Episode 287 - Damn Nurture, You Scary!

The rumors are true folks! HWIDG is going away soon. It's been a good run, but Tab has decided to go off and become a dairy farmer in Wisconsin so he can be closer to his father, Rich Evans. Also harming the recording schedule is a slew of serial handle-related assaults and cipher messages that are gripping the Southwest. So enjoy it while you can folks, and remember, you can't rise from the ashes like a phoenix if you don't first burn out in a blaze of glory!

- Farewell Tours
- Card Only
- Ass Beatings
- Forced Fandom

As HWIDG sets sail on their own farewell tour, just like all old fogies, we're going to do the exact thing we're yelling about others doing. The problem with *other* farewell tours though is that they're too long. Far too many acts decide it's time to quit five years from now, so they start a farewell tour then, instead of in four years. Imagine if we had announced we were ending the podcast on episode 500 and spent the next five-ish years parading around like it was the end. The one thing we do have in common though is that just like your favorite band from forty years ago, there are no original members left, or it's one of the old guys with a rotating band of session players. Too bad, kid. You wanted to see the original line up? You've either got to animate some corpses or travel back in time to before they broke up over who got to screw that groupie in Laredo. We're just playing the game as given though, so don't blame us when the reunion tour comes around.

In this day and age, you can be flying through digital aisle after aisle packing your digital card full of stuff you don't need, and probably won't use but are cool to look at, ready to pay with your digital money, when all of a sudden the vendor asks you for your credit card information. And not through some secure portal either. Nah, you've got to type that info in the way you used to order pizza over the phone, or when John Wick needs your help in Fortnite. I'm not saving my card info on a dozen plus websites that get hacked daily are you kidding me?

You ever see a video of someone just getting their ass handed to them in a fight? Fun to watch, ain't it? What's going on before the first punch is thrown though? Is one of them just quietly minding their own business? Or even trying to walk away from the situation? Or are they yelling back like a jackass, telling the other to "come and get it"? I think aside from that one week where "the knockout game" was popular (was it though?), generally, you keep your mouth shut, you don't end up with your nose spewing blood on the concrete. It's that simple.

It used to be that a fan was just that, a fan. Yes, I enjoy the media property Space Goons, I am a fan. Then came stans. The crazy, deranged, obsessive ones. Originating from the Eminem song about a fan that takes his lyrics too seriously and kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend because Eminem won't talk to him. And just like everything else, it lost its original meaning and become something to be proud of. And then it went even further. If the stans were the "true fans" the obsessive know-it-all Wikipedia lore guardians, then what were the "fans"? Well, they weren't. And just like that if you didn't dive headfirst into the singular identifier of "fan", you were other-ed. You had to be willing to die in the line of fire for your favorite IP. Willing to die on the hill of argument about Kyber crystals in order to just enjoy flashing lights and colors on your TV. No thanks.

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