Audio Blog
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Audio Blog ♪
It’s that time of the year again for some retrospective goodness. Unlike previous retrospectives where I blindfolded myself and threw darts at a board for ideas to talk about, 2022 is going to be more organized and the blueprint for all future ones. I’m going to divide the year into 4 quadrants, each one consisting of 3 months. I’m going to chronologically talk about the year and add commentary on topics I either forgot to mention during that time period or simply double down on subjects I deem still important at the end of the year. The audio blog will be split into 2 sections covering 2 quadrants each. So without further pomp and circumstance, let’s get the ball rolling and look back at all 2022 had to offer us. Also heads up that the retrospective is NSFW. In previous years I made a big deal about it warning visitors, this year I’m taking a more “you know why you’re here” approach and just letting things be as they are.
January - March
I mentioned at the end of my retrospective for 2021 that YouTube’s censorship had caught me in their crosshairs and that my channel would forever be stunted in growth and discovery due to a community strike. Nothing has changed for the entire year on this end. What I will say however is that external forces have pushed YouTube’s hand ever so slightly to ease up on these (frankly stupid) restrictions. For you see, 2022 was somewhat a year of “pendulum swinging”. I’m not going to get political on my site (nor will I ever), but you definitely can tell by the end of 2022 that certain dominant voices at the beginning of 2022 have been severely quieted by the end of it. Tech companies that fall under a certain “sphere of influence” also have shifted their policies a bit to adjust to the newer voices being in more control. But at the end of the day competition is in full swing, and YouTube faces a mountain of it. And I can say that we are all better for it, whatever you may think or feel at the end of the day. Especially people who create content.
Artist is すうりん
With the way I do things on my site, it inevitably means that the first update of the year technically always falls inline with the beginning of the new lunar year. So 2022 was the year of the Tiger and 2023 will be of the Rabbit. If you play any type of gacha game, Lunar new year is probably one of the most generous of the entire year due to cultural reasons. So it is worth noting that if you ever want to rekindle your love affair with a game you may have quit in the past or never thought about spending money on up until this point, Lunar new year is always the best time to do so outside of a game’s launch anniversary. Coincidentally, Lunar new year is probably one of the worst times to order anything directly from Asia as most working individuals will be on vacation for a minimum of 2 weeks. Use this knowledge for all future plans for the months of January to February!
I remember mentioning about how podcasts have now become the new normal when it comes to long form content. And it seems 2022 was the year a lot of exclusive podcasts started to rear their heads, choosing whatever platform offered the highest amount of perks for the creator. Typically I would scoff at such content as nothing more than a money grab by a desperate figure; but the reality is that some of the best content I have listened to all year has been exclusive stuff. One of my recent favorites is the Mr Ballen podcast which is only found on Amazon Music. Although he has a YouTube channel where you can see his abridged video stories ( a teaser for you above), his podcasts are definitely more intense and well written to tell a story in a relatively short amount of time. A lot of folks in 2022 are now making the permanent transition to working from home or finding jobs where there’s a high level of self autonomy (such as logistics & delivery). It’s these type of jobs that benefit the most from finding a podcast they might enjoy listening to to help whittle away the long work hours, and I sincerely hope by now yourself have found something to dig your teeth into.
Artist is MSG / MIST
Sometimes when we think so much about the future, we forget to take a moment to look at the past that got us to where we are today. Back in March I revisited a long time acquaintance in MIST who was still alive and kicking after all these years of radio silence in terms of game development. Not only did I discover he was still working, but he was actually a pretty good artist to boot, and now has plans on brining back one one of his oldest games for an update! I wish the best for the guy and hope his future projects become more successful; as I know the feeling all too well of trying to do right by your peers and being stuck in the mire of slow progress.
Some things are worth repeating until I’m dead. NFTs and Crypto are one of those things. I don’t care about what you do with your money. I don’t care what you do with other people’s money. What I do care is when people misrepresent something as something else. And if the entire freaking FTX debacle didn’t hammer down the entire world of “greedy assholes ripping off other greedy assholes” is crypto defined in general, I have no words to add. I mentioned back in March the quickest way to get on people’s bad side is to mess with their money. So I make a habit of not messing with people’s money. All I would like to say is that as a friendly reminder from one human to the next, try your best not let other folks mess with your money. This is coming from someone who ran an unsuccessful Kickstarter at the end of the year and received absolutely 0 cents or dollars from anyone involved when the project failed. Honest people will always give honest assurances that your money is safe while showing you where it is at the entire time in the pipeline. I can’t stress enough when someone says “trust me bro” that they’re about to take you for a ride, and the entire greed based world I try my best to avoid eats people up on an hourly basis. There’s NEVER a free lunch in life, everything comes from sweat, blood and tears. If not yours, someone else gave up those things to make something. Always remember this when dealing with crypto, for anyone who “wins” does so on the corpses of many (and I do mean many) loosers.
April - June
April was a pretty chill month on the site, insulated from the growing world events at the time that started to make headlines. I think people visiting my site for quite a while now may see me as some type of Japanophile (and I don’t blame them considering the links!). But what I do enjoy about certain cultures is the ability take time out of one’s day to chill. Or to seek chill. Or anything that encourages the pursuit of relaxing and helping others relax. Walking videos (particularly in Japan) has been a long running theme on my site for quite some time now; but did you also know I really enjoy traveling videos focused on trains? Better yet, there are even dedicated YouTube channels out there showcasing train travel all over the world like the one I linked you above. Bonus points for the fact that it isn’t located anywhere in Asia! Although rare for me to do this considering it’s a retrospective of 2022, I will be adding Simply Railway as a suggestion on The List since I’ve been binge watching it pretty much the entire month of December while I was pretty heavily sick. It goes along with the theme of taking the time to relax back in April, and it’s really never too late to do that.
A strong word of warning, the videos I linked above could be the most interesting thing I ever put on the website… or it could also be the most boring! That’s because back in May I did a whole bit on the importance of sleep and relaxation, and hinted at the idea of potentially using ASMR to train yourself to get some shut eye. I want to report that I’ve been following my own advice ever since then and have had some damn good results falling sleep to the sound of rain or running water within minutes. Sleep is one of those "life skills” people tend to ignore, taking it for granted and eschewing it altogether for activity. If a random person could go up to you and say “I have a suggestion for you that will make your life better in every way possible”, they would be implying to get some more deep sleep. It’s one of those painfully “obvious but not obvious” things people ignore like staying properly hydrated throughout the day. If there’s anything to take from my entire 2022 retrospective away, it seriously would be this bit of advice. Just try and sleep more, and do whatever it takes in your life to get some more.
June was one of my all time favorite blogs of 2022 because I started to let my philosophy freak flag fly. I covered a wide range of topics that had to deal with the human condition, and every single thing I recommended everyone to look at back then I still feel is completely worth checking out today if you haven’t done so already. One of the things I tried to lift the veil of mystery behind was the art of MMA and combat sports in general. How the stories of people involved are a lot more than the headlines and click bait articles seem to every imply. It’s also one of those unpopular realities of the world when we start to see our heroes (and thus ourselves) fade away from glory. If there’s anything I want you to take away from the cautionary tale I linked you above, it’s that compassion for human sacrifice is often times missing from many stories told over the years. As I alluded to in my talk about crypto and NFTs, all things come with a hidden price. All great successes come upon the back of blood, sweat and tears. And not everyone wins in the end, even if they “won” once in their life. I hope that point makes it through all the metaphor.
July - September
Artist is Kokonattsu
Artist is Michi
Summer of 2022 was the start of my “Don’t forget about old horny and go touch some grass” arc. It’s kind of funny how lewd things got this particular summer, but I think I was in one of those moods where I was REALLY getting freaking tired of people downplaying lewdness in general and that we as a society are “becoming better” moving away from it. I think it comes off pretty non-subtly that I was kind of low key angry and being a smart ass about it for the months of July and August - posting as much as I could get away with. I was also a bit dissatisfied with the lack of mainstream offerings dealing with monster girls, alien girls, furry girls and all markets “underserved”. But in-between the lines you can also kind of see that I was running low on ideas to talk about since during summer months, as most folks are happy and outdoors anyway. As a matter of fact, engagement on my website is the lowest in the peak summer months, so that’s why I have to make the extra effort to get eyes on anything I have to do or say. Well adjusted people go outside and make their own interesting stories to tell, so July to September typically is pretty slow period for me content wise. It also doesn’t help that it’s a dead time for gaming (no new releases typically) and dead there too.
If there’s something I wanted to emphasize a lot in 2022, it was to shake off the rust and go outside again. Just walk, move, do something that isn’t related to the internet. Just go and travel, somewhere… anywhere. There’s a limited window of time between when the world “goes back to busy” and where we are now. You can travel to a lot of places now without too much overcrowding, at a decent price, and enjoy yourself without feeling like a full blown tourist. And this window is shrinking day by day as people start to realize the world is worth seeing again, outside the confines of a chair, sofa or bed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to relax and unwind. Especially if you’re on your feet all day long and being outside is “part of the job”. But there’s also a large portion of us that neglect travelling whatsoever. And that was the entire point I was really, truly trying my best to showcase back in September.
October - December
It was a dry year for paranormal stuff on the site. That’s because I’ve found increasingly more horrifying stories based on actual events than any created fiction. I think looking back at October’s blog post, I actually could marry the two subjects of strange things in the world alongside YouTube stuff. In October I mentioned that my severe lack of updates on the channel was tied to the platform going through a lot of internal strife (and linked other content creators addressing the issue). But it’s a little known fact that YouTube has always kind of been a last ditch effort for those seeking social validation or an outlet for personal stress. I think it’s important to realize that outside of the highly manufactured part of the platform, there are very real people with real lives doing their best to share what they can of their lives. And sometimes it’s really raw and not pretty.
Artist is Akusemama
November was my 2nd favorite update of the year due to the fact that it was absolutely loaded with gaming content. It was my lost love letter to gacha gamers out there since I had been quiet for so long throughout the year. I want to emphasize that a lot of the games that I looked at in November are probably still fresh and ongoing even if you’re reading this retrospective late in 2023; so give them all a shot if you haven’t done so already. That being said the elephant in the room is and was Nikke being launched in the same month. I have a lot to say about Nikke, but it’s really best emphasized in the audio portion of the retrospective. Let’s just say the game is both equally great and disappointing for various reasons. I have high hopes for the future of Nikke, but I think right now it’s quite the incomplete product. I’m also quite shocked at how “safe” the game’s art direction is considering it was suppose to be “the” lewd champion game of 2022. As a matter of fact, another game I talked about that very same month (Dungeon Squad) ending up being immensely more lewd that anything Nikke had in the tank! Just goes to show it isn’t the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog when it comes to putting out content that earns the title “fanservice”.
December is my all encompassing life blog retrospective for the year. 2022 was a pretty wild ride with extremely high highs and low lows with relation to my personal life and hobbies. As a happily married middle aged man, 2022 was fantastic on all fronts on the “normie” side. I finally paid off my mortgage, did a ton of work on my home, and did a lot of fun outdoor stuff with the wife I haven’t been able to do throughout 2020-2021. On the flip side however, 2022 was the worst year in terms of my hobbies being quite frankly the most boring and disappointing year to date since 2017 and the inception of this site. Ironically me and the misses contracted Omicron early in December and were sick like dogs for about 2 weeks. But we both got paid time off from work for it (thanks Californian government lol) and we got through the ordeal with a lot of humor and self reflection. Yet my humble Kickstarter for the website failed spectacularly of its goal (not even reaching half funding), adding onto the overall disappointment for my hobbies for the year. If 2022 was trying to get me to quit everything I’ve done in my time off for the last 5 years; it made one damn convincing argument for it. But I’m still alive and kicking after everything is said and done, and hoping that 2023 will rekindle the “interest” flame that has almost been put out. I thank all of you who have been loyal along the journey with me for the past couple of years. Let’s both look forward to a better 2023, and maybe snag a lucky rabbit’s foot in the process together!
Artist is Zeke / Zerolativity
