(11/12) Thanks for checking this out! @copperkeerthi.bsky.social and @t0mm7.bsky.social

(10/12) Sexuality in gaming/nerd spaces stays permitted and monetizable, until it's sex workers themselves enacting it, not just occupying peripheral "sexiness." Then it gets disallowed and distanced. Safety is a continuous practice of communication and transparency, never a given, in any space.

(9/12) Actual play was an early, legible bridge between tabletop culture and the erotic/affective/gendered labour. That parasexual distance mechanism hasn't gone anywhere, mainstream AP (Critical Role, Dimension20) still takes the hype sex work adjacency built while keeping the product "all-ages."

(8/12) Table-topless streaming show where this history lands: sex work and AP have normalized their intersection by splitting across platforms. Twitch on one side, Joystick TV/Fansly on the other. On mainstream platforms, the content is rule-constrained; off them, it's regulated as sex work.

(7/12) By 2018, a cast member of IHiWMA was accepting a Diana Jones Award on behalf of the entire actual play movement, that award moment is the industry openly celebrating parasexual glamour as the engine of AP's growth, as long as it stayed contained. #shitty

(6/12) IHiWMA (2010) helped launch actual play with a cast of adult performers — its DM was discovered to be an abuser, and swiftly cut loose by WotC, Gen Con, and his publisher. Those same institutions had happily banked the credibility his "edgy," sex-worker-inclusive show gave them. #shitty

(5/12) Senft argues camgirls built intimacy through perceived authenticity (home footage, daily chats, "family"-like fan communities) while still holding viewers at a distance, never letting closeness become contact. Same balancing act as Bailey's barmaid, just running on dial-up not a countertop.

(4/12) Bailey's concept of parasexuality (defined as sexuality that's staged and monetized rather than suppressed, and kept at a controlled distance from the audience) describes the Victorian barmaid behind her bar. The livestream interface does similar structural work.

(3/12) A quick warning: some of the people in these case studies are genuinely shitty. @copperkeerthi.bsky.social prepared a reading list at the end for those who want to know more. We're focusing on the role contain sex worker parasexuality had in building the actual play scene.

(2/12) We'll be discussing actual play in relation to sex work through the lenses of parasexuality, labor, and platform ethics. We argue that the success of AP livestreaming was supported by skills that came from online sex work.

(1/12) A short thread based our (@copperkeerthi.bsky.social and me) base on our talk for #GenerationAnalog2026 GREEN "Performing the Dungeon"

New collection "Cultural Game Studies" edited by @fransmayra.bsky.social and Raine Koskimaa - discount code attached. Book will be available early next month. #gamestudies

JustDance* has a fascinating metaphorical role in the narrative conclusion of the film "She Rides Shotgun" (Rowland 2025). collider.com/taron-egerto... *this interview reports that its 'tiktok' which does not seen right at all

Darshana Jayemanne and my 2012 article "Game Studies Material Turn" from Westminster Papers In Communication just hit 200 citations on google scholar www.westminsterpapers.org/article/id/1... #gamestudies

Tiresome "liberal" Bill Maher licks chocolate off artist Karen Finley in this July '99 feature in Playboy.

💡Sidetalking reveals how technological “failure” exposes the fragile negotiations between design intent, user practice, and cultural meaning. What counts as "Innovation" or "failure" depends on negotiations over time between designers, organizations, and publics.

(Quick aside) Nokia is based in Tampere, and local sensibilities dictated that my research on 'booth babes' be presented behind a curtain at the exhibition. Example below:

🇫🇮 In Finland (home of Nokia) , sidetalking became a question of national identity as much as design. Local media balanced confusion with loyalty, reflecting how domestication operates not only in households but within national imaginaries of technological success.

😂 Users made sense of the design through ridicule and parody—posting memes of bananas, alarm clocks, and consoles.

🗣️ Widely ridiculed as a technological misstep. Our analysis of contemporary Finnish media indicates that this stemmed from a lack of communication. Nokia never explained sidetalking’s purpose; without a story, consumers filled the gap with ridicule.

🏗️ Marketers wanted the sideways hold for distinctiveness and branding, overriding practicalities and problems engineers anticipated, revealing how internal hierarchies within organizations can shape technology.

🎮 Sidetalking symbolized the ambition for Nokia to shift from phones to a “convergent multimedia” paradigm, where phones were both media devices and symbols of youth 'cool' identity. Nokia’s first big attempt to redefine the mobile as a multimedia device.

📱 Sidetalking was a deliberate design choice, not an accident. Our archival/curatorial research demonstrates that Nokia engineered sidetalking to appeal to, and embody a playful, youth-oriented identity.

New #openaccess article in @mobilemediacomm.bsky.social "Sidetalking: Domesticating Nokia's playful designed identity" On the Nokia mobile gaming platform: the Nokia NGage, released 2003. A THREAD. Download: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #gamestudies #platformstudies

UK Gamescenes Symposium will take place in Tampere/Hybrid on 16th September. Program and details for joining are attached. 1/2 Features work from skypeeps @digdems.bsky.social @nitessine.bsky.social @merilainen.bsky.social @rosgakori.bsky.social @vkankainen.bsky.social

If its deliberate, its genius that the Intersecting "Axes of Privilege, Discrimination and Oppression" kinda look like an asshole, if not, a fortuitous coincidence.

Elizabeth Loftus was the co-author of "Minds at Play," one of the first scholarly books on video games, was also an expert on 'false-memory syndrome,' and was an expert witness at the trials of Harvey Weinstein and Ghislaine Maxwell: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabe...

word (1st paragraph from my 2010 book attached)

Paris Hilton's Diamond Quest, in this image she is at a promotional event where there was a fuckup and the signage read "PH's Jewel Jam" but she got over it :) #ParisHilton

Hero games