The Geoff Keighley news - specifically, that he wasn’t going to manifest as a kind of E3 Avatar this year - is beyond fascinating. But also not surprising, I guess? It just seems like the latest event in a causal chain so clear that it bears predictive power.

Simply dropping out would have been sufficient to churn the cauldron, revealing hints of tantalizing beef. But he said he wasn’t comfortable participating in the event, based on what had been communicated. Now, when he says “communicated,” I assume he doesn’t mean “leaked.” Because that would already be a reason to be mad. It’s more about the slow-mo, reverse origami identity crisis of the event in general.

This language, though. This language.

We’re as clear as we can be in the strip while retaining the rhetorical framework that allows it to remain a comic. That’s just our best guess. E3 is a pillar, like - let’s choose examples at random, and not because Nidhoggr is gnawing at their roots - the NFL, or the WWE. But this is a time of molten uncertainty in general, the realization that our foundations are essentially just a thick slab of calcified assumptions that might not even refer to reality at all. Just rituals that, like insulating foam, expand and fill the space that difficult, necessary cognition would. These instabilities have transformed our society into a buffet for narcissists, but if it’s any consolation, they made the old system too. Did that help? Don’t answer.

(CW)TB out.