PlusHeart
PlusHeart
PlusHeart Issue #24 - Resisting being a sockpuppet (with PlatinumParagon)
0:00
-1:08:24

PlusHeart Issue #24 - Resisting being a sockpuppet (with PlatinumParagon)

"I have ranted to friends, saying that - this is the exact phrase - I am not your 'Based Doctor Lady'."

Today’s interview is with Dr. Natalie Coyle (aka @PlatinumParagon), an academic who I’ve followed and enjoyed for a couple years now. Dr. Coyle writes about video games and related topics with a strong desire to share information and tell the truth.

Part of what drew me to her work was that it avoided the problem that plagues more academic writing on the topic: she knows the communities and forces at work, and it doesn’t come off as someone trying to go on safari somewhere unfamiliar.

While you could argue that academic writing benefits from a little bit of ignorance (instead of bringing in your own biases), I think that gaming suffers from a lack of closeness when it comes to people writing “serious” things about the medium and industry.

I think we can all think of articles by gaming outlets that parrot something “a study has found”, for better or for worse. While it can be easy to take the victories or dunk on ignorance, that kind of scoreboarding feels like a waste of time. I enjoy Natalie’s work because it speaks to subjects I’m passionate about (personal improvement, psychology, mental health) and they never feel like a waste of time.

Go check them out here.

PlusHeart is a reader-supported publication. Every subscription helps, so consider doing so if you like what I’m putting out.

Selected section:

[Dr. Coyle:] "It was quite funny because I've I've always told a handful people this story (and they laugh every time I say it) but basically what happened was, was that at that stage of in my Twitter presence I was getting, you know, followed and eyes on me in terms of really influential people in academia and video game academia, like you had professors, people held in high esteem, et cetera, et cetera."

"And after such a long hiatus, like my favorite video game series ever, that has brought me so much joy and happiness, was getting a new game and this is me. I'm not - I know we're talking about social media,  I'm not the most social person in the world. I can go like, I can have like, a couple of tweets a month that will be related to what I'm talking about. But I mean the-the floodgates opened. The floodgates completely opened, I was going through..."

[Matt:] "You had the memes of the guy- of the guys two-frame animations of all the- yeah, so people people who don't know. I'm not even gonna explain it, but it wasn't really there's there was a specific meme with Devil May Cry V, where two frames of animation got memed into hell and back as a dance, and there were endless endless frames of it, and it was great and that's, that's what Twitter is good for, is getting more of those."

[Dr. Coyle:] "And that was the thing, it's like my partner and I were literally, without exaggeration, going through the reveal trailer, frame by frame. We were that excited about it. And I was tweeting about it that much. I was so excited." [Laughing]

"These academics were like, "Um, this, this isn't really what I signed up for, I'm going to unfollow. I'm going to hit the unfollow-". So I was hemmoraging really influencial people in video game academia industry."

Housekeeping

I wrote a new tutorial about recording podcasts with Voicemeeter. You can find that on my dotcom.

I also decided to start an infodump on my Github for specific software, sites and services that I use on the daily. Sometimes there's just a "I didn't know I needed this until I knew it existed" feeling with certain things, and eff it.

Thanks for the love. I stream on Fridays and Tuesdays. Join the Discord for events and content notifications.

0 Comments