I’m not sure calling Gorbechev an idiot is right though.

Just because he was a victim of external interests, as you describe. Feels a bit victim-blamey.

“Look what you made the US do to you”.

Yeltsin, maybe though.

Which bit of history does this represent?

At first I thought it might be the break up of the USSR, but that doesn’t really work here. So that leaves me at a loss.

I just can’t see how Gorbachev and Trump, or their actions, are similar.

Nah, we sometimes call them “Yank Vegetables”.

I’m starting with the man in the mirror I’m asking him to change his ways And no message could’ve been any clearer If they wanna make the world a better place Take a look at yourself and then make a change

I don’t think this is a gaming problem.

It is a discourse problem.

People engage in absolutes. They either love a thing or hate a thing. There’s no nuance.

And it must be made to cater for them, there’s no expectation that it will contain choices they don’t approve of.

And this stance, this modern relationship with the world permeates everything, especially forms of media.

You see it in films and books… Fans and stans and folk trying to take it down. There is no nuance or middle ground.

People don’t accept that, perhaps, something isn’t just “not for them”. That’s why you get grown men complaining about the direction of children’s shows they used to watch.

And this is compounded with social media where polarisation, blunt takes and contradiction are the primary drivers of engagement.

Audience error.

"If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a shortcut, it’d just be the way. "

Modding varies from game to game, but having been doing it for nearly 40 years now, I can say it has generally become easier in the titles that want you to and harder in the ones that don’t.

Being old.

I used to be able to sleep endlessly.

Now I find myself awake early in the morning, despite having gone to bed rather late. And I’d like to go back to sleep but I can’t.

I miss it.

And this isn’t even about needing to get up to pee. That’s apparently something I still have to look forward to.

Ok, not preaching here… Just sharing something that helped me.

I was “terminally online”.

It got me down.

What I found out was that staying well informed doesn’t mean keeping up to date with what is happening at this very moment. It means learning all the wonderful things from history.

Well informed means learning, right?

There are so many brilliant things you can learn right now. And they’ll all make you a better, more useful, citizen.

Learn how to paint. Learn photography. Learn why the Japanese like squid. Learn cockney rhyming slang. Learn about Egypt’s history with gold. Learn it all. That’s also staying well informed.

News is such a small part of being human.