Monday, September 8, 2014

One of those random kicks in the teeth

When it comes to how I spend what free time I have, I'm not very consistent. I have more hobbies and interests than I could ever explore, even if I was one of those people who go around with a katana tucked under their trench coat and who only really worry about whether or not whatever threat they're facing will decapitate them. I'll get on Facebook for a few weeks, get bored with it, and move on to World of Warcraft. When that gets repetitive, I'll catch up on all the channels I subscribe to on Youtube. So on, and so on. Interests and desires are the sorts of things that grow faster the more you indulge them, so I'm not going to start listing things because then that's all this post would contain.
No, the above paragraph is my clever way of not looking like a clueless idiot when I just now notice something that happened a few months ago. I've mentioned Fearnet a few times here, and just today I pulled it up, wanting to see what movie they're showing and what news they have of the cool and the creepy. The answer is none. No movies, no news, no photosets of graveyards where someone is having a teddybear picninc. There's none of that, because surprise! There is no Fearnet. It seems one of the companies that owned it bought out the other companies that owned it, and folded it into the ChillerTv website. I have that one open in one window on my computer while I write this, but I'm not getting the same 'wow, look at all this cool stuff!' vibe that I got from Fearnet. Yep, change happens, and it loves to happen when we're off doing something else and relying on them to not change. If I hadn't gone back to playing WoW semi-regularly, I might have noticed that this happened back in- um, *cough* April. What can I say? I was working on upgrading my battle pets.
This is not a rant on how much this new situation stinks. I'll take some time and get a good sense of Chiller. If it ends up doing the same type of job that Fearnet did, I'll use it. Media is what I use to promote my stuff, so I use whatever roads and sidewalks will get me from point A to point B. This is a rant about how good Fearnet was. I'll keep it as short as I can.
That vibe I mentioned a couple of paragraphs up? That was what I loved about Fearnet. It tried to cover everything, and as a result it was the sort of website where you could spend hours just browsing from link to link. They had streaming movies that I'd never heard of, and they put up photosets that showed everything from deserted villages around Chernobyl to graveyards that were supposed to be gates to hell. It held a very personal interest to me, and to this little occupation of mine, because they also had reviews of soon to be and recently released horror books. I found a lot of small press publishers that way, and those same reviews gave me a bit of a hint on who my competition for getting my words in print is. They had articles on film directors like Argento and Bava, introducing me to movies I had never heard of, (but that I made a point to get) and giving me little insights into the way those people thought, what gave them their vision. Little, important things.
Poof. Gone. Cue the sad music and zoom out so we can see the empty void left behind. Pan over the crowd of gawkers long enough to register their shell-shocked expressions. Fade to black.
Life moves on, and we need to move with it. I'll give ChillerTv its day in court, and we'll see what the verdict is. I might even finally see about setting up a links section here in this blog, to point out other cool sites while they're still around.
Oh, good news? It's September. Sing with me. “Two more months to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Two more months to Halloween. Silver Shamrock.”
Still writing.

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