Post-Text is the Most Text

Felix Salmon, April, on his surprising new job:

But the core of what I do at Fusion will be post-text. Text has had an amazing run, online, not least because it’s easy and cheap to produce. When it comes to digital storytelling, however, the possibilities — at least if you have the kind of resources that Fusion has — are much, much greater.

People batted around that “post-text” line for a while, made their jokes, and forgot. Now, today:

My first #post-text project for Fusion: Bad Paper, a game which should help people understand the world of debt collections in a fun, immersive way.

Bad Paper is a choose-your-own-adventure-style game, turning what would be rhetorical questions in a story’s copy into actual questions with answers you can click or tap. It’s smart! (Or maybe I’m just smug about my success at virtual ruthless debt collection.) And is was coordinated with a long and traditional Times magazine piece, which, after playing this game, I am very slightly more likely to read.

One interesting thing about “post-text” is that it’s full of text. So now we know: It’s “post” as in “post-rock,” not “post-apocalypse.”