I plan to create a mystery; that is, a teaser phenomenon that will generate curiosity, speculation, perplpexity and excitement.
It will consist of leaving a specific kind of curious item in places where people will accidentally discover them; the items will be labelled with the URL of a website, but the website isn’t going to say a lot, at least not at the start. There will be a chat room though, so that finders of the objects can speculate amongst themselves about the meaning of the phenomenon.
The items are ready to deploy and the website is up; obviously I can say no more than that, because it would give the game away and spoil the whole thing (although I will disclose full details when it comes to fruition, and my intent is not to tease dopers, except in the extremely unlikely event they should chance to find one of the items).
What I’m looking for here is general strategies and ideas that I might be able to incorporate in order to enhance the plot. Any suggestions?
I don’t know if you had already planned to do this, but it might be interesting to make the site so that it did not refer to the objects at all, at least at first. Make the chat room or message board available, but don’t seed it with any topics or clues about the objects. Or seed it with discussions about the apparent subject of the site, whatever that may be. That’s all I’ve got, but I think I’m going to be thinking about this all day.
Not the most promising of starts; I went to a nearby town centre today on my lunch break and deposited the first of the objects* next to a large piece of public sculpture; I retired to a nearby shop to watch the outcome. Within a minute, the item was picked up, but by a council worker collecting litter. I think he just put it in the bag (although I hope he would have kept it aside - it wasn’t something that could be mistaken for litter), so it may well be that the first of my items is now on its way to a landfill.
(not gloves, or anything else you’ve heard me talk about before, but I’m not going to answer any more of the twenty questions, only because it just very quickly won’t be a secret any more)
From whence it will be pored over by a post-apocalyptic Tony Robinson who will posit as to the meaning of the strange glyphs engraved on its side…
Seriously though - implications that there are prizes to be won would keep me looking for a little while at least. After that it would depend on the quality of the discussions on the message boards - are you going to have “dummy” users to help things along? The problem starting off is always to reach the critical mass of messages so that there’s something new each time someone visits.
Grim
::Prepares to scour pavement for intriguing objects on his way home::
Prizes would be a great idea; I’m not sure how they could be implemented though…
The chat thing on the website is actually just a shoutbox - I’m not sure how much history it keeps, but I’m hoping that whoever finds the things will at least post a ‘WTF?’ comment. I will probably post some stooge comments in there to help, or add confusion.
I’m sorry to hear about the disappointing start. Also sorry I have yet to think of anything interesting to spice up your already interesting concept. I’ll look forward to further details.
I deployed the fifth object today, leaving it on a park bench facing the sea; when I walked back past it a couple of hours later, there were some people sitting there and one of them picked it up and put it down again; I think people might be mistaking the items for things that have been accidentally lost. I am (slightly reluctantly) revising the tags carrying the web URL to also include the text ‘If you find me, keep me’.
Item 6 is ready for deployment tomorrow. No response on the website from any of the finders yet.
It’s a very cool idea, but judging by my success with releasing paperbacks “into the wild” with BookCrossing, I think it will take a long, long time for this thing to get rolling. 99% of your objects will not generate interest.
You may be right. I might not have the stamina to see it through. I could probably manufacture a bit more interest by anonymously posting a few of the items to targeted individuals or something, but I don’t want to do that, because a)it’s weird and stalker-ish and b)it grates against the idea of just abandoning them to the first finder.
I dropped one on a footpath about a quarter of a mile from a school this morning, knowing that it would probably be found by a kid and even this level of marginal targeting worries me a bit.
I’d like to get at least one posted response on the website; maybe I’ll post a link here once that has happened.
Ten items deployed now and only one page hit on the website (which might even be a random visitor or a search engine spider for all I know).
Ten items, all inexplicably left in public places, with large laminated card tags conspicuously bearing an easily-remembered URL, and at best, one person bothered to look it up.
Hmmm. I know ten is a pitifully small number, but my expectations regarding human curiosity were just a little higher than this.
You should find someone else to go along with you, but someone on the other side of the world. That ought to confuse some people. Then again maybe people think it’s spam. You’re not actually leaving real Spam are you?
I said I wouldn’t answer any more questions but I think it’s safe to say that no, the items I am depositing are not made of Spam or any other similar meat product.
It seems to me that likely only one person per object reads your note – he takes t he item off, everyone before him walked by without paying attention, everyone later on has nothing to see.
As for not checking out the url: not everybody had web access. Really. Some only have it at work or libraries or such, so there’s delay on following up. Delay can equal forgotten.
I’m continually finding urls I’ve jotted down in the margin of a magazine or on a paper napkin. Sometimes I check it out then, more often I don’t remember what it’s about and I’m busy so I just throw it away.
Basically, I’m saying that I don’t think you are offering enough people the chance to check out your url. I don’t know what you are leaving as bait, but is it something you can leave in multiple? Like, oh, folding an origami animal out of bright paper and leaving one on each bench in the park, or each subway car, something like that.
And…does your note give the finder any incentive to follow up? Hint that there is some prize to be won or useful info to be gain or humorous video to watch or any other reason to go there?
You may be right, although the items themselves are something that I considered curious and interesting enough that if I were to find one, I would show it to people and discuss what the heck it was all about. Maybe I’m just inhabiting the wrong part of the bell curve here.
Anyway; I think what I need is accomplices to distribute the items more widely and more imaginatively than I can; if anyone is interested in taking part (and must absolutely swear themself to secrecy until I decide the time is right), please email the address in my profile, providing a full postal address and I will send an item and some instructions/guidelines.
