INSTANT WARNET(work in progress)

Hello deviants,

INSTANT WARNET is a critical live action game, which pokes and prods at networks of harrassment on social media. As a player, you are invited to role-play characters on the massively multiplayer arena of Instagram, with the goal of infiltrating and disrupting its more hostile practices and spaces.

Composed entirely of found techniques, scenarios and language used by the world’s most manipulative trolls, buzzers and campaign operatives, this game asks you to flip the script, and rethink your own responses to online abuse and misuse.

Unlike gamification, which applies game design elements to non-game contexts, INSTANT WARNET functions on top of the already existing gaming mechanisms in social media culture. Only here, skilled players win attention instead of points, identify with hashtags instead of clans, and outmanoeuvre moderators instead of gamemasters.

[ Read Thesis ]