CW: racism, obviously

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFOqBbngMrk

Only 308 views on this.

I was flattering one of the mods, saying they were without peer; that they only removed few posts and when they did it was people who disagreed with me; and they were lucky to have such great powers. In response the mod offered to switch places with me for a day so that I could "experience this great power firsthand." I eagerly accepted the mod's proposal.

I sat on my computer chair and moderated the comm with a nicer mod-exclusive UI, access to the girls-only mod chat, and the service of grovelling users begging to not have their posts removed. But the mod, who has made many enemies during their modship, arranged that a naginata sword they bought me off Amazon Prime should hang above my computer chair, held at the mekugi-ana only by a single hair of a horse's tail to evoke the sense of what it is like to be a mod: though having much censorious power, always having to watch in anxiety against dangers that might try to overtake them, whether it is a jealous admin or wrecker, a slanderous rumor, an enemy instance, a poor website decision, or anything else.

I finally begged the mod for permission to depart because I no longer wanted to be so fortunate, realizing that while I could have had everything I could ever want at my fingertips as a mod, it could not affect the dangers over my head.

I loved the art style a lot. Animation was great too.

Normies flow down the feed
While he drowned in its flow
Clutching the heterodoxical roots of thought
He stepped into the ceaseless beyond

Loose knit moderators of the thought crime procession
Banded together under the mod's sword
To wage a holocaust verse against the age of the cis man
Up and down, Twitch streams of humans’ feeble course
Grandiose removals retrograde of thoughts that were
Locking future threads
Erasing posts that are

I am a mod, the prime being
I shall impale you
On the crumbled posts of the millennia

I dread flying. But as I was preparing to travel to San Francisco for this year’s Game Developers Conference, I had one reason to be excited: It would be my first flight with the Steam Deck. I downloaded several games onto the handheld and gleefully stowed it in my carry-on, right next to my Switch OLED.

That excitement quickly turned to embarrassment thanks to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

As I reached the front of the airport security line, I pulled my laptop out of my bag as I normally would. I asked the TSA agent standing by if I had to remove any game consoles as well. She asked if I meant the Switch, and looking to avoid a needlessly complicated explanation, I said yes. She told me to remove any systems, so I did. First, I pulled my Switch out of its soft slip case. Then, I pulled out the Steam Deck’s comparatively hulking carrier and flopped the beastly device right next to the Switch. That’s when I noticed a strange, almost suspicious look on the TSA agent’s face.

“That’s a Switch?”
“No, no, this is a new thing.”
“… That’s too big.”

That last line, delivered with an incredulous laugh, has stuck with me long since my flight, mostly because she’s right. I couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious about booting up the device on the plane, the same as I would if I were to take my shoes off during a flight. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to realize how truly ridiculous gaming hardware is.

Last year I travelled alone on a flight from London to New York. The flight officially takes around eight hours, but from the time you get on the plane to the time you leave it’s probably more like nine or ten. As soon as I sat down in my assigned seat I took out my fully charged PlayStation Vita. I was playing the visual novel Norn9. I recommend it. Once I started to play, the man next to me decided to grab his Steam Deck, Valve’s ostensibly handheld console, before the flight.

He was storing his Steam Deck in his backpack that was sensibly stowed away in the overhead locker. As people were still shuffling down the aisle, there was a little hubbub getting the portable console to his seat, but with a few minutes of struggle it was secured. He sat down and turned it on. I noted that he also had a full battery. After some browsing through his library he settled on Hogwarts Legacy. After this I remained absorbed in my story until I heard a sigh.

I turned to the noise to see that his Steam Deck was dead. The sigh was not only because his Steam Deck was dead, not only because it can’t be charged from the weak plane USB chargers, but because we were still mid-take off and he couldn’t put the handheld away until the seatbelt sign was turned off. He wrestled a little to grab his headphones from the seat pocket in front of him with the Steam Deck teetered awkwardly on his lap. It was impeding him from doing anything else. Eventually the sign turned off, he put the Steam Deck back into the overhead locker and I never saw it again.

lol. The stupid fucking behemoths we get now instead of something actually usable.