“Hey big man, fancy bumping into you outside the Argyll Arms on this cold winter evening. Have you been daygaming?” asks a keen purveyor of the mystical street arts to another adept he’s just crossed paths with.

Snow falls lightly onto his nose. He hunches his shoulders and shivers. A woolly hat and thick scarf would probably stave of hypothermia, but such winter comforts would clash with his rock’n’roll jacket and obscure the three skull pendants hanging from his neck. He long since lost feeling in his fingers. Rather frostbite than allow mittens to cover his skull rings.

The big man replies.

“It’s been pretty grim, mate. Only found four sets in two hours. Barely even sixes at that!”
“Shite. Let’s go inside for a quick snifter. We’ll get warmed up.”

The two men shuffle indoors. A warm blast of air from the interior of the Argyll Arms overwhelms them both. They walk down a narrow corridor past a couple of small booths and on to a large bar area. It’s buzzing inside with the after-work crowd. The two men prop up the bar.

Twenty minutes later they are each onto a second pint and deep into a discussion of the current state of London daygame.

“Has [redacted] put his YouTube videos back up yet? He can’t still be shitting himself over that BBC documentary,” opines the rock’n’roller.
“I got a group email from him. He’s put his entire content behind a paywall together with his [redacted].”

He of the skull rings nods thoughtfully. Daygamers like to spot patterns and to connect threads. It takes him mere moments to formulate a hypothesis. “All his old free stuff is now pay only? He’s following [redacted]‘s business model, isn’t he. He saw that [redacted] made some money off his [redacted] and is now running a [redacted] group. He wants a piece of it doesn’t he. Fair enough.”
“It’s still a bit shit, though. All the big channels going down. Even [redacted] got taken down. Probably a good thing, now his ugly Australian mug doesn’t show up on my feed.”
“Yeah but that pasty ginger [redacted] was just hiring hookers anyway. The videos were all fake.”
“Oh, I didn’t realise, I didn’t look closely. You mean like The Natural [redacted]?”
“No, mate. I mean literally fake, not merely shit.”
“But those guys actually just [redacted shifty stuff you wouldn’t believe but I know for a fact] don’t they?”
“According to Krauser, yeah. Total fags.”
“What happened to that [handsome] Geordie [inspiration of many]? He never blogs anymore. It’s been ages since he released any new content. It’s like the entire daygame world ground to a halt now that he’s stopped doing its thinking for them [1].”
“Funny you should mention that. He’s just put his Daygame Resistance talk up on YouTube. The whole thing. In its entirety. For free.”
“What? You mean he’s not charging $99 for it like [redacted]? What a kind, generous man. He’s got a heart of gold that Nick Krauser has. I never did believe the people who said he’s a cunt.”

 

[1] Look, I’m writing this and it’s a fantasy chat. I can make the characters say whatever I want.