[SIGCIS-Members] THIS FRIDAY @ 2PM ET: ROMchip Presents: Rachel Plotnick on "Powering Performance: Energy Drinks and the Optimized Gamer

[Laine Nooney]

Join us Friday, January 31, as *ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories *hosts
scholar Rachel Plotnick for her talk "Powering Performance: Energy Drinks
and the Optimized Gamer." The event will be at 2PM ET on the *ROMchip *Twitch
channel, https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal.

Get tickets HERE
<https://buytickets.at/romchipajournalofgamehistories/1484662> and sign up
for our newsletter
<https://romchip.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=27c1594af9abf2dc80455091b&id=caaf5790a7>
to
never miss an update. **Tickets serve as calendar reminders for the event;
they are not required to attend. Head to
https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal to join the talk on Jan 31**

*About the Talk*
Energy drinks like *G Fuel*, *Gamer Supps*, *Amp Game Fuel*, and *Nerd
Focus* promise to optimize the gamer’s body through performance-enhancement
and longer-lasting play. Public health experts have long warned against
these beverages’ negative health effects, but these drinks can also teach
us a great deal about consumption – not just of gaming *content* but also
how media stamina and endurance intersect with bathroom breaks,
nourishment, tiredness, and attention. Taking an historical approach to
energy drinks and the gaming culture that surrounds them, Plotnick's talk
considers how long-held ideas about caffeination, hydration, sport, and
fatigue – from studies of pilots to athletes drinking Gatorade – inform the
present moment. As energy drinks offer a solution to burning out or tuning
out, they medicalize media use to produce the ideal gamer and the
never-ending game.


*About the Speaker*Rachel Plotnick is an associate professor of cinema and
media studies in The Media School at Indiana University Bloomington. She
studies human-technology relationships and interfaces in everyday life
(both historically and in the present), from pushing buttons and scrolling
through touchscreens to the media hygiene provoked by sweating in VR,
cleaning vinyl records, or dropping your phone in the toilet. Her first
book, *Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of
Pushing*, is published by The MIT Press (2018), with a second book, *License
to Spill: Where Dry Devices Meet Liquid Lives*, forthcoming in April 2025
(The MIT Press). Her research has been featured by *NPR*, the *Wall Street
Journal*, the *BBC*, *IEEE Spectrum*, and others.

*Upcoming Events*
February 7 @ 2PM: Jesper Juul presents on his latest book, *Too Much Fun:
The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer *[TIX HERE
<https://www.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehistories/1498794>
]

February 14 @ 2PM: Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman discuss their
co-authored book, *Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and
Almost Bankrupted Barbie *[TIX HERE
<https://www.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehistories/1498801>
]

February 22 @ 11AM-11PM ET: ROMchip Twitch Fundraiser Stream, ft Phil
Salvador, merritt k, qdot, Paolo Pedercini, tinahacks, Jason Scott and
more! Come through for 12 hours of games, prizes, and historical hijinks.
Learn more HERE <https://donate.romchip.org/>.


*About ROMchip**ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories
<https://www.romchip.org/>* is a free, online scholarly journal for game
history. *ROMchip *develops, edits, and publishes ad-free, open access game
history research for a range of audiences. It supports any discipline of
work enlivening the history of games in local and global contexts, and
embraces diversity in how game history is studied, documented, collected,
preserved, and practiced. *ROM**c**hip* is a donation-based organization
fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation
<https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/> (d.b.a. Hack Club), a 501(c)(3)
nonprofit (EIN: 81-2908499).
--
Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/>

Associate Professor |  MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU
<http://www.nyu.edu/>  | they/them
Managing Editor  |  ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories
<https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal>  |  Join our Newsletter
<http://eepurl.com/crCul1>

-Need to make an appt? Click, don't email:
https://calendar.app.google/V9ZuMRWEKnnUBdQ56
-Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos
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