There is really nothing like setting goals for the next year. A chance to refocus and push new agendas that otherwise might seem too big for a week or a month. You get to make up a plan for a whole damn year, and AVOutput is going to do it up moderately big for a one person operation. I was digging through the archive of my musings and found that every year since 2017, I have written less and less. I wasn’t doing anything particularly different, but by the end of 2024 I had finally figured out what was slowing me down. There was just way too much content being churned out. The constant flow from thousands of brilliant creators and millions of bots crunching those thousands into consumable media, all vying for just a few minutes of your attention. AVOutput was trying to just be another one of those voices; it felt overwhelming. That’s when I realized that my perception of AVOutput was out of sync with who I am as a person, who most people are truly becoming. I needed to recreate this project into something that made more sense for my aging millennial ass.

There is a story behind AVOutput, and you can read about that if you want, but when it was created in 2008 it was started with the design of being at the forefront of nerd culture to simply add our own voice to the mix. Writing reviews, articles, podcasts, music, and videos about all of the news in the geekosphere. But as young grandeur turned into middle-aged pursuits, AVOutput became a less than part-time hobby blog, experimental YouTube channel, and an excuse for getting into Twitch. We started out with Twitch in earnest. Trying to make a schedule, playing interesting new games, showing cheap or free movies from YouTube, and making fun commentary with friends. While we never cracked more than 10 viewers at a time, it was the most fun I’d had online since the shit-talking days of Halo 3. Again, overtime my co-creators fell into other passions, and AVOutput simply became my channel to show whatever I was playing. And it just so happens that as a lifelong gamer with a backlog older than I have actually been alive, I played whatever my heart desired and 90% of it was not remotely “new”. The people who did drop in were people with similar niche interests. It felt nice. While at work, I have a lot of time to listen to other content, and most of that time I spend listening to retrospectives and old game soundtracks. And that’s when I realized where my passions lie now; in whatever the hell I am feeling in the moment, in and outside the glut of the content machine.

AVOutput in 2025 is going to be a place for me and my ilk (honestly it will probably be entirely yours truly) to post content that sparks joy. I have accepted that my time has passed and much of what I have to say is about the past, about who I am now, who I was then, and how that shapes what I have seen. Everyone’s content backlog is so large it takes years to get to the stuff people are doing today. Content is lucky to grab even a minor majority of attention that when it does, its truly shocking. And while 20 million people may watch a single show, those same 20 million people are not watching the next show, they have their own interests. No one person or even group of people can keep up with the good, the bad, and the ugly being produced and have something interesting to say about it anymore. Nerd culture is no longer an umbrella or a big tent, but more akin to that trash island floating in the pacific. On that trash island is a small thrift store, filled with old culture. AVOutput is going to be your garbage island thrift store connoisseur.

The AVOuput 2025 resolution is to do things our way, which is what we should have always been doing, and maybe what we always have done. Now it’s simply the focus. Mostly old, maybe something new, but hopefully always interesting. If it’s not interesting, at least it was content for the AI that will ultimately eat it as a small snack (which is not permission to do so, make your own content AI). Now it’s time to write an article on Minesweeper, a game I have never understood, but was probably some kind of government conspiracy. That sparks joy. See you in 2025.