The Degeneration Station.

  • What this “station” aims to be.

    Like any other aimless and anxious 20/30-something these days, I seek to make my avoidance behaviors into means of artistic and critical expression. One of the constant avoidance behaviors in my life has been the quest for art and the humans that seek to create it — largely video games, animation, film, history, philosophy, literary analysis, among others — and the subsequent social interaction around the shared experience of discussing such. This process of consuming, critiquing, and communicating has been vital to me and I hope this platform can act as a means to reach a larger audience to engage and learn from.

    The Degeneration Station will act as my avenue to express my own experiences with — frankly — anything I chose to discuss. One week it may be a video game; another week it may be an opinion piece or specific anecdote. My hope is to create a broad range of topics that could entertain, inform, humor, or simply distract from the mundane. This broad approach can allow me to be subjective and personal, but also factual and informative, given my love of humanity and humanity’s history.

    “Station” is exactly what it means. This is a hub; a nexus where numerous pathways connect and lead to a myriad of diverging destinations. Additionally, this “station” should serve as a place of refuge; a place that is comfy; where you can take your time, order a warm beverage of your choice, look out the window, and take a breather before your next obligation that demands your attention later.

    To paraphrase Brandon Sheffield of insert credit: “back then, we defined ourselves by what we did; now we define ourselves by what we like“. This most likely explains the immense rise in media critics over the past decade. As we migrated from a traditional proactive approach to expressing ourselves (i.e. creating art, being a tradesmen), we became more immersed in a reactive approach — where the media we pay attention to and consume is what we use to self-identify; this could be a byproduct of the internet age, but that’s a discussion for another time.

    This evolution of how we express and self-identify is important to this site’s other significant word: “Degeneration”. In general, it is a form of self-deprecation disguised as a badge of honor. “Degeneration” is the process of becoming a “degenerate” — in this context. A degenerate is a self-conscious lad; entrenched in the feeling what they enjoy is not viewed as mature, worthwhile, or self-nurturing. However, they are also proud of their interests. It is the proud exaltation they could spend their time doing — literally –anything else; the irony almost fuels us, in a way.

    Hopefully, that provided enough explanation into the naming on this site and what I intend the title to convey: a gentile hostile of diverse views and interests that society deems as lacking of any value, but is meaningful to me. In addition to what I stated earlier about this site’s content, if I write any sort of (godforsaken) “review” or any other form of evaluative article: I will preface said evaluation with whatever metric I deem appropriate for the article at the time. I will not incorporate any numerals or stars, if I do, it will be far removed from the intended purpose of those metrics, as I do not believe a serious application of them is at all helpful for any lens of criticism. For my purposes, metrics of evaluation will be as volatile and dynamic as this site will be as I continue to write and tweak my methods; it will be interesting to see how it unfolds.

    With all that out of the way, I hope some of you will find any of my writings on here to provide any kind of meaningful insight and entertainment for you. What I ask is that you bear with me as this project takes its own shape as I continue to add to it. I do not have an schedule in mind as of now, but I will do my best to add what I can between my job and other social obligations. If things go according to plan, some of these potential essays could become videos as well as I work out setting up editing software on my computer.

    If you’ve read this far, thank you!! I hope to see you again when this gets updated next.

    Best wishes 🙂

  • A preamble, of sorts.

    I have no clear intention or auxiliary motivation making me write any of this. My need to not feel as though my youth is hopelessly slipping away may be one; my desperate need to feel competent, articulate, and creative may be another. Regardless, it has been knawing at me; the desire to express myself with the hope of being authentic and original…which may be a virtue, rather than a tangible goal — as if successfully pocketing a “13-ball” in a game of “9-ball”. This knawing could also be described as a self-loathing, an unfettering anxiety and unease that needs to be quelled like a gangrenous wound radiating down my torso, requiring a potent anesthetic.

    I have dabbled in various hobbies throughout my life. I grew attached to drawing early on; was pretty decent for my age, however, I never took the time to seriously learn the craft of drawing; so my skills became somewhat stagnated over time (although it still helped in some animation projects down the line). After seemingly infinite viewings of Empire of Dreams: The Story of The Star Wars Trilogy, I was inspired to get into film production and video editing — the latter of which I got proficient enough to get paid to do in my college years. Later into my adolescence, I was pushed into music when I picked up the bass guitar and progressed at a meteoric rate, gained some touring experience, played on some albums, and ended up teaching music into adulthood for over four years.

    The most pervasive skill — and oddly enough the one I have been the least invested in personally — has been writing. Again, it is not because I actively worked to improve it, it was because it was consistently encouraged. I was always told I had a knack for it; whether because I was raised by a teacher or I randomly developed an ability to lucidly envision flowery prose at the drop of a hat. To clarify, I am not saying I am hot shit or was a wordsmith at birth, but that I received external validation from others that it was worth fostering. I never really paid it much mind — nor improved it significantly — until college. I was always drawn to the humanities and that field was the training that I needed to channel that need to embellish unnecessary romantic pandering into tight, terse, arguments.

    Throughout all this, I developed an impulse to discover — notably the obscure, the aged, the unique, the emotional, the sentimental, the downtrodden, and the specific; from a historical perspective. Being an avid fan of looking back provided what would become my taste in art and related media in general. If there’s ever been a noteworthy film, video game, philosophical movement, war, line of illustrious monarchs, or book, there is a high probability I will scour the corners of the digital age to find who was responsible for these incidental historical artifacts. During this process, I attempt to find these creators’ upbringing, college major, place of birth, etc. Not only do I crave to know things for the sake of themselves (and their incidental aberrance), but also to deeply understand the who behind work because I am deeply invested in humanity as well as the art we create.

    What really exacerbated this impulse to learn about old shit was old-ass video games — as well as now old-ass Youtube videos about old-ass video games. Like most, the Angry Video Game Nerd exposed me to much of the pre-Super Nintendo era, while also teaching my 12-year old self the F-word was, in fact, okay. I eventually stumbled across a Nintendo Entertainment System at a thrift store for $8. Gazing upon the humble cardboard box containing it through the musty glass case encasing it; a door in the lateral side of my brain had opened. I was hooked. I used the early days of Youtube to study and gather as much information I could. My favorite has always been the work of Derek Alexander (Happy Video Game Nerd now Stop Skeletons from Fighting/Starship Amazing). His videos laid much of the foundation for my retro video game obsession and the collecting of such antiquated programmable objects. As cringe as it sounds, his lean towards the underrated, less discussed annals of gaming history embedded those same sentiments into me — as a part of my identity and self-worth. In general, I had worth because I knew.

    I tell you all this because all of these incidental interests and occurrences in my life have reached a culmination point. This culmination has been overwhelming. My chest is bursting, brain opaque and foggy, my eyes stare aimlessly into the stark empty sides of my bedroom’s vaulted walls. I do not want to live the rest of my feeling like I hesitated indefinitely; hesitating through the pain of feeling less; hesitating through fear of knowing I will become less. In order to help combat this anxiety and dread, I have decided to start this blog. I hope you all will join me to see what comes of it.

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