Google’s getting worse, I’m sure you’ve noticed. And it's not just Google, everything has an AI button clamouring to be clicked when all I want to do is write an email in my own damn words. Facebook’s been a hellhole for longer than it was ever that novel, fun place it was when it was chronological rather than algorithmic. But I’m not just here to moan, or post pictures of the good old days like a Facebook community page whose bulldog-avatar followers think the blitz was the last time people were nice to each other. I have, however, fallen into the mire of nostalgia.
T-t-try again Mr Potter, you can do it.
This week I was distracted from my work in one of the nichest possible ways. I was listening to a Youtube '90s Computer Room' compilation (because the things that help me focus are sometimes even nicher) and halfway through, a piece of music grabbed me in a food-critic-in-Ratatouille moment. It sounded like wholesome mischief, it repeated itself without being repetitive, and it was distinctive without dominating your attention. It was a song from the original soundtrack of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for PC. Within minutes of hearing it, I was finding a way to download and play the game on a modern Windows computer (hint: the Internet Archive is, as always, your friend.)
It’s exactly as I remember it. Warm, inviting, glitchy as hell. As an offline game, it’s a space frozen in time. There’s no update, no expansion, no change. It’s also divorced from any revisionism or adjustments from anyone - I don’t think JK has made any pronouncements on the canonical accuracy of PS1, PC, or Gameboy Colour Hagrid. It is a way to directly access the memory of the space I used to inhabit, to wander around those low-poly halls in much the same way that Harry does in the pensive. Having grown-up, worked, and socialised in the constantly shifting online world, there’s something very reassuring about discovering that a dear digital space from my childhood has been preserved just as it was. There’s also an irony to finding stability in an obsolete piece of software designed to run on obsolete software running on obsolete hardware.
On the other hand, I went to the dentist last week. It was their first day running a new computer system, so there was some light banter about struggling to get the bloody thing to work and why does anything have to change etc. I glanced over at the computer to see my notes. Alongside my name was a circle with a picture in it. I wasn’t close enough to see the detail of it, but even from a distance I recognised the splodgy greyish-white with thin lines of black. It’s a caricature of me, drawn by a guy I knew at school. He drew it while we were in sixth form, which is when I’d added it to my Yahoo email address as my avatar. I’ve since tried to remove it on several occasions, but it persists, occasionally popping up when I use that ancient (and, naturally, cringely named) address for something inconsequential like: notifications from my dentist. And it’s a good drawing - quite flattering really. ‘Caricature’ is the wrong word, it’s more like a stylish pen drawing - the kind that my own chronically ugly doodles could never imitate. It depicts the high cheek bones and lightly curled hair of a fresh faced man wearing a collared shirt, and no longer resembles me in the slightest. It quite resembles another figure that my school friend used to draw: Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock. So in this instance, the artefacts of digital-yesteryear haven’t provided that much comfort, they’ve just given my dentist the impression that I’m the last remaining vestiges of the Sherlock fandom.
I'm sure I had a brilliant way to tie all of these disparate thoughts together into a cohesive conclusion but, as I've lost my remembrall, I cannot recall it.
The latest episode of Watts on your Screen: