This tout on Lifehacker by Alan Henry for a browser extension that turns responding to emails into a game seems innocuous enough. Henry’s summary, however, touches on some of the rhetoric that makes gamification so insidious:

The developer behind The Email Game reminds us of the time when getting email used to be fun, and says it can be again with the help of The Email Game. If you’re the type who can’t help but earn arbitrary points and badges in online games, The Email Game is perfect for you.

Each message you open or respond to starts a timer, and you’ll get points based on how quickly you decide what to do with it or how quickly and concisely you respond to it. Accumulate enough points and you’ll level up. In the end, the goal is to get you to play your way to a cleaner inbox and better email management habits.

Gamification delivers on what the Internet, by capturing people’s attention, promises. It closes the trap the Internet sets, locking us into patterns of compulsive productivity that have little to do with us, substituting placatory and infantilizing pseudo-goals for whatever motivations and larger personal aspirations we might otherwise have had. Of course, the gurus of gamification assume that we are not capable of conceiving of such aspirations, that instead we are floundering, waiting for technology to enhance the dreary substance of being and make our lives “fun.” Who doesn’t want to have fun?