i’ve always found it very compelling to look at how people use software without the opportunity to explain why. the legibilizing is always ad hoc, i want to explore the decontextualized usage.

that’s kinda jargon heavy and dense so for example: MAL/anilist have the ability to add comments and ratings to entries, but youtube doesn’t have the same feature when adding videos to playlists. this might seem like a drawback, and in many ways it might be relative to certain goals, but i feel like

there’s so much depth by not providing that ability. it leaves open questions like “why did they (or I) add this here?”, “how does this fit into the larger context of their playlist organization?”, “what was striking/warranting attention?”.

and it’s not that ambiguity itself is alluring - it’s that an explanation would prematurely foreclose curiosity, and is always partial. don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to analyze with what people explicitly state about their motivations (hi freud), but in some sense that is a separate enterprise.

and what interests me is the way platforms and protocols are designed and how this influences our engagement with them. AniList toward lexical legibility, YT playlists towards metaphorical inclusion/evaluation.

(in this context, with this dimension). as someone who struggles immensely to put their impressions into language, i appreciate the lacking feature set. even with the limited options i do have (title, description), i can get carried away. and of course im never satisfied with the result - there is