Play Anything

Play is the act of manipulating something that doesn’t dictate all of its capacities in advance, but that limits its capacities through focus and exclusion.

Games aren’t appealing because they are fun, but because they are limited

We need a new commitment to worldfulness, an agreement to remain open to the infinity of things that are not our own feeble minds trying so hard to shape the world to our hopes, fears, and assumptions.

Instead of seeking greater happiness within ourselves, we should pursue a greater respect for the things, people, and situations around us, learning to take them for what they are rather than for what they lack.

Something insidious is going on here, and it’s easy to miss it, thanks to the cute, chipper matter-off-actness of Kondo’s writing. A Hello Kitty executioner.

But Scriven says he might go for it. “It is very interesting, clicking nothing,” Scriven says. “But then, we were clicking nothing the whole time. It just looked like we were clicking cows.”3

They remind us that Murray Spain, one of the entrepreneurs behind the 1970s smiley face, said of that icon, “This face is a symbol of capitalism.” Emoji, Stark and Crawford conclude, “offer us a means of communicating that we didn’t have before . . . , yet are also agents in turning emotions into economic value.”39

. Here’s how the code from Brian Westley’s winning 1990 entry begins:30

char*lie;

double time, me= !0XFACE,

not; int rested, get, out;

main(ly, die) char ly, **die ;{

signed char lotte,

dear; (char)lotte—;

for(get= !me;; not){

1-out & out ;lie;{

char lotte, my= dear,

**let= !!me *!not+ ++die;

(char*)(lie=

fun isn’t maximizing pleasure, but finding something new in a familiar situation.

the “do what you love” mantra—mistakes fun for pleasure rather than exploration.