“We might therefore add a third category to Roland Barthes’s classification of scriptible and…”

“We might therefore add a third category to Roland Barthes’s classification of scriptible and lisible texts: the faux-scriptible text which proclaims its openness to interactivity, which gives its user the illusion of meaning, power and active participation, and which, in appearing to satisfy its audience’s desire for agency, in fact sublimates and dilutes that desire. This process resembles a kind of textual karaoke: its audiences believe that their participation represents a form of activity, a mode of agency, but they are, in effect (and in consequence), mere puppets of the text. This faux-scriptible text is thus significantly more reactionary and compelling than the lisible.”

Alec Charles – Playing with one’s self: notions of subjectivity and agency in digital games

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