people having more fun than them. The Sears commercial is a kind of communal experience we all endured between reruns of Dexter’s Laboratory and, uh, Aaaaah! Real Monsters(?). There were no ad-free streaming plans, so we just sat there like idle ducklings while capitalism gave us a tongue bath. Some of us grew out of this habit. Some of us let it consume them for a lifetime. I’m here because I’m still drowning in the saliva of big business. I’m still soaking in the acidic bile of corporate scum trying to sell me air conditioning units and Polly Pockets and Light Bright Cubes. I’m sinking, and I’d like to take this opportunity to bring you down with me for just a couple of moments to make a point.
A commercial that has been rattling around in my mind for 16 years is this advertisement courtesy of Pizza Hut:
In case you’re the kind of person who (like me) is reticent to click on video links solicited by strangers on message boards who write overly lengthy essays in an attempt to seem sophisticated while actually being a lowly gremlin, let me describe it for you: A group of seemingly well to do socialites gather at what they believe is a four-dollar-sign caliber restaurant to break bread(sticks). After declaring their appreciation for the cuisine presented to them, the chef emerges from his chef hole to inform his patrons that they are eating Pizza Hut, actually. The people rejoice, and Pizza Hut is declared the champion of affordable gourmet food. The linked video’s description indicates that this was a very real thing that wasn’t at all staged with fast food crisis actors, but we of all people know that this is a false flag operation designed to put Pizza Hut pasta in all of our mouths. We of all people know that when presented with the fact that this otherwise fine eatery had not four Michelin Stars but one half of a half of a quarter of a Michelin Star that shit would hit the fan. Words would not be as minced as the garlic in these pastas. Heads with tiny little chef hats would roll into the streets as a warning to any other fast food establishment attempting to defraud passersby into having a good enough time when they could instead be having a good enough time, but expensive.
People like numbers. People really like numbers that are bigger than other numbers. When people see that the restaurant they’re eating at has more numbers than the restaurant their peers are eating at, they feel like they’re a part of some kind of secret club that lowly small number stans could get into if only they had better, more gargantuan appetites.
Me? I like numbers. Heck, I make my living talking about numbers! I have a favorite number (8, for symmetrical purposes) and a least favorite number (4, because I like the way it looks on my keyboard but my hands are too dumb to render it that way in real life). Sometimes I ruminate on really fun number combinations on license plates.
I don’t have a lot of friends.
Numbers are good, but you know what? Numbers are bad, actually. Numbers were once an additive sprinkled onto the delicacies of life, like cilantro. Now, numbers are an additive sprinkled onto every delicacy of life even when we, the consumers, are begging for the man with the condiments to lay off a little bit (like cilantro?). Numbers are overwhelming our senses and making us incapable of seeing the truth in front of our very eyes: Video games are pretty neat.
Numbers must be stopped.
Not to be confused with Numb3rs, which did stop.
I make a living waxing poetic about numbers to a captive audience of disinterested youths. Every so often, one of the victims of my innumerable numerical ballads will stop me to ask a genuine question: Who invented math? It’s a question that is understandable for a small person to ask, just as it would be for the same small person to ask a dentist who invented the drill that is currently boring its way through their oral cavities. It’s also a question with an answer that is far too long for them to possibly maintain interest, especially given my aforementioned proclivity for agonizingly tedious exposition.
Are you still there?
So, anyways: Who invented math? People invented math, of course! Mathematics has been used for a majority of human existence to help make sense of a world that otherwise doesn’t make much sense at all. Its application is informed by reality! Or, at least, it was. The roles have reversed; instead of taking cues from reality, reality has begun taking cues from math.
Working in education, I’m often victimized by numbers. These numbers are ostensibly designed to measure things like student growth and aptitude. But do they? I don’t think so! I think these numbers have replaced valuable, qualitative data with something a lot easier to put on a chart and display proudly (or disappointingly) to a bunch of clueless suits who have been foolishly entrusted with guiding the decision making of the institution in which I toil. These numbers are the ultimate rhetorical shortcut, one which can be implemented at any given moment to replace nuance with a routine inequality.
Alright, I’ll talk about video games.
Me when someone complains about games that run below an "acceptable" frame-rate.
Enthusiasts in this industry have become wholly dependent on numbers to have even the most pedestrian of conversations. An inquiring soul might ask a simple question, like “Did you play Penny’s Big Breakaway, the latest game from the fine folks who you might remember from such genre-defining classics as Sonic Mania?” In a more decent society, you might expect replies about the mechanics or the level design or the merits of the humble yo-yo. In this quantitative hellscape, the answers to that innocent inquiry will probably fixate on the fact that the game runs at 30 frames per second when it should instead run at 60 frames per second. Someone might mention a number indicating the resolution of the game and then indicate that that number would be a lot better if it were also bigger. An especially statistically-savvy type of individual might chime in to say that the game is selling small numbers, implicitly suggesting that only games that sell bigger numbers are of sufficient merit for discussion. At some point, the conversation will get so heady that you might be tempted to fiddle with an abacus just to keep your head above water. But you can’t! You will drown in these numbers, and when you’re done drowning in these numbers you’ll wander to another nearby water cooler to drink enough numbers to kill God.
Who needs God, anyways? Numbers are the new God.
I’m loath to reference South Park, but it seems appropriate to do so here: In the twelfth episode of the tenth season of Comedy Central’s longest-running FCC fine accumulator, Eric Cartman really wants a Nintendo Wii. The only problem is that it isn’t out yet! To solve this dilemma, Mr. Cartman freezes himself until such a time when the Nintendo Wii is readily available. He overshoots the mark a bit and finds himself in a nightmarish future where what’s left of humanity is at war with sea otters. Also, everyone worships science. Literally! They say things like “science damn you” instead of “God damn you.” Hilarious!
Yes, I do hate the 1 and 2 buttons!
In some ways, this is our present. For one, the Nintendo Wii is readily available! I could play one right now. I could even emulate one! It’s wild. For two, science (and, by extension, math) are kind of like a religion. And I don’t mean good science and good math! I mean the bad kind! I mean the kind that your coworker uses to justify why they eat three pieces of bark and a dollop of pine tar for every meal, or why they keep blasting Essential Oils in your face whenever you appear to have even the most minor of ailments. I mean the kind of math that leads people to think that it makes sense every time their football team goes for it on fourth down, or the kind that makes the worst people you know buy and trade imaginary quantities in the hope of making the most money.
I mean the kind of math that has made it impossible to have a good conversation about, well, anything. But especially video games!
I understand the inclination to quantify enjoyment. I do! But, at the same time, I don't! How can numbers possibly be used to represent the immense number of feelings I have about THE Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy? What integer could hope to signify my lifelong attachment to a mustachioed plumber, a tie-wearing gorilla, and a musically-inclined boy with pointy ears who also happens to be the most important person in the entire world? I assure you no number big or small can explain why I feel strongly enough to write this call to action about video game discourse on Famiboards dot com.
I pine for a simpler time. I long for a time in which people can have serious discussions about this industry without also making a line graph to quantify the relative value of a piece of software. I yearn for a time in which people might once again play games that maybe don’t run super smoothly but do have something interesting to say, be it from a mechanical perspective or something more narratively impactful. I pray for a time when conversations about art don’t feel like a pissing contest about which developers are the most prolific at compiling the biggest numbers.
To put it more simply: I want the people to legitimately enjoy the Pizza Hut pasta. I want the chef to keep his head. I want the patrons to go home and happily discuss the grease sponge they foisted upon their digestive system. I want the man to say “I like it even more now”, and I want him to mean it.
I genuinely get the point of more technical discussions, and I even seek them out from time to time! I also feel like they're supplanting normal discourse in a way that makes it frustrating to discuss my favorite past time on the Internet. If you're reading this, Jon Linneman, I love you! Please don't hate me.
I do remember the Sears commercial and to further show my age, the Pizza Hut commercial reminded me of this SNL skit where Chris Farley finds out he’s on a hidden camera commercial.
