Guest lecture: "My Moshi Monster is 'Desolate: Games and Affect in Digital Capitalism"

On March 25th we welcome you to Dr. Natalie Coulter's guest lecture "My Moshi Monster is 'Desolate: Games and Affect in Digital Capitalism". Natalie Coulter is Assistant Professor in Toronto at York University, and will be the Director of IRDL (Institute of Research on Digital Learning and cultures) starting in June 2019. The event is organized by Tallinn University's Gender Research Team and BFM. The presentation will be in English and followed by a discussion. Everyone is welcome! 

Short introduction:

In the online game Moshi Monsters geared to tween girls, the game tells me my avatar Monster named SillySoul2407, is “desolate.” Desolation is a bad thing according to the game. The goal to keep a monster’s happiness and health ratings high. 

While my Monster maybe desolate, tween girls are not allowed to be desolate.  Instead there is this perpetual fetishization of fun for the young girl. There are few spaces for girls to be anything but having fun. The corporate framing of tweenhood defines this stage as a stage of perpetual fun and happiness. In the current neoliberal marketplace the tween girl plays an important role in anchoring the activity of consumption as a space of fun.

The purpose of this paper is to extend this theorization of the affective spaces of young tween girls in the current moment of neoliberal capitalism. The presence of misery and desolation in digital spaces such as Moshi Monsters allow for an opportunity to problematize the mediatized construction of sensory experiences for tween girls.  In the game emotional sensations are rooted in the effects of material conditions that can easily be changed with the simple actions of buying food and buying items to decorate my monster’s room. 

Ultimately this paper will use Moshi Monsters, as form of tween media, as way to question the mediatized constructions of a) affective experiences, b) individual subjectivity and c) Lauren Berlant’s (2008) notion of the “unfinished business of sentimentality” in the spectacle of the digital spaces of Moshi Monster.