Procedural Rhetoric

I love Bogost and procedural rhetoric. I read this last semester and am excited to be reading it again.

The concept of procedural rhetoric is that the persuasion or argument is found within how something works. For instance the main rhetoric of a videogame it is in the mechanics. While the art, the music and the plot can have their own rhetoric, a game designer needs to be aware the argument their game is making and how it influences the character. For instance I remember playing one game where you work in airport security. The game moved very quickly, so soon I was just going through the motions as fast as I could, removing the banned objects from the customers. It was only till after I was done playing that I thought about the fact the game had made me remove people’s clothing at one point and what that meant rhetorically. I felt how I played the game was added to by the minamilstic art and the simplest music; but it all centered around the procedural rhetoric.

I also tried to think about this in other ways beyond games as I read this piece the second time. What can be said about the mechanics of a web page? I thought about how I how facebook brings up a small box when I want to share something, verse tumblr, who will bring me to a separate page. Or how a comedic webpage called 9gag lets you scrolls using two keys and to like a picture with another when most sites require the use of a mouse. These mechanical choices persuade the user of the web page in a certain way.

I wonder how far that persuasion goes? Does it go even deeper then the procedures rehtoric of the website. I wonder if web browsers and OS can use procedural rhetoric. If so, what would they try to persuade their user of? I wonder if this something a designer or programmer consciously thinks of. We recently read something about racism in the way websites are designed for my web design class. I wonder if the mechanics of websites can have a racist, sexist, or homophobic connotation.