Separation
By: Annie Abrahams
If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t have read the text that is shown before playing the piece of literature. These few sentences explain exactly what the purpose of the work is, and what the ending ends up revealing. With this aside, I found this piece of work very creative as well as informative.
In order to start and proceed with the literature, you must click each time you want the next word to appear. As you are reading through it, it would be easy to assume that the entire poem is centered upon how one person feels about another person. (If I hadn’t read the text at the beginning, I would’ve thought this exact thing.) Even though the tone of this poem is very depressing, there are many parts to it that are very exciting and innovative. Every few lines, the poem stops and a picture and description of an exercise pops up. If studied carefully, it becomes clear that the lines in the poem make some mention of what kind of exercise is shown. Not only do these exercises tell you how to do them, but also time you so that you have just enough time during the poem to do them. At the end of the poem, it becomes clear that the poem isn’t about two people, but about one person’s addiction and feelings towards a computer.
If I hadn’t read the text previous to playing it, I don’t think that I would have thoroughly understood why these exercises were placed in the poem. The reason that these exercises were placed in the poem is because they are exercises that people should do in order to prevent getting RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury.) One way that people get RSI is from being on the computer for an extended amount of time. It is comical to me that the author would do this because in order to play this game, one must be on the computer.
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of this game was what happened when I got impatient. When I got impatient, I started clicking my mouse faster to make the poem show up quicker. It gets very frustrating clicking each time you want to read the next word. If the player begins to click too fast for the game’s liking however, a pop up window comes up and tells you that “You don’t have the right attitude in front of your computer.” It then lists four reasons for why this pop up came up. This is really interesting because it explains that you are using too much energy and force when clicking and that you must slow down. It then makes you replay the last few lines of the poem that was just read. I believe that the reason the game wants the player to play at such a slow speed is because that is how somebody with RSI would play. Since you have to go slow and you cannot skip anything, it really gives you the idea of how somebody with RSI feels when on the computer. I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game because it informed me about RSI while keeping me interested and making me think. This is definitely one of the most creative works I’ve experienced.
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