Monetizing brand love and some games (Spam Mail #22)

💩 Cool Shit

Doom Captcha - Play Doom to prove you’re a human.

Than Average - Find out how average you really are.

Terms and Conditions Game - Fun and harrowing game navigating all those awful popups.

Dark Patterns Tip Line - Speaking of awful UX. Report those dark patterns you come across.

Trash the Planet - A fun anti-capitalist click game featuring a raccoon.

River Runner - Drop a raindrop anywhere in the US and follow where it flows.

Trassel -  This is surprisingly relaxing. Scroll and click to draw in your browser.

Auditorial - This takes the idea of an interactive digital story to the next level.

Build mmm page - Mmm is a drag-and-drop web builder. They cleverly let you edit their own page for an interactive demo.

💎 Word gems

What Is an Entertainment Company in 2021 and Why Does the Answer Matter (Matthew Ball)

This fantastic essay dives into how entertainment companies maintain properties so they can grow and monetize brand love.

The value of “affinity” is even stronger when applied to media products with scarcity. There’s no real cap on movie tickets or TV viewers, but Elsa dresses are finite, and theme park attendance is controlled. As a result, marginal affinity can drive substantial pricing power. Those who need to go to Disneyland aren’t very price-sensitive, nor are parents whose daughter needs an Elsa dress. A little bit more love translates to a great deal of revenue, with no marginal cost, and substantially greater profits.

Left alone, together (The Roof is on Phire)

So much of today’s thinking is individualism. Even design thinking is guilty of this. This essay offers a critical take on how our own data still implicates the people we’re connected with, and because of that we need to shift our view of privacy and data from individual to the collective.

If we do care about privacy as a collective value, then it cannot be an individual burden. Right now, privacy is essentially a luxury good. If you can afford not to use coupons, you don’t have to let retailers track your shopping habits with loyalty points. If you’re technically savvy, you don’t have to let Gmail see all your emails. Not only does that make access to privacy incredibly inequitable, it also affects our collective understanding of what is a “normal” amount of privacy.

Geography Is the Chessboard of History (Uncharted Territories / Tomas Pueyo)

This is a truly fascinating lens of history and civilizations. Find out how the environment around us shapes our future.

What if whoever conquered the US landmass was condemned to become an empire? What if China was always meant to be another empire? What if Europe had all the best geographic assets to make it the breakout continent? What if Northern Europe was always going to be richer than the South, no matter the protestant and catholic ethics? What if Africa’s geography holds it behind?  

What if the land determined which tribes developed the technology to grow into cities? Which ones would become kingdoms and empires?

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