Site experiment · first seen May 29, 2026

Wall of Rejection

Wall of Rejection began as the Steam-style badge meme I sent to labmates after CHI and UIST said no. I turned it into a small public record: pick a badge, read the rejection receipt, and collect deliberately silly Failure XP. The same rejection event never earns points twice.

Rejection receipts Event-based XP Non-additive combos Accepted papers stay primary
Open the wall Download reproduction MD
Why

The publication list showed where work landed, but hid the trying and revising around it.

What

Four selected rejections, each with a badge and a short receipt beside the accepted papers.

Try

Open a badge, move between shelves, and check that the 38 XP total never changes.

Why it began

After one first-authored paper was rejected from CHI 2026 and UIST 2026, I made a Steam-style badge meme for labmates. The joke treated surviving the reviews—not getting accepted—as the achievement. It also pointed to something missing from the publication page: the bibliography showed where work landed, but none of the attempts around it.

For the website, I kept the joke small: selected public rejections beside the scholarship, with enough detail to understand each “no.”

What changed

  1. Original

    The lab meme made two rejections into achievements.

    The intentionally overbuilt Steam-style profile was funny in a group chat. It was not a record someone could inspect or update.

  2. Website version

    Each “no” became a badge with a receipt.

    I removed the generic achievement profile and kept only rejection events. Opening a badge now shows its date, decision stage, and a short reflection.

  3. Counting rule

    38 XP means four rejection events.

    A badge can appear on several shelves, and the Double Rejection combo can connect CHI and UIST, but neither adds another event or another point.

From meme to receipt wall

Original Steam-style lab meme showing CHI and UIST rejection achievement cards in a fictional HCI researcher profile
Origin source. A supplied 1672 × 941 static lab meme, added at 77b8efbca on May 29. Its profile statistics are fictional joke copy.
Noon-theme Wall of Rejection with Highlights selected, the CHI Rejection receipt pinned open, four source-event badges, one zero-XP combo badge, and 38 of 50 Failure XP
Current wall. A 670 × 502 Noon/light runtime crop from dd801b99c on July 22: Highlights selected, the CHI receipt pinned open, and 38 XP from four source events; the fifth badge is a zero-XP combo.

Each public rejection has one source event and one receipt; shelves and combo badges never create another event.

How each no moves through the wall

The ledger contains two first-author paper rejections at 12 XP each, one grant rejection at 7 XP, and one fellowship rejection at 7 XP: 38 XP from four events.

  1. Event

    I add a selected decision once, with its public label, rejection type, XP value, and eligible badges.

  2. Badge

    The event becomes a control such as CHI Rejection. It can appear in Highlights, Papers, or CHI without becoming three events.

  3. Receipt

    Open the badge to see its date, decision stage, short reflection, and category tags.

  4. Non-additive combo

    Double Rejection connects the CHI and UIST pattern and contributes 0 XP. The joke gets a combo; the ledger still has two decisions.

Technical provenance and exact ledger
  • Event source: _data/wall_of_rejection.yml separates source events, display badges, receipts, shelves, and joke metrics so repeated presentation cannot inflate the count.
  • Current math: CHI 2026 12 + UIST 2026 12 + MSR AI and the New Future of Work CFP 7 + MSR Fellowship 7 = 38 XP. Combo and milestone badges add 0.
  • Origin image: 1672 × 941, SHA-256 dc4d4e79d5d6444867dfc56b7d436a6439226208b2885a34d37cf22bcb4c4271, archived at 77b8efbca on May 29.
  • Runtime crop: 670 × 502 Noon/light Highlights state with the CHI receipt pinned open, SHA-256 44605d2f71e9a771c390eef6986d35952dd8c11df933a3c4ccc6747b859941e0, captured from dd801b99c at a 700 × 1000 CSS-pixel viewport in Chromium 145.0.7632.6 on July 22.
  • Reading order: the wall remains secondary to the accepted-paper list; changing shelves reorganizes badges but never changes the event ledger or XP.
  1. 910f3c7f2Replaced a generic review-achievement panel with rejection-only badges, receipts, and the first XP joke.
  2. 77b8efbcaRestored the supplied lab meme as the real origin evidence instead of keeping a substitute.
  3. 6ab847bcdSeparated source events from reusable badges, added grant and fellowship records, and made combo and milestone badges worth 0 XP.
  4. 1dad10b5bAdded the rejection timeline and aligned the ledger with CV evidence while keeping accepted work out of the count.
  5. f51ff4f16Quieted the evening hierarchy so the rejection wall stayed secondary to the papers.
  6. c23d42e9dArchived the 670 × 502 current wall state for the project card and case-study evidence.
  7. dd801b99cRecaptured the same current-wall story state with its source commit, viewport, browser, theme mode, and pinned interaction recorded.

Credits and the next joke

The wall nods to Bradley Voytek’s failure-CV tradition, Sirui’s own post-UIST badge meme, and the strange optimism of the Spooder-Man trailer. Those references shaped the honesty and tone, not the final interface skin.

The wall carries the evidence ledger. HCI Spooder-Man follows what happened when the double rejection became a character, a trailer-shaped joke, and a remix kit.