In a world where measurement and classification dominate everything, from restaurants to movies and social media "likes," philosopher C. Thi Nguyen has coined the term "value capture." This concept describes how individuals adopt external values without questioning them, allowing these metrics to define their behavior and perception of the world. His book The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game warns about the omnipresence of this phenomenon.
This dynamic creates a fundamental paradox: although metrics are essential for social coordination, there is always a gap between what is measured and what truly matters. Often, the most significant aspects of existence are unquantifiable. Nguyen illustrates this tension with the example of games: in a family card game, the goal is to win, but the real purpose is to enjoy the company. Therefore, satisfaction can exist even in defeat, as long as victory is taken seriously, maintaining a delicate balance.
Metrics are useful: they allow people with different interests to work together towards a shared and simple goal, like a magazine wanting to increase its readership, as is the case with Fonoll magazine. But in this process, we lose sight of our deeper, personal goals.
The problem arises when this game logic is transferred to daily life, saturating it with classifications and scores. Although metrics can facilitate collaboration towards shared goals, such as increasing readership for a publication like Fonoll magazine, this obsession can divert attention from deeper personal purposes. The pursuit of "likes" or good grades can lead to the belief that what cannot be quantified – a recipe without followers, an unknown town, or an ordinary person – lacks value or is insignificant.
Over time, this trend fosters a homogenization of discourse and implicit consensuses: an excellent recipe is defined by thousands of "likes," and personal attractiveness is associated with certain canons. The more we classify, the more this system perpetuates itself, making any element outside of it seem strange. Nguyen, drawing from his experience as a skateboarder, cook, and yo-yo enthusiast, observes how the introduction of scores into previously unquantified activities can reduce the variety of excellence. For example, skateboarding competitions have prioritized spectacular tricks over style, and wine scores have favored intense wines at the expense of subtle ones.
Currently, despite the existence of numerous cultural niches that allow for deep exploration of any interest, the gathering of people with common passions often leads to the establishment of hierarchies and fractal standardization. Nguyen's proposal for this problem is to pursue one's own purposes without the need for external justification. At the end of his book, he suggests that shared games could be avenues for personal fulfillment, an individualistic conclusion that makes sense in a context where external metrics trap us, making it so that, perhaps, the only way out is to "play alone."
