HAPPY 8 YEARS OF DIGITISER!

8 years ago today was the first Digi-fest, which was part of the Block Party at the Centre for Computing History.

That is pretty much where modern Digi began for me, I guess. It was a brilliant, life-affirming, day. It genuinely changed my life.

It was the first Digitiser-themed live event, my first proper time meeting Digi’s audience in person - a much-needed reconnection - and it’s where Found Footage began. I threw together some silly videos inspired by the old Digi teletext ads, and people started asking for more. Then I crowd-funded the series off the back of it.

Making Mr Biffo’s Found Footage remains one of the happiest times of my life, and Sanja and I still intend to make a follow-up series at some point. It WILL be back. I’ve still got more I want to do with that format.

I don’t have to tell you that the ensuing 8 years have been a bit up and down for us, but overall they’ve been the best years of my life. Mostly. We’ll gloss over the last couple.

I appreciate that Digi has changed a lot – and there now exists all sorts of different versions of it – but for me, it’s all Digitiser. They’re all part of the same thing. Teletext, Found Footage, Digitiser The Show, Digi Minis, Digi Level 2, Great British Days Out, and our current format… for me they’re just all different stages and aspects of the same thing.

FEET

It took me a while to find my feet in front of a camera. I never wanted to be a performer really. Digitiser The Show was hard for me – you may recall that initially I merely wanted to direct it, remaining behind the scenes. Gannon insisted I had to present it. I’m grateful that he did.

I leant on my co-hosts while I found my feet, and then Gannon for the Digi Minis, but I gradually grew in confidence. It was kind of inevitable that I’d eventually realise that I needed to reclaim Digi as mine – and that meant going it alone.

 Covid gave me that opportunity when Gannon and I could no longer get together. It was then that I finally found my voice - albeit with Sanja now as my long-suffering foil. Not being a performer, she gave me the space to develop.

The fact I’ve now done videos with just me and nobody else whatsoever is something I could never have imagined 8 years ago. I don't think I'm a particularly good presenter or performer, but I'm good enough finally to get my ideas across.

Pretty much most of what we’ve done has been experimentation – testing formats that fit with where we were at, trying to figure out what Digi was in the 21st Century. Some of those formats we stuck with longer than others, and some cast longer shadows than others. But overall, I feel we’ve struck a consistent tone.

I’ve said it before, but the current format – despite it dealing with some more substantial topics than, say, old toys – feels closer to the original spirit of Digi than anything else we’ve done. We can still have something like Toilet Squad alongside a discussion about a Universal Basic Income, or Leaf and Monty's Mum in a video about nuclear weapons.

That's Digi.

That mix of funny and weird and factual and a bit anti-establishment is what we are, and what we've always been – in the old days, the establishment just happened to be the games industry and our bosses. It leans on me feeling more like I’m a writer than anything else.

I love dressing up and dicking around – and that hasn’t gone away, promise, as you will be seeing soon – but this is my comfort zone.

Any of you who read my old Biffovision blogs back in the noughties, or read Digi2000, will know I would often delve into bigger issues that might be on my mind. I still love video games – I’m currently addicted to Star Wars Outlaws (don’t believe the reviews) – but I wrote about them every single day for a decade. Beyond finishing Digi Level 2, and my ongoing Retro Gamer column, I’m kind of spent when it comes to that subject.

STANDING ALONE

 Another reason for the shift has been – as I’ve explained to a few of you in recent comments – the need to move away from Cheapshow. We very much relied on the Barshens/Cheapshow audience early on, but it gradually became clear that many of them never saw us as their own entity.

I loved feeling a part of that, and part of me misses that sense of community, but we were seen an extension of that universe. Everyone else seemed to have their own thing, but Digi seemed to be perceived as part of something else. It never stood alone.

Yes – I was proud of that association, because those people are my friends – but it nevertheless meant that a significant portion of the audience only wanted Digi when it featured those people.

As soon as we went back to videos without them, the views would go down. That was disheartening and – frankly – kind of hurtful that thousands of people were never there for Sanja and I, because we weren't Paul or Eli. And we could never be them, because they're uniquely them, and they dominate whatever they're a part of.

Also, I’ve written about how there’s a vocal minority of the Cheapshow fanbase who simply don’t like me. I mean, REALLY don’t like me.

It’s another reason – for the sake of sanity – that we’ve been working hard to establish our own identity. We’re only now breaking out of that bubble – for years our videos have only ever been recommended to the Cheapshow/Barshens audience (which is useless when some of that audience actively dislikes me), which has dramatically stunted our ability to grow and find our own audience.

As I’ve said before, we’ll collaborate with them all again, I’m sure, we just need to put some air between us for a bit. Not sure if I'll ever appear on Cheapshow again, because I don't need the grief, but thank you to those of you who understand.

YOU LOT

So many of you on here have been with us since we started this Patreon, and we never take that for granted. We’ve lost a few paying backers this month – I’m guessing because of the new format – but so many of you are still here, still supporting us, still backing our decisions. And man… we’re so blessed to have you. SO blessed. I don’t know how we would have survived without you.

You get that Digi is a continually evolving thing, and I dare say we’ll evolve further. It seems to reflect wherever I’m at in my life, and – yes – there’s a little more sobriety in there right now, because, well… horrible dark life stuff. But I’m sure it’ll keep evolving.

Back in the Teletext days, we never had any direct contact with Digi’s audience. We got letters and (later) emails, but the biggest change now is that we feel like we know who many of you are, through Patreon, social media, Biffo’s Brain Zooms, and various in-person things. I feel like I’m a part of something, a community, and that’s been the greatest gift.

I admit, over the past year I’ve felt a bit less connected to the community. Partly that’s because of everything we’ve had going on outside of Digi, and partly that’s down to Twitter getting ruined by a rich idiot.

A lot of Digi’s feeling of community came from there – that’s where the community was built - and it has fragmented now. I’ve yet to find a real replacement for it, and I do miss it.

Patreon is at least somewhere I can post and Sanja and I can connect with the audience, because it gathers many of you in one place.

So, anyhow... onwards. We're not going anywhere. We're in a good place creatively. We're going to keep moving forwards and keep exploring what Digi can be.  

Thank you for everything.

Paul