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.

Day 210: Shiny Thing

I’m debating whether to buy a new gaming PC in the sales.

I know I shouldn’t. I know that Black Friday is a lie, that consumerism is rotten all the way through to the centre of its shrivelled heart, that “we buy new stuff to conceal from ourselves our disappointment about the failings of the old stuff.”

I know all this. But on the other hand, I really, really want a Shiny Thing!

Imagine what life will be like with a new gaming PC. I’ll come home from work jubilant and excited, primed to undertake important writing and photo editing, the smile on my face illuminated by the elegant glow of the machine’s tasteful blue LEDs. Within seconds Windows will have booted from the secondary 500GB solid-state harddrive, and a world of buttery smooth computing will be at my fingertips. The 16GB RAM will handle tabbing between multiple programs without breaking a sweat. The Intel Core i5 processor will chomp through data at a rate of knots. And once the work is done, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card will bring stunning videogame worlds into stark, ultra-high-setting detail at framerates of which my hoary old Sony PlayStation 4 can but dream.

There’ll be no more turning my computer on and then going to make breakfast while it loads up. What a slog. What squalor. What debasement.

There’ll be no crashes to desktop. No Blue Screens of Death. No hard resets. I’ll press a button and the sleeping giant will roar to life, instantly ready to transport me to wherever in the digital world I require to go.

There’ll be no more sadness. No depression. No world hunger. Only whirring, purring machinery, the clicky-clack of keyboard keys, the softest gentlest glow from those comforting blue LEDs.

And what’s money? It is but a concept. Grubby bits of paper, lines on a bank ledger, imbued with only the meaning we choose to bestow upon it.

An abstract, whimsical thing, money, of little note. Far better to convert that whishy-washy idea into thrumming, corporeal silicon. Glass-windowed casing. The primal twitching coils of internal SATA cables. You can’t lick the concept of money, can you? But you can lick a motherboard (although perhaps you shouldn’t). The concept of money can’t keep you warm, but a 600 watt bronze-rated power supply will heat the home all the way through the icy months of winter.

And what of the Nintendo Switch I recently bought, sitting sniffling in the corner? A paltry creature, dull and lifeless. No one cares about Nintendo Switches anymore. It’s all about new gaming PCs. That’s where the future lies. Beautiful gaming PCs, big and bold, bristling with features.

Hear the voice calling. The silken voice of the Shiny Thing, whispering in your ear. “You’re nothing. You’re empty. You’re a husk. But I’ll take away your suffering, I’ll burn it apart in the coruscating gleam of the Shine. Buy me. Buy me, and together we will ascend.”

… Hmm. On second thoughts maybe I should leave it for now. Mike dropped some homemade soup off on his way to work. I’ll eat the homemade soup, ladle it out, mop it up with my leftover brown bread roll, and let another day pass.

Consumerism is a lie. Soup is truth. Lovely, lovely soup.