Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/30/the-adventure-app-randonautica.html
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Only tried it once so far and set my intention to “money” because I mean hey, why not? The point it took me to was the stables where the city keeps it’s police horses. Random.
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I entertained my SO’s interest in this one day. All the spots it picked were publicly inaccessible (at least legally), except the last one, which was just between two houses and there was no cat there like she wanted, or at least that we could see.
It feels like geocaching except for the Ghosthunters viewing crowd.
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An evolution of dérive in keeping with our goal orientated culture I guess. Wonder what Guy Debord would say. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dérive
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So this is a solitaire pokeman-less Pokemon Go?
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For every interesting find I wonder how many people find absolutely nothing.
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“Tried this app, nothing happened.” doesn’t go viral.
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Bitrot has almost destroyed the semantic content of that image. Perhaps it’s time to start with a fresh scan.
Meshing the physical energy, or lack of it, around you with the power of the human mind can show you something you would never have found otherwise.
Okay, Deepak Chopra.
Sounds to me like a bunch of improbable (but entirely possible in a large enough group) coincidences, some stories made up or exaggerated for dramatic effect, and lots of confirmation bias (ignoring all the times nothing happened). All that said, it sounds like an interesting app and I’m going to give it a try myself, but I’m not expecting any of this creepypasta to be a concern.
Anyone remember the app that was just called Rando? You’d take a picture and send it to someone random somewhere in the world, and get a photo from another random person. It was a lot of fun and I miss it.
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… … … can I buy some pot from you?
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So basically this app provides prompts for the kids to use to create written or video creepy pastas that people take at face value like, I dunno, rainbow parties. I love the internet.
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It’s cache-less geocaching.
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Ah, quantum flapdoodle. Is there anything it can’t do?
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With at least 2 more actual corpses. Actually, now that I think about it, is there any data on how many people have stumbled on corpses while playing Pokemon Go? It might be a good control.
Edited to add - actually, after just a little googling it looks like you might be -more- likely to find corpses while playing Pokemon Go.
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I suspect it’s normally distributed, with the mean being an unremarkable trip, and the outer edges being things like dead bodies and sacks of ID cards etc. Of course the fringe cases are what get the attention as the rest are just too mundane.
As for the pet anecdote, I think it’s likely more coincidence than causal.
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The “science” on display seems more than a little reminiscent of the '80s Doctor Who story Warriors’ Gate: trapped in a pocket universe, the TARDIS crew try to break out by setting random coordinates based on coin flips, on the theory that in their current, much smaller, universe, random events are more likely to display meaningful patterns.
Unfortunately, it instead causes them to become trapped in a white Limbo, featureless except for a Gothic ruin, time-portal mirrors, homicidal robot knights, and formal Baroque gardens presented entirely as still black and white backgrounds.
It was proper weird.
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Using a quantum number generator to send users to a set of mysterious coordinates, Randonautica has become a “fully functional reality-tunnel creating machine that digs rabbit holes to wonderland.” Perhaps it sounds enchanting, but for some, the trip to wonderland can be unnervingly ominous.
If you’re not into quantum physics and philosophy, this may seem like a jumble of nonsense.
It sounds like it’s complete condescending nonsense, it’s because it is.
And this kind of complete nonsense can be intensely fun the same way a magic show is fun. Except, I dont leave a magic show thinking that the laws of physics can be violated and ladies can be safely sawn in half.
It looks like the app creators are making some coin on their quantum: In the “Add ons” section, you’re going to have to pay extra, say, if you want to ensure that your random data point is not over water.
Magical thinking and irrationality, in the middle of a botched pandemic response and a botched Presidency, is apparently something the American populace needs less of and not more. (That’s kind of how we fell into these twin crises.)
If this person is an adult, this isn’t fun. This is facepalm territory.
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