About fun: a long thread.
I have quite vocal about my dislike of the concept of fun. In class, I warn my students that they should not use that f-word, and I’ve written about its limitations and why we should not use it.
But come to think of it, I am wrong. (1/11)

I disliked fun because I was being too serious about “design”. Fun is vague, it does not allow for properly understanding the nuances of human experience, and it is too positive a concept.
That is me trying to be very serious about being a serious scholar. (2/11)

From a design (sorry, "design") perspective, I may be right. After all, precision in what designers look for is important, so they can ask the right questions. But going from there to a dismissal of the concept is an example of an academic taking themselves too seriously. (3/11)

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I need the concept of fun. Yes, it is vague, but precisely because it is vague it’s important . Fun is not a precise concept, a quantifiable value, a formal property. Fun is liminal, and that is the point. (4/11)

Perhaps what matters, what really matters, is that fun has no stable meaning, it is always in the making. We cannot define fun - fun becomes a meeting point, with others and with the world; it is a shared experience, a negotiation of joys and pleasures. (5/11)

Fun is a strong concept because is ambiguous and because it is ambiguous, it cannot be policed. What is fun for me is not fun for you, but if we want to have fun, we need to meet and agree. (6/11)

We cannot dictate what is fun and what is not without become bores or worse, small tyrants of other peoples’ pleasures. This ambiguity of fun can lead to solipsism: my fun is not your fun, and only mine counts. Again, we can easily become small tyrants. (7/11)

But fun promises something bigger, an opportunity: because fun is ambiguous, a point of encounter, it is also a way out of what is regimented, the outcome or the beginning of desirable possibilities. (8/11)

In this way, fun is also an ethic. Fun requires the generosity of meeting where others think fun is, the curiosity and generosity of seeing others’ fun, and the bravery of joining it. (9/11)

And sure, some people think horrible things are fun; some people find fun in the misery of many. We need to live with this contradiction. (10/11)

The moral rottenness of people should not deprive us from having fun as a way of joining together, of imagining possibilities, of approaching others with generosity and curiosity about what their fun is all about.
Again, fun is an ethic.
And I guess I like fun now
(11/11)

(thread inspired by John Sharp ( @jofsharp) and David Thomas’ ( @DrDeth) Fun, Taste, & Games ( https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fun-taste-games), and David Graeber’s What’s the Point if We Can’t Have Fun? ( https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun))