I've a confession to make: for the last seven years, my gaming chair has been an old wicker-seated dining chair that I found on the street. It's not ergonomic, it has no fancy features, and it's started to come apart.
So, despite being the editor of a site that reviews and recommends the best gaming chairs and spending a lot of the last week finding the best Black Friday gaming chair deals, I've been avoiding our own advice.
The reason, awkwardly, is entirely down to aesthetics. There's something about office chairs and gaming chairs, in particular, that I find too overbearing. My desk and gaming PC are set up in my bedroom, and I don't really want something that looks like it could be in the cockpit of a fighter jet forever in my vision.
That's why I've stuck with the street chair for so long, it's not particularly comfortable, but when I'm done for the day, I can slide it under the desk, and it fades into the background. I can stop thinking about work and games for a little while.
So, with that all said, here's the gaming chair that has finally caught my eye...
It's hardly the subtle, sleek design I thought I'd settle on. It has bunny ears. And a tail.
I'm trying to work out what I like so much about it. Perhaps it's because it flies in the face of my issues with other gaming chairs, where, despite their dark color schemes, their size means they'll never fade into the background. This chair flaunts its size, even adding extra height with the ears.
I wouldn't be able to hide this chair at the end of the work day, but – and this could be the three days of Black Friday night shifts talking – maybe because it's so loud I would notice it less.
In Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently novels, the author explores the idea that it stands to reason immortal beings, such as Thor, would still be wandering around the world today, they'd hardly die from old age. But, the reason people who encounter the Norse god wielding a mighty lightning-spewing hammer don't see him is precisely because they don't expect to see him, he doesn't fit into their understanding of the world, and so they filter him out of their vision.
"Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see," Gently says in Dirk Gently's Hollistic Detective Agency.
Maybe this bright pink chair with bunny ears and a tail is so out of sorts with what I'd expect to find in my room, I'd simply filter it out.
Of course, if I didn't, I'd have the most obnoxiously pink gaming chair you could hope for. I don't know how I feel about that... do I spend $299.99 / £199.99 to find out?
Maybe I should stick with the street chair for a little while longer...
