While I admire the time and effort it takes a hater to find my email address and write me something hateful, I’d prefere something more intense than “Hey fat ass goto a gym before you die you virgin.” I mean, honestly?

I might have written

“Dear Sir,
I hope that when your heart finally gives out under the stress load you have put it under, you realize that your life has been cut short of several decades worth of moments you could have shared with your loved ones. At that moment, when your life flashes before your eyes, I hope you see every greasy sandwich you ever ate and lament it as you shuffle off this mortal coil leaving those who love you behind in agony.

Sincerely,
Ihatefatties319@aol.virus”

See, that kind of shit is haunting.

As a content producer, I understand your point of view when it comes to piracy, I really do. 

When I see someone cop and redistribute one of my videos on the internet I have a lot of thoughts pass through my brain.

• “Well that’s 500k hits I’ll never get back.  That’s a lot of ad revenue I lost.”
• “I can’t believe someone else is profiting from MY HARD WORK!”
• “This just sucks. :(“
• “why would they do this to me!”

I guess we probably have that in common.  Though that, unfortunately, is where the common ground ends.

See, I create content to be given away.  Sure, I put it up on youtube and I recieve advertisement compensation for creating it.  Somewhere along the lines of about a million views every month on my videos, it sure adds up fast!  I am now making a comfortable living doing this and it encourages me to produce more content and give it away and make more money.  its a pretty great system.

So when someone takes my video and gives it away, I kind of feel like “No harm no foul.”  Sure, it takes me hours of time to film and write and edit.  It costs me time and sometimes money when I use props.  but at the end of the day I have to say to myself “Hey its free press!”  And most of the time the people stealing my content will either use my ‘branding’ name of boogie2988 or francis… sometimes they’ll link right back to my channel.  Sometimes they’ll do all kinds of great stuff to help make me more famous!

You see, when people steal my content they deliver it to a whole new audience I cannot otherwise reach.  I think that your industry can relate with the show “community” in this aspect.  Its one of the most watched shows on the internet, and most pirated!  People sure love it!  But they SURE HATE the way you distribute it via your dinosaur of a distribution system and therefore don’t watch it in a way you can profit from :(

See, the real difference between you and I is that you keep your content under lock and key.  

• You keep it in a difficult place to find it (televisions and cable scripts are becoming rare for young people if you didnt know!)
• You only allow us access to it as certain times of a week or a day!
• eventually a few years after its shown you allow us to buy the dvd… for the low low price of 30-80 bucks per season!  awesome? :(

You see, we have a lot in common.  We both create content.  We both want people to watch it.  We both want to produce income doing so.

The difference is I have a basic understanding that the kids these days watch what they want when they want.  Either you let them do that or they’re either going to FIND a way to watch it their way, or not watch it at all.  Both make us both very very sad :(

So I invite you to join me, to keep up with the times and the technology, and join in on this awesome profit making thing we call “the internet.”

Feel free to try to shut it down all you want.  You might even get a 10 or 15 year ban on this whole system in place before the oldest and stupidest of you die and the young eggheads and nerds around the globe realize what an awful mistake you made and fix it.   But in the end, all you’ll be doing is creating the meteorite that makes you dinosaurs extinct.

Instead you can evolve and adapt and learn to survive in this brave new world.  Just like I have :) 

A few days ago I picked the wrong side of a conversation involving misogyny, feminism, and magic the gathering cards.

I voiced an opinion that turned out to be pretty hurtful to some people who I have never met and to some people that I also hold very dear.

In the fall out of that conversation It was said that I am ignorant of the way such things effect women and that I am a misogonist.  I would like to address those points here.

Yes, I suppose I am a misogynist.  I don’t actively hate women but if misogony is the “institutionalized hatred of women” and that a a person can be a misogonist by falling into trappings of common misconceptions, I certainly do that.

Furthermore, I will admit that I often make inappropriate jokes about inappropriate things.  This is part of my nature and I understand it is a VERY negative personality trait that leads to VERY negative consequences for myself and others.

Furthermore, I have great trouble understanding some of the things that hurt some women and their plight and their problems.  It has been said that I can be dismissive of some women’s issues, and I will be the first to admit it.  I am ignorant of them, I misunderstand them, and in some places I am just flat fucking wrong.  The things I say and do are just fucking wrong.

Beyond just misunderstanding or hating women, I will add that I also hate many traits that men and women alike posesses and think and act.  I will be the first to admit that I am an equal oppurtunity offender and hater of all people and all kinds and creeds.  I’ll even add that on some subconcious level, this extends FURTHER to women than men, possibly tenfold.  I dont really know.

But I will close in saying that I love all people, of all shapes and sizes.  I do care very much for even the people I hate.  Even the people who hurt me and yell at me.  The people who love me and care for me.  The people who watch my youtube shit and the people who think I’m just a fat disgusting neckbeard idiot.

I try my best to have patience and understanding for everyone around me.  Often my best is not enough.

I have been trying very hard the past few days to fix some of these character flaws, as I have spent the majority of my life trying to fix countless others.  I do not expect these things to change overnight.  

I think it’ll be a very long time until I am NOT a … well, lets see.  Ignorant, stupid, backwoods, inbred, redneck, misogonist, self hating, woman hating, beligerint, insubordinate waste of human life… just a few of the keywords that have been used to describe me both personally and privately lately.

but I’m trying.  I apologize profusely for the damage I have caused personal friends and people outside of that circle.  I apologize for the conversations and pain I have caused recently.  I apologize for the ignorance and misunderstanding I have displayed and for any pain that ignorance has caused.  I truly am sorry for what I am.

I will do better.  Not for you, but for me.  I’ll crawl as far as I can out of this hole before my fat neckbearded heart finally gives out.

-boogie 

Tonight on twitter someone asked me about eating their obsessive compulsive over eating.  This person is still very young, only about 200 pounds, but is struggling and feels they are losing the fight.

They’ve tried exercising and they can’t seem to stick with it.  They have tried dieting and find it difficult.

I want to say that I too feel exactly the same way and each and every single day for me is a struggle.  There are two ways to beat it, as far as I can tell, and I’ll explain the details of both here.

If you watch a lot of reality television you’ll find that there are many people who seem to change almost overnight.  in a few rare cases this is true.  These people have the help of intervention though.  Whether its a stomach surgery, or a fat camp rehab, or a tv show contract that forces them to lose the weight they have some sort of combination of outside and inside source powering their recovery.  Most of us wont be so lucky.

Most of us have to do it the old fashioned way.  We have to take baby steps, and unlearn our negative behaviors step by step every single day.  We have to make better choices every chance we get and we have to be sure not to beat ourselves up too much when we fail.

Each day is a new challenge.  Each meal is a chance to make a better choice.  Each time you choose to exercise rather than veg out in front of the tv is a victory.  Every day is a battle, and you’ll have a few good thousand battles before the war is over.

So do your best, try hard, and keep strong.  :)  Make better decisions every time you can and when you fuck it up, try again tomorrow. 

@MistakenFaith

@Boogie2988 how do you forget all the pain in life and do what you love with such a strong passion? Idk why but I can’t do anything anymore.

I spoke with a person in Alanon, a support group for the family members of alcoholics, he taught me something that I never forgot.  ”fake it until you make it.”

Envision the person you want to be and even when you don’t feel like you can be that person, you dont feel like you can become that person, or you dont want to try to be that person.. do it anyways.

fake the person and things and emotions you want to be/have until one day you realize you have made it there.

best of luck. 

Tonight I had a breakthrough.  Here’s a little history on myself, for those of you who don’t know me.  I’m a 532 pound man.  I’m 5’9, so as you know, that’s a pretty heavy weight for someone my height.  I’m 37 years old and according to all of the great healthcare professionals that have been in and out of my life over the years, that’s a pretty ripe old age for someone my size with my health history.

I also suffer from an obsessive eating disorder that manifested itself at about the age of 5, due to living in an extremely abusive home with an abusive family.

I was 350 pounds when I graduated high school.  I put on another 100 by age 20.  I was over 500 at age 25.

My largest size ever was when i was 33.  I weighed 587 pounds.  I never broke 600, fortunately.  I’m quite glad.  (for those wondering, I am the proud owner of a very expensive packing scale I got from amazon.com)

I have spent the entirety of my life trying to put my brain back together, with much success.  I have overcome severe depression, a bipolar personality disorder, and Post Traumatic stress disorder so far.  (for those wondering, these were clinical diagnosis, not self diagnosed).

This of course has left me with two major problems in my life yet to overcome, even though they are closely related.  My health is very poor because of my weight and I am of a very heavy weight because of one of my last remaining ‘unchecked’ conditions.  The obsessive compulsive overeating.

I have approached this topic much the same way I approached the depression, the PTSD, and the like.  I have slowly but surely convinced my brain that this is not how things are going to be done, and I have slowly but surely taught myself some techinques that would allow me to cope with these conditions.  I have also tried “faking it until I made it” the classic mantra of all modern day psychology, and It has lead to great success.

So now I’m in the process of doing this with my health and my overeating.  I have tried to find the root of the problem and attack it directly.  I have slowly and methodically made changes in my day to day life and eating habits that I can stick with for the rest of my life.  I have studied my disease, my addiction, my mental illness in great detail and have educated myself as much as possible.

I have watched videos on youtube and other places of people who are likewise suffering.  I have read stories about people who have succeded and how they did it.  I have read stories of people who tried and failed and died fat and miserable.  I have read stories of folks who have lost the weight only to find out they were STILL miserable.

I have done nothing but eat/breath/sleep recovery for the past 9 months.  I have gone from 567 pounds to 532 in those 9 months.  I have made small but solid steps onto the road to recovery and I am proud of that success.

Tonight I spent an hour looking at pictures of other people that suffered from Lymphadema and Veinous insufficiency like me.  I looked at pictures of folks who had legs that looked like mine.  I watched a video from “Mtv’s true life - I’m Obese” and realized that I am certainly not the first person to walk this path.  I have read the reddit success stories on /r/loseit of people much bigger than me landing in at about 1/4 of their starting size.  

And tonight I felt something click.  I’ve felt it before with other conditions and problems I have dealt with.  its similar to the gears of a combination lock coming together.  If I can just get a few more gears into position I can unlock this thing and make some hard/fast/real progress.

I truly hope that this spring and summer I can prove to myself that I can achieve this goal.  I truly hope that I can prove to the people who love me and care for me that I can do this.  If I can prove it to myself, if I can prove that this is just one more obstacle in my way,  I will ask the girl I am with if she will marry me.  I know that she will say yes, because we have talked about before.  She is wondering why I haven’t asked.  I told her I had to prove that I was a man worth having before I’d ask her.

It’s going to be an exciting summer. 

Looks like woody is donating 100% of his winnings to a suicide prevention charity, if he wins.  Good on you, woody.

No offense to Ayevenne or her fans, or any of my fans, but that’s a damned worthy cause.

As many folks know, I have suffered my entire life with some mental issues, most notably depression.  When my mother passed in 2009 I nearly took my own life.  Two things saved me, the suicide prevention hotline and the love and support of my friends and fans.  (hi adam.)

I could not imagine a more worthy cause.  If I were to win I’d want to keep the money.  7500 is a ton of money to me.  Its nearly half of my income in 2011, for example.  I’d use it to further my youtube career and make a life for myself.

But woody has enough money that he can easily give away 7500 dollars of ‘found income’ and I think that’s fantastic.  I will be glad to see him win it and give it to people who will use it to help people who have lost their way find their way back.

I love you for it woody.  Best of luck.

I sure wouldnt mind 2nd or third or 4th place though.  Feel free to vote.  But if its close, please consider voting woody.

TotalBiscuit has promised to pledge his support to me next time around, so let’s plan on winning this thing in april.

But for now, go woody. Save some lives you magnificent bastard.

I have the dinstinct honor of playing every system of dungeons and dragons, all the way from the original box set (complete with those blue dice) to modern day 4ed.  Though, I must admit, my group plays exclusively pathfinder… like a lot of groups these days.

You’ve asked for our input for 5th edition and I want to offer you some now.  I’m even going to use cute little catchphrases that will hopefully get stuck in your brain during the development of your new system.

1) Characters, not character sheets.  While streamlining each class was a noble idea, the inability to pick and choose certain aspects of your character in 4ed was frustrating.  having no REASON to flesh out certain aspects was another.  When the only thing truly different between 10 different 4ed fighters it the name on the sheet, there’s a problem.

Give us ways to define our characters.  Give us reasons to care about the characters.  Give our characters personality, and feeling, and depth.  Give us wants and desires, dreams and hopes, fears and loves.  Bring in a perk system, a trait system, or something that will encourage the hardest anti-roleplaying skeptics reasons to want to define their character beyond just a set of stats and items.

2) Simplicity WITH options.  Sure, simplicity is a great idea.  Making it easy to play, easy to do and keeping a pacing/flow through the game is fantastic.  But you have to give players options.  Playing 4ed compared to pathfinder feels like you’re playing with a strangle collar on.  Pathfinder is ‘wide open’ when it comes to options and choices, 4ed gives you a choice or sometimes two every time you level.  Give us more and BETTER options. :)

3) The core rulebooks should be the CORE RULEBOOKS.  Pathfinder did this right.  Sure their core book is 60 dollars and weighs as much as a ton of bricks, but it is by and large complete.  Pick up a Bestiary to go with it and you’ve got everything you’ll ever need to play.  yet, they sell modules and worldbuilding tools and kits like hotcakes.  They didnt have to release a ‘neutered’ version of the core book just to suplement it every other month with things that should have already been in there.  We know you want to sell ‘add ons’ but those add ons shouldnt be replacements or extensions of the core book.  They should be, well, add ons.  Adventures.  Towns.  Cities.  Worlds. Npc’s.  maps.  minis. etc.

4) Watch your pricetag!  Cost, now more than ever, is a thing.  So many of our products in our store we had to sell for ‘deep discount’ just to keep it moving.  Even then, we were often stuck with product.  even as a retailer we felt that your pricetag was often just plain off the mark.  Maybe you know something we don’t but 25 bucks for 5 minatures seemed a bit much for MOST of our players.  We know its expensive to develop and then print books, too.  But often our players would scoff at the pricetag of the newest 100 page hardcover book.  It made finding the PDF on piratebay a lot more appealing for a lot of our budget oriented players


In closing, I think you still have a chance to fix the game and get it back on top.  Or at least, in the top 10.  Just take great care and make sure you make decisions that are great for the game, not for just your bottom line.

Ps,
I think bringing tom lapille on board was a great idea.  I love that guy ;) 

sad times indeed.

thank you a lot my friend.  I truly appreciate the support and love and for taking the time to write me. :)

I’ll continue to do my best! :)