{"id":938,"date":"2011-05-09T21:45:33","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T11:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/?p=938"},"modified":"2011-05-09T22:03:50","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T12:03:50","slug":"so-long-old-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/2011\/05\/so-long-old-world\/","title":{"rendered":"So Long, Old World"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
What I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m holding in my hand is a letter kindly reminding me that I have one issue left of my subscription to gaming magazine \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHyper<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. And I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help but feel a bit melancholy because after 12 years, I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be renewing.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
*cue violin* <\/p>\n

You see this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just a goodbye to the magazine itself, but to the whole print medium.<\/p>\n

*wipes tear*
\n 
\n
\nLet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s take a trip down Memory Lane. My magazine subscription journey started in 1998. I was in the 8th grade with a Pok\u00c3\u00a9mon obsession and to compliment my Nintendo 64<\/a> gaming habits I subscribed to a N64-only magazine appropriately titled \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcN64 Gamer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. A few years later Nintendo launched it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next console the GameCube<\/a> and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcN64 Gamer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 was renamed \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcNintendo Gamer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. Sadly the GameCube did not perform as well and was pummelled by the PlayStation 2. As a result the magazine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s readership most likely fell and the magazine was cut by a metaphorical axe. My subscription with the defunct magazine was then transferred to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHyper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u201danother gaming magazine that covered all consoles, handhelds and PC. And this is where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been for the past 5+ years.<\/p>\n

The choice to discontinue the print subscription is a bittersweet reflection of where things are heading, which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve only experienced over the last year. It really is all digital from here, no more touchy feely and warm fuzzy feelings associated with the printed form. I get most of my news online anyhow.<\/p>\n

I used to browse book stores then order the books from Amazon. These days I rarely visit and their End is looming over the horizon (see Borders closing story here<\/a>). For text heavy books I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m already buying eBooks<\/a>. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re cheaper and you can do things that are only possible in the digital realm, like copying quotes and pasting them on your Tumblr to remind your followers you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re deep, cultured and contemplative.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a harrowing idea that my kids (if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have any) may not enjoy the fruits of the printed medium, such as the unappreciated trait that paper ages and discolours; discovering scribbled notes in textbooks; the charms of doggy eared pages; or being fucking annoyed when a page has been torn out where a critical part of the book should be.<\/p>\n

And sigh, the video stores. You see, one of my favourite past times was visiting the local video store. One day I got up with a smile, hopped into my beat up car and made it down to the local. But to my dismay it was closed. Forever. Like a desperate man who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d trekked dangerous lands in hopes of finding long lost treasure and discovering in the end there wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even an ounce of gold, I fell to my knees. Threw my clenched fists out wide and roared at the disinterested sky. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t raining that day, nor was it in monochrome. But if it were, you can bet it would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been really dramatic.<\/p>\n

Over the next few months other video stores were closing too. Even the franchises. Looks like downloading movies from this thing called The Internetz had taken it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s toll.<\/p>\n

Anyhoo, every evolution has its upsides. Besides being reasonably cheaper, and I guess \u00e2\u20ac\u0153interactive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, the clear advantage of digital content is that it takes up zero physical space. You know how you can never keep your living room clean like the ones in the Ikea catalogues? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because you always have stuff, notably magazines and books, lying all over the place.<\/p>\n

Now it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all neatly stored on your black iPad sitting atop your beechwood coffee table, placed parallel to the edge and next to that chai latte.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m holding in my hand is a letter kindly reminding me that I have one issue left of my subscription to gaming magazine \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHyper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. And I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help but feel a bit melancholy because after 12 years, I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be renewing. *cue violin*  You see this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just a goodbye to the magazine itself, [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.invertmethod.com\/bravo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}