Many evaluations offer a concrete judgment about whatever is being evaluated. When you are ambivalent, though, you have mixed feelings about someone or something. In the final paragraph of his essay,...

Many evaluations offer a concrete judgment about whatever is being evaluated. When you are ambivalent, though, you have mixed feelings about someone or something. In the final paragraph of his essay, though, Bogost writes, “As for me, here I am — with some ambivalence — giving Comcast publicity for its pizza stunt, doing the very thing the company claimed it didn’t expect” (par. 17). Implied in this judgement is an assumption about the acceptability of ambivalence when evaluating something. By ending his essay this way, Bogost suggests that it is okay to be ambivalent, to neither endorse or reject what it is you are evaluating.

What assumptions do you have about the appropriateness of ambivalence in different contexts and where do you think those assumptions come from? Can you think of contexts in which you think ambivalence should be encouraged or discouraged?

Are you satisfied with Bogost’s ending and his articulation of ambivalence as opposed to a more concrete judgement? What does your reaction to the ending suggest about your assumptions regarding when ambivalence is appropriate?