‘Interactivity’ and ‘interactive’ are terms used to describe an ostensibly essential quality of digital technology, but are they robust analytically useful concepts, and if so, describing exactly what? What does it mean to declare a phenomenon ‘interactive’? Is ‘interactivity’ a type of technology, a structural characteristic, or a mode of communication? Using examples from print, games, software, and other material media, this talk will take the adverse view, arguing against usefulness of ‘interactivity’, and suggesting a number of alternative, more precise terms and conceptual models that do not suffer from the same ideological and rhetorical weaknesses.