Episode 200 - Bicentennial

Like all great things, HWIDG has reached its 200th anniversary. That's right we've been bringing you life's toughest issues for two hundred years now. Hard to imagine that this all started with two guys writing into their local newspaper about the death of Daniel Boone and how he was "an overrated hack". Their newfound brotherhood in all the things in life that bugged them created what will become today's media empire. Here's to two hundred more:

* No Source
* Collectible Coins
* Ignoring Scalpers
* Time to Load Games

These days people are all about "aesthetic". Mood boards, screencap galleries, and more are plastered all over to get you to say "that's so aesthetic", whether its purple-soaked rainy cyberpunk or high end modern-day prosthetics-as-art or even retrofuture car dashboards. Even the dumb things you want to dunk on are their own dumb aesthetic. Therefore, you don't need to add any words or searchable features. They would just mess up the mood. That way you can get even more "engagement" by having everyone ask you what the hell it is you're aestheticing/dunking on.

Coins! Unless you've got a mint condition 1823 strawpenny they're worth about their face value. It's just metal! Usually bad quality metal at that! Quarters made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Watergate? Useless if they're made of the same things as regular quarters and they print a bazillion of them. Those commemorative 9/11 golden dollars you bought? Now those will be worth something when World War 3 happens. You could probably trade one of those puppies in for a week's worth of MREs. Mmmmmmm. Dehydrated chicken alfredo.

Seems every time an expensive limited-edition hot new thing is announced, the inevitable happens. Terrible people abuse the systems in place or straight up use bots to grab every one they can, then once stock is out, sell them on eBay or Facebook Marketplace for five times the price. That means you don't get a new Playstation, some kid doesn't get their Scooby Doo Lego set, and some highschooler that got a part-time job to buy those new Jordans is now failing Math for no reason. And who cares about this? Not the manufacturers. It seems every time this happens they say "we're so sowwy, we had no idea that putting all of our current stock up for order at a single time and announcing it ahead of time would make them disappear faster than a chocolate cake at a fat girl's wedding."  

20 years ago: insert cart/disk, boot into game, select your save and load, play. Currently: log in to your account, update console firmware, reboot, login, all your recently played games' updates are queued up, stop the ones you don't want so only the game you want to play now downloads its 43GB patch, watch YouTube on your phone but turn your Wi-Fi off so your console gets all the download juice, wait, let it unpack and patch, boot up the game, login to the Developer's account system, then finally you can play.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!