for class (readings, links), speculative|compelling stuff, criticism, culture at large
reorg: moved from 479 (deleted)
links i can recall from the algo presentation
https://www.tiktok.com/@james_ikin/video/6932945017891851525
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLNXsooFHsv/?igshid=7r6h7x9nrui1
Google presents its search engine as the most powerful and efficient means of finding what you're looking for - but this makes a fundamental assumption about where the value of searching lies.
Behemoths like Google essentially position themselves as 'shortcuts' which bypass the 'inefficiencies' of journeying -- in effect, to become The Destination for destinations (or with something like Facebook, The Community for communities). In this paradigm, people inevitably become digital tourists (again, 'users'/consumers) rather than explorers (agents) because they increasingly lose their ability to navigate on their own.
What I did, he told me, wasn’t illegal, and he didn’t even tell me to take the post down — but he did warn me against posting that “type of thing” publicly again, more like a disappointed mother than a Big Brother. What stuck with me most about the incident, though, is the one question I asked him: “Have you ever played Warzone?” “All the time.” Of course he did.
like Nintendo’s Animal Crossing, another game whose cultural status flourished over the past year, Warzone has provided a platform for social interaction over the course of lockdown, drawing comparisons to the golf course and the bowling alley.
attacking virtual reactionaries offers the glee of shitposting. But it’s hard to deny that I’m drawn to the feeling of control and mastery over a landscape I’ve surveyed and colonized. In spite — or because of — my awareness, the game was working on me just the way it was meant to.
The socialization of Call of Duty is almost inseparable from the gun culture it encourages and depicts.
Warzone still proposes a social relations in which the only way to relate to other people is through violence.
The battle royale genre grafts the first-person shooter onto the “open world” genre — games like Breath of the Wild and Grand Theft Auto — which makes the colonial instincts of the form most apparent. These games offer the an illusion of an endless landscape with no law or limits, a map with invisible borders for you alone to tame. Game environments, even nonviolent, seemingly benign ones, condition open-ended sociality on tasks of resource extraction and zero-sum competition. In Animal Crossing, you cultivate farms and gardens, exchanging your produce and products for tokens that help pay off a debt to your landlord, but also allow you to upgrade and customize your avatar and their residence, with the intention of showing it off to friends who can visit your island, or the followers who might see your screenshots on social media. It’s still a form of competition, which takes a colonial mentality for granted. Even if your play style is different, you’re all still bound by whatever rules have been set by the game’s designers. In the case of both free-to-play multiplayer games and free-to-post social media platforms, the rules are set by powerful corporations.
I don’t believe that war is natural and right. But I’ve found myself acting as though I do; and finding real friendship, and real belonging, under a set of circumstances I would otherwise abhor. Just like the invisible walls of a rendered landscape, you often don’t know you’ve hit the boundary until you’re up against it and booted from the game.