Ian Bogost 🍔
@ibogost.bsky.social
32K followers 3.1K following 620 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
Today, students might use AI to write college-entrance essays so that they can get into college, where they use AI to complete assignments on their way to degrees, so they can use AI to cash out those degrees in jobs, so they can use AI to carry out the duties of those jobs.
Job Interviews Are Broken
People are sneaking answers from AI, and who can blame them?
www.theatlantic.com

ibogost.bsky.social
I've been posting more and it's reminding me why I was posting less.

ibogost.bsky.social
Love to boot up my Apple TV and open the Apple TV app, which gives me access to my Apple TV subscription.

ibogost.bsky.social
Apple TV+, Apple's subscription streaming service, has rebranded to Apple TV, which is the same name as the software that runs the Apple TV, which is also the name of the device Apple sells to deliver it.
Apple TV+ Rebrands To Apple TV, Dropping Plus Sign
Apple TV+ has dropped the plus sign and is now simply Apple TV, "with a vibrant new identity."
deadline.com

ibogost.bsky.social
It's a cool example, I don't mean to trivialize it. I just worry that ppl are so unfamiliar with low-level programming, which is highly controlled, and not really magical , that such examples feel more voodoo than they really are.

I have a joke that most 6502 bugs are better than most video art.

ibogost.bsky.social
The thing you have to understand about programming in assembly during this era is that every instruction is a byte, and every parameter that instruction takes is a byte. So "changing only a single byte" would be expected to produce different program flow—in this case probably foregoing a branch.
mariobrothblog.bsky.social
By changing only a single byte in the code of Mario Paint, the music composer will not stop at the end of the song and instead continue to play the entire contents of the console's memory as music.

Reposted by Ian Bogost

mariobrothblog.bsky.social
By changing only a single byte in the code of Mario Paint, the music composer will not stop at the end of the song and instead continue to play the entire contents of the console's memory as music.

ibogost.bsky.social
Oh I see. You can't share work you make with Scrivener (because your editors/colleagues won't; it's a private tool), unless you export it to a "real" format, which just leads to the other problem.

ibogost.bsky.social
This is a technician’s response. It is not how organizational life operates today.

ibogost.bsky.social
Word and Gdocs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ibogost.bsky.social
Corporate ownership and closed-sourcing don’t bother me. Only functionality. And I can‘t work with colleagues via LibreOffoce. It’s an ecosystem.

ibogost.bsky.social
LaTeX is a layout system, not a writing tool.

ibogost.bsky.social
Probably, but I'm writing, and I'm a writer, so I'm thinking about word processing.

ibogost.bsky.social
Not really, tho? People say this but Word used to be 'fine' at base.

ibogost.bsky.social
Word used to profoundly beat Gdocs in handling revision tracking, notes, and other editorial tools. It's also become far less adept at handling large documents. Microsoft seems to have focused on making Word an Office365 Suite Gdocs office-document competitor. It's only vestigially good for writers.

ibogost.bsky.social
Gdocs is not for writing, it is for making workplace documents.

Word can no longer support the activity of writing, especially as a collaborative one (which it always is, professionally).

Scrivener etc. are really murder maps, not word processors—you have to do the writing elsewhere.

ibogost.bsky.social
Almost a half century after the invention of the word processor, we are living at the tool's nadir.

Gdocs has improved while Word has become worse, but both are horrific tools that actively frustrated the practice writing.

The few alternatives are Wes Anderson or `make` parodies, like Scrivener.

ibogost.bsky.social
New Street Fighter is wild.

ibogost.bsky.social
Stick to white beans you monsters.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce

ibogost.bsky.social
It’s almost like George Lakoff has been right for the last (checks watch) 29 years.
ifycomedy.com
I think we really should stop using antifa and just fully say anti-fascist and get them saying they are against anti fascism. Using antifa is giving them some distance and I genuinely think some of their base don’t even know that’s what it stands for.
ifycomedy.com
I think we really should stop using antifa and just fully say anti-fascist and get them saying they are against anti fascism. Using antifa is giving them some distance and I genuinely think some of their base don’t even know that’s what it stands for.

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?