The Octonaut

Nope. None of that works. And I end up with a new Pro Controller entry in the Bluetooth settings each time it pairs to the Steam Deck. And if I mess around with Bluetooth too much, all controller input stops working, including the joysticks on the Deck itself, requiring a hard reboot.

As a handheld device to play PC games it is amazing. As a day to day half hour on the couch after work relaxation, or let the kids play it to keep them quiet on a Saturday morning, it is not at all comparable.

Did you know that kids sometimes play video games?

The Steam Deck is great. Im playing more PC games than I have in a decade. But every couch session starts with me walking over to turn it on, manually setting the HDMI input despite being in the Input+ slot, starting my Steam Controller, hoping it connects, hoping the bug where it loses my controller configuration doesnt happen, rebooting if if does. Then I can start any of my thousands of Steam games, and a lot of them will work.

The Nintendo that sits next to it, my 4 year old picks up her unicorn covered pro controller from the coffee table, presses the little house button, and she can play Animal Crossing in her own profile in 2 button presses. It always works. Every game always works.

Stop calling it a boycott then.

A boycott is named after Charles Boycott, an English land agent who was cheating his master Lord Erne’s Irish tenant farmers. When they “Boycotted” him in 1880, the local people wouldn’t just not give him money - they wouldn’t interact with him or his agents in any way. Pretended they didn’t exist. Pretended they didn’t hear him or his lackeys speak his lackeys when they went to the shop. Cut them off entirely from their lives.

It should be noted that then he appealed to British establishment media and the British government sent 1000 police to protect 50 replacement workers - scabs - and provisions delivered from Protestant areas. It cost the Brits £10,000 to harvest £500 worth of crops, but they paid it to send a message. The government is not on your side.

This was 145 years ago. I know that seems like a lot to most people. In terms of the Irish resistance to British rule, it is remarkably recent. Not only that, but within 35 years, Britain had agreed to Irish home rule (and reneged on it). Within 40 years Ireland was independent.

In the words of Michael Davitt, leader of the Land League who inspired the protest:

You must shun him on the roadside when you meet him – you must shun him in the streets of the town – you must shun him in the shop – you must shun him on the fair green and in the market place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were the leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he committed.

And in the weasel words of Boycott himself:

My farm is public property; the people wander over it with impunity. My crops are trampled upon, carried away in quantities, and destroyed wholesale. The locks on my gates are smashed, the gates thrown open, the walls thrown down, and the stock driven out on the roads. I can get no workmen to do anything, and my ruin is openly avowed as the object of the Land League unless I throw up everything and leave the country. I say nothing about the danger to my own life, which is apparent to anybody who knows the country.

Don’t interact with these business. Don’t interact with people who obey these businesses.