[-empyre-] Compulsion vs. Distraction

[Jacob Gaboury]

Hello All,

It's been a fascinating discussion so far, and I just wanted to pick up on
a few key points made by Patrick and others over the past few weeks. The
question of design and compulsion rings true on several levels,
particularly as it relates to certain kinds of gamified use and play.
However I don’t want to ascribe all forms of compulsive use to design *per
se*, at lease not design as some kind of calculated practice. I’m
particularly interested in the question of vernacular and improper use,
which I wrote about in a brief piece for Art Papers this past January <
http://www.artpapers.org/feature_articles/2015_0102-feature3.html>. When is
compulsion not designed for, and is it always recuperable as extracted
value through advertising, in-app purchases, etc. As Natasha Schüll’s
fantastic work on machine gambling shows, certain spaces and forms of use
are highly scripted and designed, but I don’t think that is entirely the
case when it comes to the pornographic context that many contributors have
discussed over the past few weeks. I immediately think of the tendency
toward compilation videos that string together only the climaxes or “money
shots” of a collection of videos, or 2+ hour extended cuts that can be set
to play uninterrupted, which seem designed instead for some kind of
distracted use. Is this form of use equally recuperable, or does it somehow
fall outside of design? After all a single two hour video would seem to
frustrate the ad revenue model of many porn sites.

This kind of distracted use also brings to mind James Hodge’s earlier
question regarding the temporality of compulsion. This kind of distracted
use brings to mind not only the compulsion associated with our phones, but
also other forms of mobile game technology as Samuel Tobin’s research shows
<http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Play-Everyday-Life-Nintendo/dp/113739658X>.
This kind of distracted but habitual engagement brings us outside of both
the temporality of riveted engagement as well as the space of something
like a casino or the home.

I suppose my question is if this is also a form of compulsion as we are
seeking to articulate it, and if this distinction is in some way
significant.

I also couldn’t help but attach this meme image, which feels relevant to
our discussion.


Jacob Gaboury
--
Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Visual Culture
Dept. of Cultural Analysis and Theory, Stony Brook University
--
Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Dept II)
Berlin, Germany 2015 - 2016
--
http://www.jacobgaboury.com/
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