“Maybe one before I head out. I don’t want to overdo it,” you say. On your way to the kitchen you reach for your keys. You’re in a hurry, after all. Then you realize what happened.
Your keys are red hot. That rat Dominic gave you the ol’ spicy keychain!
The Ol’ Spicy Keychain
It’s no exaggeration to say I’ve been on the internet a little too long and a little too much. I remember the early days of viral memes. The first I recall seeing was someone writing “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” on a chalkboard at school. I remember looking at demotivators and advice animals like they were some kind of in-joke only me and my friends would get. Some of them even went a little far into being vulgar or mean-spirited, but we were dumb teenagers laughing at dumb teenage things. But this particular image escaped my notice until much later in my life.
I ran across the spicy keychain picture in a group chat among local friends. It sent me into unshakeable hysterics. I’m thankful I was alone at the time so I could dodge any puzzled looks from my wife or have to try to explain it to my son (he’d probably appreciate the slapstick of it but I think this one can wait until he’s a little older). For days after, the image kept popping into my head, forcing me to stifle the odd giggle and pretend to be coughing for a more legitimate reason. It stuck with me in a way memes never seem to do. It felt more permanent. It was so absurd but so perfectly presented in the story it told and the expressions it depicted.
FGC Twitter
I’m pretty active on fighting games Twitter. I get to see cool tech and match clips, learn about games I otherwise would never have seen, and stay on top of when tournaments are happening (and now that I’m a tournament organizer, I get to plug my own events). But there was something I noticed about the way FGC Twitter operated when it came to less specific discussions. When larger or more abstract aspects of fighting games became the talking point of the day, the visible community all at once seemed to engage in what I like to call the FGC discourse cycle. Here’s how it tends to go:
1. Someone, usually a well-known player, posts a “hot take.” The subject of this can range from directly gameplay-related (“Zoners shouldn’t have DPs”) to more metagame or meta-genre (“Accessible control options will reduce depth in fighting games.”)
2. The community engages in a back-and-forth argument. Tweets are retweeted and quite retweeted. Everyone gets their talking points and takes-on-the-takes out. People get unreasonably riled up.
3. The topic loses its luster and people move on, with few people having changed their opinions.
4. A new hot take comes along. This is often the same take as some previous instance of the cycle.
It started getting frustrating to watch the same talking points run through the cycle over and over. These were even arguments I remember from years ago! I saw people predicting FGC Armageddon over “dumbed down” games since I first got into the genre with Street Fighter 4 and Blazblue CT. And the worst part is that when I engaged, I got sucked into the cycle myself.
But what could I do? Venting my frustrations seemed pointless. I even saw people I knew doing it - bringing up how these topics have been done to death for years and how the argument never changes. But shouting “shut up!” at the loudmouths in a theater won’t help you hear the movie any better. You just add to the noise.
Reductivism as Argumentation
The whole situation felt absurd. I felt an urge to comment on it but what could I say that wasn’t just raw venting? My inspiration came chiefly from two sources: one was the spicy keychain. That perfect little surreal story about a cartoonishly assholish brother committing a cartoonishly assholish prank. The other was the idea of the over-explained political cartoon - the insistence on labeling things that didn’t need to be labeled felt like the touch my commentary needed. So I tried hanging some little signs on the keychain meme. Enter my first attempt.
Looking at it now, it feels clumsy, but the idea was beginning to take shape. At the time, the FGC discourse cycle was centered around the argument of whether learning frame data or playing by feel was the superior playstyle. I didn’t lean one way or the other on this argument - a good fighting game player should be able to be analytical and intuitive as the need arises. But the fact that the argument was even going is what I wanted to argue against.
So I turned it into something absurd. I reduced all the talking points and namecalling to their barest essentials and stapled it onto a funny picture. Then I kept doing it. Every time the FGC discourse cycle moved onto a new topic I did it again. Same format, same joke, same caption of “Here’s my take on today’s FGC discourse. Says so much about our society,” over and over. Once or twice I even reposted the same keychain when the conversation rolled back around to familiar issue.
Something curious happened - it started resonating with people. At first I thought this was just going to be something of an in-joke with my FGC friends, but it grew. People started relying on me to sum up the drama of the day, and I was happy to do it. Because it resonated with me too.
So I grew it. I started challenging myself to get more verbose, to grow the format well past the point of absurdity. It’s become a fun writing exercise. How dastardly can I make Dominic sound while still remaining the perspective I generally sympathize with? How much can I exaggerate his brother’s blamelessness while associating him with whoever I think is wrong in the argument? What’s the perfect little punchline to drive the point home?
So What’s the Point of it All?
Not a lot really. I’m just looking to give the folks out there a quick laugh and a reminder to not get sucked into Twitter spats if they don’t want to.
Cookies, anyone?
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