#21 - The "I’m on holiday this week" special, so I wrote a fake news report

Local Man Fails at Making a Living Writing About His Uneventful Life

Veteran video games journalist Tom Orry, a man who survived over two decades scraping a living in games media - founding VideoGamer.com and directing operations at VG247 and Eurogamer - this year turned his focus toward his most formidable adversary yet: applying factor 50 sunblock to a moving child.

According to witnesses who have read Orry’s self-described “blog” Low Poly Mess, the media legend’s ongoing transition from games website editor/GOAT to independent writer has been marked less by high-stakes industry coverage and more by domestic existential dread.

A Legacy Built on Pixels, Furthered by Desperation

People close to Orry who have been privy to his weekly column, report a man locked in perpetual combat with inanimate objects and summer weather.

"Applying sun block [to a child] might be the single most infuriating task any human ever has to do," Orry confessed, exhausted in April, not usually a particularly hot time of the year, noting that his smartwatch now routinely alerts him to dangerous stress spikes before the morning school run.

This, a terrible hardship at the time, seems insignificant when compared to the "Great Washing-Up Bowl Collapse of May," wherein an eight-year-old plastic basin suffered a fatal seven-centimeter laceration, triggering in Orry traumatic flashbacks to a burst pipe on Christmas Eve 2024 - an event that sadly predates the blog and therefore has of yet not been documented. Sources close to the author confirm he managed to avoid calling an emergency plumber this time.

TOM ORRY: A PROFILE IN NUMBERS

Navigating a Tricky World

Beyond household calamities, Low Poly Mess serves as a front-line dispatch on modern culture and absurdity. In recent weeks, Orry has tackled:

• The Dystopian Algorithm: Railing against AI search engines consuming independent websites like "a form of nourishment," comparing the modern web to Stephen King’s The Long Walk - mainly because it was the last film he’d watched.
• Gaming Culture Wars: Defending narrative games like Mix Tape against "drama-farming megaphones of hate" (that’s a smart sounding way of saying “internet trolls”) who insist on gatekeeping what constitutes a real video game.
• The Maze Incident: Spent nearly an hour wandering a maze in midday heat with three children in search of an exit, proving that real-life pathfinding is vastly inferior to video game mini-maps. He’s reportedly not sure if he even found a way out.
• Unusual Friends: Documented a bizarre dream in which a real-life wrestler friend demanded his arms look noticeably larger while laying in a coffin.

An Avant-Garde Genius?

When asked to characterize Low Poly Mess, Orry himself candidly admitted that while cultured readers might deem his work "avant-garde," everyone else would likely consider it "self-indulgent bollocks".

Despite the heat, his children, and the existential threat of Google algorithms, Orry continues to file weekly dispatches to subscribers, although sources confirm he’d appreciate a few more paying members. At time of press, Orry was reportedly once again sitting in an uncomfortably damp office chair - his spiritual home.

Tom Orry can also be found on independent games media site Respec.net.

Note: Audrey the spider was contacted for comment, but refused to speak for fear of repercussions.