More experimental even than my usual fare, this symposium will seek to describe the snapstreak, and Snapchat itself, as performative play practices, and then to extrapolate from there to describe other social media practices in similar terms.

The question to which I seek an answer: what traction can we get over the function of identification in the play practices we usually describe as games from considering how we identify with ourselves as practitioners of social media? If immersion is identification with the ruleset, how do our social media performances transform us as we assume the self-images we create within the mechanics of various social media platforms? What happens to that imago, and to us, when a snapstreak ends?

Thursday, March 1st, on Skype at 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT.