The Prison Colony

I've been cataloging other examples that seem to show what I call online "theatres of cruelty" in interactive computational media. "Animator vs. Animation," which I write about in the book, seems to be another satirical case in which the violence of writing described by Derrida and the violence of the computer interface that collapses vision and touch, which is described by Lev Manovich, are conflated and depicted on the Internet.

Of course, for many simulating torture is no laughing matter. I've written about the genre of the "torture game" before here on Virtualpolitik. This month, as torture is debated in two branches of government, and conservative talk show hosts are allowing themselves to be waterboarded, "torture" is hardly a neutral term.