on gamification

in which none of us gets to opt out

It is some time now we’ve been sinking into the state of everything around us being gamified out of recognition. There is hardly a moment we don’t find ourselves struggling not to become a “loser”—with an increasingly opaque set of rules. For that’s the meta-game: guess the game that is being played, a game in which you are nothing but a token. You think you are sick & want to see a doctor, but actually you are being played by an uncountable number of mysterious entities that only want to use you to win a share of taxpayer dollars, & no one will tell you what’s going on. You think you are communicating, but your message will be swept away at once & subjected to a thousand nameless indices before it ever finds its mark. It is not a word that is said but a straw thrown on the wind, in the incalculable hurricane of mostly gibberish. Gibberish is your answer, & gibberish is your home.

Your new home.