It’s All Just Dinosaur Shirts
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How do you start your day? I generally start it with a shower, caffeine, pain killers, and a protein shake. Once I’m ready to head out the door I pick out a pair of jeans or shorts, and a shirt. I put a lot of thought into my shirt every morning. These days I mostly leave the house for work (in which I have a uniform for) or to grocery shop. That’s when I get to express myself. What kind of shirt does a man in his 30’s wear to buy several loaves of wonderbread?
Right now my current rotation is mostly shirts from OuterStratum. I got the classics. The SMT shirt, the DDP shirt, the Biohazard shirt, and the Bubblegum Crisis shirt. If you ever wanted to look fresh as hell then Griffin over at outerstratum is your guy. Alongside these particular shirts I got band shirts, shirts from conventions and those tacky shirts from the yetee. I’m not saying the art is bad, but the screen printer they use is small, and I wear a pretty big shirt so it just looks bad on bigger people.
So with that all said, does any of this really matter? I only wear these shirts in public maybe once or twice a week. Should I have just purchased 20 identical white shirts to wear under my work uniform? Absolutely not. I love expressing myself, and will maybe even tell the truth when people ask about what niche Japanese game I have on my chest. One day I was wearing my Shin Megami Tensei shirt at a restaurant when an older woman started staring at me from the next table over. I kinda did a look to the left and right, and then stared back at her. Once she realized that I caught her staring she came up to me and said
“Oh I’m sorry. I was just looking at the Chinese on your shirt.”
I couldn’t let her stand there and get it wrong.
“Actually it’s Japanese Kanji for ‘New Goddess Reincarnation.’ It’s…a band.”
Some days I catch myself lying to strangers about the Shin Megami Tensei shirt. I don’t want someone to look it up and find a picture of Mara.
Now when I’m at work I spend most of the day tending to the public. I see a lot of shirts. Let me tell ya, I’ve seen it all.
“I love fishin”
“It’s wine o clock”
“Fluent in sarcasm”
“Coca Cola”
The works. A few years back I had a revelation.
We’re all just wearing dinosaur shirts.
…and that’s OK! Since we were children our parents would dress us up in shirts that would have dinosaurs, trucks, and the like. When we got old enough to have our own tastes we may have requested a Power Ranger or Pokemon shirt next time we were at Walmart. At 11 or so it might be a Green Day shirt or perhaps even South Park. As the years go on so do our interests. Our music tastes change, our TV tastes change, but one thing that stays is our want and need to wear our love. I mentioned band shirts before, and I even have some anime shirts- but these days I usually just wear shirts with games on them. Those were my dinosaur shirts as a kid. They’re still my dinosaur shirts now. I used to laugh at the mom shirts, the “I love Beer” shirts, the “Vote for Pedro” shirts of our time. Now I get it. We’re all just wearing our love on our chests.
So that brings me to this:
What does it look like when a company tries to market to people who enjoy videogames?
Let’s take a look.
EXAMPLE 1: LOGO
It’s a Nintendo 64 shirt. What you see is what you get. These shirts are officially licensed by Nintendo themselves, so you know you’re going to get at least some form of quality. You’ll see these at Target, Kohls, and Walmart- usually for around $15. The screen printing is a bit too paint-like, so it’ll wear out after about 30 or so washes. That’s were it really comes into it’s own however, because now you might have someone thinking solemnly to themselves:
“WOW. That guy has had that shirt since at least 1998. Maybe he got it from an order form in the back of a Nintendo Power….”
If they’re more discerning they’ll stop you in the middle of your grocery shop, and demand to check the stitching on your sleeves.
“Double stitching????? You got this from a JC Penney last year! You fraud. You sack of a man. How dare you. I hope you rot.”
EXAMPLE 2: MARKET MEETING
About 20 years or so ago five people had a meeting about how to market apparel to “gamers”. Here’s what they said:
“Well they love games, and people who love games tend to be…how do I put it…fucking terrible.”
“Brilliant, Jim, print 17 million of these things and send them to every K Mart in North America.”
If you ever see someone wearing this or any variation of this shirt- whether it’s this or “I’m a gamer I have many lives” or “I don’t die I respawn” I want you to know that you’re looking at someone who simply cannot stop being cool. They’re on an entirely different level than us. While I spend at least 15 minutes a day thinking of the next day’s shirt, this person wears whatever is next in line on the rack. Mad respect. Don’t piss them off though, because they’re close to leveling up and you look like just enough XP to get them there.
EXAMPLE 3: GAMING- FOR KIDS!
In that same market meeting two younger, significantly less important business men are in the corner of the room devising a plan to eradicate the youth of the current day, by creating a shirt so toxic…so abhorrent that wearing it would be akin to equipping a cursed item in Dragon Quest.
I have never seen this shirt in the wild in my life. I honestly don’t think it’s real. My best guess is that shirt originated in the mid 00’s on account of the references to handheld games and printed media. We all know print is dead. If a child wore this in 2005 they likely were never able to change into something else, like that south park shirt they begged for. The gamer shirt consumes, and absorbs the wearer in an akira-esque fashion.
EXAMPLE 4: HIGH ART
Alright I’m not even gonna be cynical here. This fucking rules.
I love Fangamer so much. I bought a VA-11-Hall-A shirt from them back in 2019 and they were nice enough to send me a new shirt and like ten stickers when I emailed them that the shirt had a small tear in the side. The best customer service I have ever experienced. I wanted to include a genuinely good shirt in this article and when I went on their website looking for ideas I exclaimed
“A FUCKING DWARF FORTRESS SHIRT?! LET’S FUCKING GO!”
I have never purchased a shirt so fast in my life. Fangamer rules.
EXAMPLE 5: HIGH ART, BUT MAKE IT SOULLESS
“Yo, that’s 50 dollars for a t-shirt”
Well it’s actually $55, plus shipping and handling, and it only goes up to 2X.
These shirts suck! I’m sorry! It’s giving sad boys 2015 vaporwave for people who follow elon musk on twitter in 2023.
These shirts have no swag.
I’m not making fun of the people who purchase and wear them, but the people who make them. These shirts look like they’re designed by someone who watched one too many video essays about how James is looking at the player through the mirror. He’s not looking at you! He’s looking at himself! That’s what people do in the mirror!
EXAMPLE 6: YOUTUBER MERCH
Hey.
I know how bad youtube’s ad revenue share is. I have a patreon for a reason.
Just…. I don’t know. I got nothing.
EXAMPLE 7: THE HOLY GRAIL
If you see someone wearing this, watch the hell out. If they’re wearing khaki cargo shorts, it’s already too late.
The “Zelda shirt wearer” is the final whale in the sea of gaming fashion. We all strive to be them, and we’re all jealous of them. We will never be the Zelda shirt wearer.
In 2004 my mother purchased a special edition copy of The Legend Of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures for my 11th birthday. It came with a strategy guide and a shirt with the four links you see on the cover.
I was made fun of constantly at school for wearing a shirt like this. A decade later I would get my court-ordered triforce tattoo, and people would then compliment me with a quiet
“nice zelda tat dude”
Oh how the times have changed. I’m not going to cry over how hip it is to be square however. Stranger Things popularized D&D? Good. Now there’s more people to play with. Final Fantasy XVI is an action game? Well there’s always Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default.
The times are changing, the Zelda shirt reigns supreme. 11 year old me can finally rest.
-PA
If you like what you’ve read feel free to buy me a coffee or check out my patreon. If you’re from discord or insert credit follow me on Twitter if you want to keep in touch with what I’m doing in between essays.
