Ian Bogost
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Ian Bogost
@ibogost.com

PREORDER The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life: http://bit.ly/49gyZmp

Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor at WashU; Contributing writer at The Atlantic; author of 11 books. https://bogost.com

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%
Pinned
🚨 PLEASE PREORDER MY NEW BOOK 🚨

It's called The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life, and it's about the sensory enchantment of everyday life.

Click here: www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Sm...

… or go wherever you buy books

(More info in the next post)

Real dear diary moment for me too

Here's bit more about The Small Stuff, how it came about, and why it totally makes sense and adds up that I would write a self-help book, in a Bogosty way, about a flavor of contentment I call *gratification*.
The Small Stuff
How you got disconnected from the physical world—and how to reclaim that lost joy in everyday life. Out summer 2026.
bogost.com

Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshipping God.

Felt like I could hear @amandamull.bsky.social screaming over my shoulder as I was reading this.

“The concept of an ornate couch appears to be an exciting novelty for homeowners under 40.”
The Reign of the Maximalist Couch
www.nytimes.com

By his knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew.

That time I made a queue in Animal Crossing.

Don’t hate the playa

Vess Up is fire. It’s so dry.

I have learned about Dr. Lou, via this found object.

I think @damonberes.com right that chatbots shouldn’t be your friends, and insidious stuff arises from treating them as such.

But that doesn’t doom LLMs, which are useful and (sorry to ppl here) not purely evil.

It would be nice to try to sort out the jumble, but our culture isn’t great at that!
The Age of Anti-Social Media Is Here
The social-media era is over. What’s coming will be much worse.
www.theatlantic.com

“Copay” is such a perverse idea. Like your insurance wants a wingman. That’s just a payment bro.

Someone who works in advertising.

Went shopping.

Further to this: In the cinnamon-gum era, cinnamon was considered freshening (“Give your breath long lasting freshness / With Big Red”), probably because of cinnamon’s tannins and associated astringency.

Difficult to imagine cinnamon being considered “fresh” today.
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

Had my first sundubu of the season earlier this week. Made me think of this famous Hart Crane poem about sundubu:

Steam—an opal psalm—
breaks from the earthen mouth.
Tofu, cloud-anchored, drifts—
salt of the sea’s confession,
heat of a star made broth.

Reposted by Ian Bogost

On the surface, grade inflation might seem simple to address, @ibogost.com writes. But it’s a strange and wicked problem on campus, with no single cause or obvious solution: https://theatln.tc/ds5cBJAV

Reposted by Ian Bogost

A new digital era is emerging, and it’s even more anti-social than the last. Damon Beres reports on the false promise of AI companionship:
The Age of Anti-Social Media Is Here
The social-media era is over. What’s coming will be much worse.
bit.ly

Reposted by Ian Bogost

I attended Cornell briefly in grad school before I had to leave to avoid killing myself. Syracuse was “civilization,” and also planes never landed at Ithaca but always rerouted.

Oh no

I have unearthed and am sharing this specimen.

I have 'dined' at Fresno's (which closed after multiple health-code violations). It offered "BBQ fajitas," which was sweet-and-sour meatlumps atop wet, boiled onions.

I cannot speak for Galveston's, but fear it.

Hey girl,,,

I understand why you ask that, and it's true that humanities classes are naturally less rigid in assessment by nature, but the situation also feels pervasive.

Last week, Harvard released a report on curtailing "grade inflation," and (some) Harvard students kind of freaked out in an embarrassing way.

It's easy to call the students coddled, but why grade inflation became a problem is a knotty, decades-long nightmare of a problem, which I wrote about:
Why Students Are Obsessed With ‘Points Taken Off’
Students and professors are in a drawn-out battle over grade inflation. It may never end.
www.theatlantic.com

Sad to report that I saw some posts this morning.

Hertz has added koans to Gold Plus Rewards

Nine years ago, I wrote about Sense, which could track home-energy usage. I explored the possible privacy and data concerns of "load disaggregation."

This week, Sense announced it will stop selling the product, because the tech has been incorporated into most electrical meters directly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Home Monitoring Will Soon Monitor You
When the internet of things begins to track electrical usage, houses could become more measured—and scrutinized—than ever.
www.theatlantic.com