Note: OGM Forum is no longer active. This is a static snapshot as of February 2022. You can browse the site to see posts, but the functional features of the site will not work. You can search or download a zip archive of the files from the site at github/OpenGlobalMind/forum.openglobalmind.com.

Alternate-Reality-As-A-Service: "Facebook is an ARG Platform"

Discussions and Actions Redesigning Everything
#1

He’s not wrong.

We’re still exploring Alternative Reality Games (ARG) and how they might relate to OGM. This blog post seems like a good thing to bookmark in that quest.

Connections, by mhoye
via Adrian Hon, Smart commentary by@mhoye on ARG+QAnon, referencing Umberto Eco, Baudrillard, and even better, the Majestic ARG’s tagline

And with an audience already wound up in this unfiltered, overpopulated hyperreality-as-service, you barely need to do any work at all to kickstart the sort of amazing, self-sustaining paranoia-fulfillment engine that would have put the last few centuries’ foil-hatted quasi-mystic conspiriographists’ jaws right on the floor. All you need is enough people in rough proximity who feel frightened and powerless, a compelling seed crystal – the antivax fraud, the QAnon clownshow, a thousand others, it barely matters as long as it’s got a sharp hook – and this cancerous hyperculture machine pretty much bootstraps itself…

#2

just cannot shake the association of ARG with ARG-umentative; especially w.r.t. FB.

#3

I normally see the term LARP - Live Action Role Play - for QAnon. Are ARG and LARP synonymous?

#4

Good q, Rob. Definitely related, but definitely different, too.

LARP is an older term, ARG is a newer one. Folks who say QANON is LARPing probably don’t know a better word for it, but ARG is definitely better.

Even from the acronyms, you get the gist of the difference: the RP in LARP stands for “role-playing”; LARPers know they’re acting, playing a role.

The AR in ARG means “alternate reality.” Part of the game is not letting on that it’s a game; rather, it’s an alternate reality. Some people can inhabit alternate and real reality at the same time. Some people fail, and become occupants of the alternate reality.

I will copy a post about QAnon as an ARG into another topic – it’s an interesting and important topic.

#5

I agree with the topic being important and relevant.

My first association after reading your post: “All the world’s a stage …”