Ian Bogost 🍔
@ibogost.bsky.social
32K followers 3.1K following 600 posts

Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Writer at The Atlantic. https://linktr.ee/ibogost

Ian Bogost is an American academic and video game designer, most known for the game Cow Clicker. He holds a joint professorship at Washington University as director and professor of the Film and Media Studies program in Arts & Sciences and the McKelvey School of Engineering. He previously held a joint professorship in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and in Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Chair in Media Studies. .. more

Political science 28%
Sociology 26%
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ibogost.bsky.social
This is a version of where I landed. "Congrats [TO ME]."

ibogost.bsky.social
I suppose I know the answer to the original question, which is that "congrats" is an obsequious lie meant to reward a person for conforming with the expectations or demands of the agent issuing the fake congratulatory message. It means, "Your compliance is my accomplishment."

ibogost.bsky.social
To be is to be authenticated.

ibogost.bsky.social
This is of a piece with the inflation of "experience."

We once aspired for an "experience economy" in which encounter would take the place of ownership. The implication was that experiences, like congrats-worthy acts, were notable, substantial, rare.

Now everything is one. "The login experience."

ibogost.bsky.social
What is the meaning of a message of "congratulations" anymore?

This one was offered after I re-registered for a payment account—as required of the bank, which changed its account infrastructure. Congratulations?

ibogost.bsky.social
I don't think it's conspiratorial to hold that NYT logs me out of my session only so that they can show me this upsell screen when I log back in?

ibogost.bsky.social
I don't envy university presidents, who now occupy the worst job in America, managing the most difficult personalities (truculent professors, wealthy donors/boards, bananas legislatures).

But MIT's response to the "Compact" legitimates it in a foolish way.

orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...
Regarding the Compact | MIT Organization Chart
orgchart.mit.edu

ibogost.bsky.social
Sometimes it has a slice of cheese.

ibogost.bsky.social
I received direct email marketing from a company that has previously sold me goods. I clicked to see the promotion but didn't add anything to a cart or even view a product detail page. Within an hour the company sent this "you forgot to buy our shit" nag. Email is the enemy and must be eradicated.

ibogost.bsky.social
Premise: Cinnamon gum and candies (Big Red, Red Hots, etc.) have now been fully supplanted by sour-flavor alternatives.
Big Red Commercial
YouTube video by commercials818
youtu.be

ibogost.bsky.social
Apple Watch has all these health features that maybe sort of work but are fairly imprecise by design. So Apple says “Talk to your doctor” and then if you talk to your doctor they're like “Huh, yeah, I dunno keep an eye on it” as they type frantically into Epic MyChart during your 8-minute visit.

ibogost.bsky.social
I am sick of the thresholded swipe gestures that make it so you have to flick hard to “move” a smartphone interface (for example, to go back by flicking toward the right). This is a paradigm that needs to end.

ibogost.bsky.social
What if I also told you that

ibogost.bsky.social
When the flight crew thanks you for your “loyalty” for flying one of the four remaining domestic airlines and probably the only one that goes from your origin to your destination.

ibogost.bsky.social
”The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns. We are suddenly eager to have things and people declare their beings totally.”

^^ Marshall McLuhan wrote this in 1964, 60 years ago

ibogost.bsky.social
Good thing we have these computers around to compute shit for us.

ibogost.bsky.social
This is the only reason I single-signon

ibogost.bsky.social
Passionate about moving symbols between B2B SaaS services

ibogost.bsky.social
We need to shut down architecture schools until we can figure out airport restrooms.

ibogost.bsky.social
Somewhere I have a photo of the Cow Clicker cow someone drew on the Facebook HQ whiteboard “wall”

ibogost.bsky.social
Found the original Cow Clicker “design document,” including a fully-conceived basically final cow sketch (and a bunch of seemingly complicated ideas that thankfully never got implemented).