Lecture – The Gamification of Public Discourse (C. Thi Nguyen, Assoc. Prof. of Philosophy at Utah Valley University)

Social media makes public discourse more like a game. Is that a good or a bad thing? C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are good precisely because they let us transform our motivations and values for a moment — offering us clear, simple, quantified targets — to make our gaming activity more enjoyable. That’s fine in the artificially separated space of a game. But public discourse is not a game. When we gamify public discourse, we change our reasons for engaging in that discourse, changing and simplifying them to make the activity discourse more enjoyable. And this can be quite dangerous.