Pos or Not

MTV’s Pos or Not? uses a hot-or-not style interface to encourage players to guess if the person in the photo is HIV positive or not. Unlike overly easy online games, such as ID the Creep about sexual predators, it isn’t simple to figure out the underlying algorithm of posornot.org, which makes the experience of this particular guessing game unsettling. Gay people are often negative, and straight people are often positive, and all of the portraits come with intimate accounts about either how the person became infected or how the person became an activist despite being negative because of contact with a victim of the disease. According to the “about" page, this Kaiser foundation-sponsored online activity is specifically designed to be “viral,” and players are frequently prompted with a message about “Send Game to A Friend.”

• Share on Tumblr