Eyes Wide Open – How the Internet made people kinkier

A cold phone booth sits on Lewisham high street in the late 90’s. Stepping inside that phone booth was like entering some enshrined defiled womb; The door would shut tight behind you and seal you inside, tuning out the sound of nearby traffic until it became a distant murmur. The overpowering smell of stale piss would […]

A 31-year-old man attempts online dating: A cautionary tale.

Its 2am here and Brixton from my bed is as silent as anything. Outside, distant cars create an echoey soundscape and the penetrating light of my phone swallows up my face like a flood light. Its a sleepless night tonight. Just me and the disillusioned glow of a dating app to keep me company. Faces […]

London Alternative Market: BDSM, but not as you know it.

LAM or the London Alternative Market is disappointing. But it’s not disappointing for reasons you might expect. It’s disappointing by just how normal everything seems. It’s not disappointing because it’s gross. It doesn’t disappoint because it’s a toxic environment or because it’s overpoweringly intimidating. Nope, it’s actually just pretty normal.

Mean Streets: Scorsese’s observant gaze

The strange thing about being British, particularly now, is you grow up in the shadow of the United States – a cultural behemoth, something so grand and consuming that we can’t help but know so many intricacies of their culture just like we know our own. Boston is a baseball town, New York is an […]

VR infancy: Taking a peek inside The Matrix

It’s hard not to feel excited, much like I was, on the 16th of July, watching a delivery driver pull an ominously dark package from the back of his van. I stood at the front door of my flat with an eager, gormless smile on my face as he handed me a box that could […]

How Tyranny avoids oppressive storytelling

Storytelling in games is an experiment that few games have successfully managed to fully grasp. This often means that games will either be a distracting spectacle of explosions and frivolity or they’ll double down on cinematic excellence to compete with their celluloid cousins. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you. Games like The Last […]

Far Cry 5 and the moral quandry of player freedom

Resting in the rolling valleys of Montana lays a small, picturesque farm. Armed men roam the farm picking at their skin, occasionally kicking cages that contain ravenous killer dogs. They chat amongst themselves, load and unload their rifles as a church hymn plays over a loudspeaker, followed by a dramatic sermon by one of the […]

What The Sopranos can teach us about morality

Despite what social media might be telling you this modern era spoils us: in 2018, Netflix and its imitators graciously drown our culture in lusciously detailed TV dramas on an almost weekly basis and this renaissance of high-quality entertainment has the shadow of Tony Soprano looming large over its shoulder.

The reason why we need Net Neutrality – We can’t be trusted to rule ourselves.

In the early 2000’s, messenger apps such as ICQ, IRC, Yahoo Chat and MSN Messenger connected people in ways that were previously unthinkable. For a society limited to phone calls or, shudder, actual hand-written letters, messaging a stranger or a friend separated by miles of distance was absolutely revelatory. IRC especially was an acutely hidden […]

Digital Brain in 2018 – Turning Puddles into Oceans.

PSX2017 has crawled by this year rather unceremoniously – a much more muted affair this year with some surprise new announcements but otherwise, it is resolutely par for the course. Some sequels announced, Reddit gets excited. Some remaster that perhaps 100 people will enjoy, Reddit celebrates the nostalgia. Some horrendously awkward on-stage segments with socially […]