Day 211: Still shiny

Despite how the point of writing yesterday's blog post was to vicariously experience the thrill of buying a new gaming PC without actually having to buy one, I still came incredibly close to actually buying a new gaming PC.

I just needed someone to tip me over the edge. 

I asked my friend Mike what he thought, and he said that if I bought one I’d be miserable, and if I didn’t buy one I’d be miserable, so I might as well be miserable without one and save £800. 

I didn’t like that answer, so I asked my friend Steve, and he said that the deals were probably all companies getting rid of old stock now that the next generation of CPUs and GPUs had been released, and I said well still it would be an investment, and Steve said that a gaming PC wasn't an investment it was a depreciating asset, and I didn’t know what that meant so I stopped talking to Steve. 

Then I asked my mum whether I should buy one, and she said Absolutely not, that I shouldn’t spend large amounts of money when I was in a bad place emotionally, and I was like, aaaaahhh, Muuuum, if I shouldn’t spend large amounts of money when I’m in a bad place emotionally then that means I’ll never be able to spend large amounts of money! And she didn’t see the funny side of that.

So I went away in a huff and watched comparison videos on YouTube of the two graphics cards that the gaming PC I wanted offered as options, and I muttered darkly to myself.

“They don’t understand us, New Gaming PC. They're trying to keep us apart. It’s just you and me, New Gaming PC, it's just you and me. We’ll show them. We’ll show them all.”

And I got the tab back up of the deal I’d been looking at, and plugged in all my configuration choices, the graphics card that looked better, the upgraded SSD, and I stared at the price, and I stared at the picture of the completed rig, with the blue LEDs shining so tastefully… and then I changed channels on my TV and went to play the Witcher 3 on my PlayStation.

The Witcher 3, on console. A game that would look demonstrably stunning on my new gaming PC, but that on console was rendered with visual settings comparable to the low-to-medium preset on the PC. With a framerate targeting a meagre 30 frames-per-second, and struggling even to hit that. The Witcher 3 on console, looking like a pile of garbage, like a muddy pixelated piece of goddamned trash. I might as well just mash shards of glass and rusted knives into my eyeballs and be done with it. How dare everyone deny me the pleasure of The Witcher 3 on my new gaming PC? How dare they presume to know what is best for me? I know what’s best for me. I know what I need, and what I need is a brand new gami-

-and that was when I glanced at the time. 

Past midnight. The deals would all have finished. 

Oh thank Christ! A new gaming PC? What was I thinking? I can’t afford a new gaming PC. I can't afford lunch, let alone a new gaming PC! Madness. Utter madness.

 At least some part of me had the sense to take the ball, which in this analogy represents my debit card number, and run it to the other team’s corner flag, which represents The Witcher 3 on PlayStation, and wait out the final whistle, which was midnight.

And so that’s how you be an adult. You grab the decision making part of your brain, which obviously makes terrible decisions, just the worst, and you fucking RUN away with it and keep it away until there’s no longer any possibility of making the terrible decision any more.

And you just do that every day, I guess, until you die. Or something.

OK, I've finished this post now. This post is done. Go away.