My Internet: Stephen Totilo
The Game File founder is not into comedy.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Most weeks, we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Stephen Totilo, who recently launched
, a reader-supported newsletter in which he covers the business and culture of video games. Stephen watches TikToks of a guy in Japan pretending to be an NPC in Grand Theft Auto, runs to the audio of the sign-off montage HBO aired after the network broadcast its final boxing match, and will soon celebrate the anniversary of the time he went viral for holding a huge, replica sniper rifle from Halo. —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
STEPHEN TOTILO: You’ve started with an unexpectedly tough question. I’m not into comedy, a personal detail that people always react to really well.
A guy I went to journalism school with used to queue up some SNL sketches and key moments in stand-up comedy routines, invite me over and see if any would make me laugh. We’re still friends.
EMBEDDED: What shows up on your TikTok For You page?
STEPHEN TOTILO: A guy in Japan pretending to be an NPC in Grand Theft Auto.
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EMBEDDED: Do you make TikToks? What format works best for you?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I have not. Maybe someday!
EMBEDDED: Do you still tweet? Why?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Sure. The place is falling apart, but I’m a reporter covering a beat that is very online. For me, Twitter is still a decent place to find and distribute news about gaming. Not that anyone ever clicks through to the articles. It’s also good for clips of amazing moments that happen in the world of pro wrestling, if you’re into that sort of thing.
EMBEDDED: Have you found any good alternatives to Twitter? Do you have on opinion on Threads?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Threads seemed solid, but they keep defaulting to an algorithm-driven recommended feed instead of the feed of people I’m following. So it’s not looking great.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I don’t. I don’t like comedy, keep up with TikTok or use Instagram. I’m super fun, yes?
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I love a powerful montage set to dramatic music. Like HBO’s great 22-minute sign-off after the network broadcast its final boxing match to cap a 45-year run. I’ve run to it. Outside. Just listening to the audio. (There are actually two montages in that video; the better one starts at 7:30.)
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
STEPHEN TOTILO: The NY Times app on my phone is good for an overview. Also: fellow reporters and the many Axios newsletters I signed up for when I joined my now-former company in 2021. For my work, I get some gaming news off of Twitter but also hear plenty from sources and whatnot.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I don’t! I was born in the ’70s, or as someone recently mentioned it to me: the late 20th century. The discourse is not for me.
EMBEDDED: Where do you usually discover or learn about online trends?
STEPHEN TOTILO: My kids are in first grade and limited to 30-minutes of YouTube on any given day. Eavesdropping keeps me up to speed with what’s trending for seven year olds. A happy finding: No one there is trying to turn them into a Libertarian or tell them that Feminism is bad. Hoping they can keep dodging the algorithm.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
STEPHEN TOTILO: The verb you’re missing is “play.” I spend most of my entertainment time playing video games (and not laughing, of course). Friends recommend games, but I also am fortunate enough to hear directly from developers about cool stuff they are making.
I’d say most recommendations about music or what to read come from texts or other chats from friends, not so much anything that’s being promoted online in public.
EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, and/or Boomers?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I can’t tell how old anyone is, but something I’ve noticed about people online: many of them are very sure that they’re right about a lot of things—and haven’t considered that they might be wrong.
EMBEDDED: If you could create your own social media platform, what would it be like?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Make it safe for people who are genuinely seeking connection and for whom the offline world is more hostile than it is for me. Social media should be a useful tool that marginalized people can use to bridge gaps and connect with each other. It should be a means to invert the power dynamics in the physical world and let those who struggle to express their voice or to connect with peers offline do so virtually. And yet social media platforms are often hostile to such people. I’d focus on that.
Also, no Nazis. But that seems like a no-brainer.
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite Substack or other independent newsletters?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I recently discovered
Also, I enjoy my pal Tim’s Substack about tinned seafood.
EMBEDDED: Do you have any favorite media company newsletters?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Last time I got a chance to praise a bunch of Axios newsletters I was rightly chided for not acknowledging the excellence of Axios Closer. So let’s go with that one.
EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Positive trend: The more connected we all are, the more impossible it is to ignore how fucked up war is. Maybe that’ll lead to some genuinely positive things in the decades to come, with less looking the other way.
Negative trend: A lot of people out there are making “jokes.”
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I’m learning a lot about the X-Men via the Cerebro podcast.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Sure. Some of my scoops. It’s nice as a reporter to know people are reading. But in my field, these days, anything that spreads a lot becomes ensnared in arguments between PlayStation loyalists and Xbox fanatics. It’s tiresome.
Back in 2013, there was a photo of me holding a huge, replica sniper rifle from the Halo franchise. That made the rounds on Facebook and led to some fascinating discourse from anti-gun people (theoretically, my people!) jumping to all kinds of conclusions about me and my supposed propensity to overcompensate. I wrote about it! Join me on February 4th to celebrate the post’s 11th anniversary.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I think Gilbert Gottfried did. And Barack Obama does. Either of them cool?
Oh, and Elon Musk unfollowed Kotaku while I was running it. That was pretty cool.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
STEPHEN TOTILO: tigerstylepro on Twitter, for the best fan-made pro wrestling hype videos. What, not your thing?
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
STEPHEN TOTILO: When are you going to ask me about Miiverse? Miiverse was cool. Nintendo, bring that back. A social media platform where people were encouraged to draw.
EMBEDDED: Have you ever been heavily into Snapchat? Do you miss it?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Nope.
EMBEDDED: When was the last time you browsed Pinterest? What for?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Long time ago.
EMBEDDED: Do you have a take on Tumblr?
STEPHEN TOTILO: No, I haven’t used Tumblr since 2012’s Superstorm Sandy flooded the building where Gawker Media’s servers for Kotaku and our other sites were located, forcing us to run back-up blogs on Tumblr.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, Slack, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Reddit’s good for lurking and reading takes. It also has amazingly good site search. Want people’s reactions to something you read? You can find a good thread.
EMBEDDED: How has using LinkedIn benefitted you, if at all?
STEPHEN TOTILO: It’s a great reporting tool for connecting with sources.
EMBEDDED: Do you use Slack or another chat tool for work? What’s the best thing about Slacking with your co-workers? What’s the worst thing?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I used to, but now I run a reader-funded Substack of one, so I just talk to myself out loud while I’m pacing around the house.
EMBEDDED: Do you typically start searches on Google, Reddit, TikTok, or another source? Have you tried AI-powered search on Bing or elsewhere?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Google for most searches, though, as mentioned, Reddit to find decent chats about things I want others’ takes on. I haven’t used AI-powered search.
EMBEDDED: What most excites you about AI chatbots and text and art generators? What most concerns you?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Answer to both is: They might make for some interesting stories for me to report.
EMBEDDED: Are you currently playing any console, computer, or phone games?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Many!
2024’s best new game so far: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
A backlog of partially played 2023 games including beautiful rock-climbing adventure Jusant, the twisty thriller Alan Wake II, and the daunting 100-hour Baldur’s Gate III which I was seven hours into and should probably just restart.
And then there’s co-op mode in Vampire Survivors and WarioWare: Move It, the two games I love playing with my kids—at least until the finicky, how to put this … butt-movement-tracking … in the latter starts to cost them points and begins frustrating them.
EMBEDDED: Do any of your group chats have a name that you’re willing to share? What’s something that recently inspired debate in the chat?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Wrestlefest. You can guess what we debate.
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
STEPHEN TOTILO: You will be shocked to learn that I don’t use emojis.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
STEPHEN TOTILO: No, but people send me them, and that’s neat. I used to be self-conscious about replying with voice notes of my own, but they’re a great idea. Better than voicemail, for some reason, though I’m not sure why. Maybe because they don’t begin with the disappointment of a missed call?
EMBEDDED: What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
STEPHEN TOTILO: There’s a gymnastics mix that I’ve been playing for my daughter as she flips around the horizontal bar we got her for her birthday. I’m belatedly discovering all kinds of dance music. That Meghan Trainor song “No” from 2016 is kinda catchy.
EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? When was the last time you bought a music download or vinyl record, CD, or tape?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I have Amazon Music. Am I paying for it? I think so? It has the Disney soundtracks my kids like and The Very Best of KRS-One for me, so that’s good.
No idea when I last bought any music or downloaded any.
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? In general, do you prefer to get ads or pay more for ad-free tiers?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Disney Plus, because my kids like a lot of the shows and movies there. They’ve got Bluey and the Mater shorts and the new Chip n Dale and The Last Jedi. And we pay for the no-ad version. Gotta shield the kids from marketing, at least a little bit.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Runkeeper. 980 runs logged across 4,628 miles.
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I had to look up your interview with Nilay Patel to try to figure out what this question meant. While doing so, I discovered that you did not ask me: “Do you have any predictions for cryptocurrency, the metaverse, and/or Web3?” For shame.
Basic internet thing … Hmm … I love the satisfaction of seeing signal bars all lit up. Not those moments when one is grayed out. I’m talking about full bars. I love full bars.
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
STEPHEN TOTILO: Well, I’m sure they’re online, but it’s a shame there’s no legal and affordable way to obtain the Amalgam age of comics. The fact that Bruce Wayne: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 is not officially sold online—that the fleeting moment of a desperate DC and Marvel working closely together has long passed—is both a disappointment and a heartening reminder that at least some entertainment giants have yet to consolidate.
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I bought a microcassette recorder off of eBay in 2022. It didn’t work. So I bought another. A couple of weeks ago, I used it to re-listen to an interview I did in 2004 with the then-president of Nintendo. And I wrote it up. Thank goodness the tape hadn’t decayed in the last 20 years.
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
STEPHEN TOTILO: I have not, but I am crossing my fingers that this Q&A will be cited by a future respondent when they’re asked this question.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
STEPHEN TOTILO: We’re ending with a tricky one, too.
The internet is a tool for me, I guess. It enables a lot of my social connections and delivers a lot of my entertainment, but … “joy”? I am struggling to come up with something, because when you ask me about joy, my mind immediately shifts to a moment like having dinner with my kids: my daughter’s proudly showing me some math equations that she figured out, my son finding white paint to complete a snowscape he’s illustrating … that’s joy. The internet has nothing on that.
Perhaps the issue also is that I go to the internet for reaction. I’ve read something and want to know what other people thought of it, so I search Reddit for reactions. I’ve seen a puzzle-box TV show and I’ll go online to read fan theories. I’ll get wistful about the sport I most loved watching as a kid and I’ll re-watch HBO’s boxing sign-off. My point is, joy is a feeling I associate with a moment that feels new. It shines bright. The internet, for me, is often a place for reflection or nostalgia—as wild a place as it is, it has a softer glow in my life. I find joy offline.
Thanks Stephen! Subscribe to Game File.
