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Randonauts & Randonautica (App)

FrKadash

FrKadash

Justified & Ancient
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Jul 1, 2012
Messages
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Has anyone heard of this app called Randonautica? I heard it mentioned on the Strange Familiars podcast and installed it. It looks really interesting, a pretty original idea for an app, along the lines of psychogeography. Check out episode 157 of Strange Familiars, Force the Hand of Chance: A How-To Guide to Psychogeography.




‘Randonauts’ have found a great way to spice up lockdown walks

Thousands of people are using the Randonautica app to tell them where to go during lockdown – and they’re spotting some weird coincidences
If you’ve got a smartphone and access to the internet, you have everything you need to start your journey as a randonaut.

Randonauting is using a random number generator to produce specific coordinates within a set radius of your current location that you can travel to as a way of exploring the world around you. People gather these coordinates through a dedicated app, Randonautica, where they can further define what they want to encounter.

The app encourages users to set a personal intention before visiting a location, in the hopes of uncovering ‘synchronicities,’ coincidences or occurrences outside usual patterns of experience. These experiences are then documented on the community’s various online forums.

For example, one person set out with the intention of ‘seeing something unexplainable’ and stumbled across an empty armchair in a field, while another asked for guidance and ended up at an abandoned mirror telling them IT IS YOUR TIME.
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https://www.wired.co.uk/article/randonautica-lockdown
 
FrKadash said:
Has anyone heard of this app called Randonautica? I heard it mentioned on the Strange Familiars podcast and installed it. It looks really interesting, a pretty original idea for an app, along the lines of psychogeography. Check out episode 157 of Strange Familiars, Force the Hand of Chance: A How-To Guide to Psychogeography.






https://www.wired.co.uk/article/randonautica-lockdown
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Randonautica is getting a lot of mentions and videos on spooky/strange part of youtube. It probably deserves it's own thread.
 
There's a website for Randonautica:

https://www.randonautica.com

It offers almost no info and claims:

The Randonautica app puts the user in the Director's Chair of an adventure story yet to be written. By using the app, the user can break from their mundane day-to-day and take a journey of randomness into the world around them.

Your mind is your guide as you observe and view the world differently. Traveling into the unknown is a journey like no other!

Break out of your reality tunnel, re-calibrate your mind and have fun on an adventure into the world you never knew existed.

Welcome, Future Randonaut!
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It claims to work like an intention experiment with a number generator. You think of your target idea, and the app claims to lead you to somewhere relevant in real life. The target categories are often things of fortean interest, and the app claims to lead you to 'anomalies in reality'.

It "went viral" or whatever the term is, when some teens using the app were led to a suitcase with two dead bodies in it.

A bit more on the app.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...autica-app-tiktok-body-reddit-quantum/614401/
 
And an example of the randonautic videos popping up on youtube.

 
Isn't it more or less the geo-coordinate or navigational version of a Magic 8 Ball?
 
EnolaGaia said:
Isn't it more or less the geo-coordinate or navigational version of a Magic 8 Ball?
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It asks what you are looking for, then supposedly generates relevant geographic coordinates in your area (it doesn't claim to need to hear you speak the intention). A lot of the hits naturally are dependent on the fact the app user will be actively looking for things in the location they are sent to that are relevant to the intention they set, though of course the claim is that the app directs them there to find those things.

Basically it seems like Pokemon Go for humans ascribing meaning to coincidences.
 
Seems like my mind could stand to be re-calibrated, but I don't think a phone app is what is called for.

I'm tempted to try it though, so I can see how it might deal with my immediate surroundings. In many ways, I live in a very sparse place. It would probably try to send me someplace that looks like it's fifteen miles away on Google Maps, but would take a few hours to drive there because of the mountain range and wilderness area in the way.
 
Shit get weird >


Random Confirmation Bias
 
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It seems that to many of these kids the outside world is a foreign country and when they do visit it they rarely take their eyes from their phones.
They're suddenly realising that there are things out there which to them are strange.
For me - like yourself Naughty_Felid - all this would have been just another day out playing and a huge adventure.
 
I had the app installed to my phone and, as one would expect, I concentrated on Fortean/scary/obscure things in my area. Whatever I was thinking of, it constantly pinpointed to a single place in local forest... scary - yes... did I go there - no :)
 
It led one group of teenagers to some dead bodies in two suitcases:

 
I tried it, and it "located" several places near me which had nothing of interest. One spot was on a fence along a county road. The fence separates the road right of way from a field of rabbit brush, greasewood and a bit of scrubby grass. No structures are located anywhere within a quarter mile. The app didn't seem to work worth a damn either, but that's nothing unusual. SirisusXM keeps changing their app, but it doesn't work any better. They just keep moving stuff around and making things even less intuitive, if possible. Is it really that hard to make an app that works well and actually does what it's supposed to do?
 
I went to two places, both close together, one was on private land behind some houses that looked like it might lead to allotments and the other wanted me to go to a tree or copse on the siding of railway tracks, I'd have had a go at getting to the latter if there was any way off the bridge I was on, besides jumping.

Once you get to the place are you supposed to do anything, there was no information about them "in app" and they were not accessible both legally or practically and the areas closest which I could get to were not of interest. Am I doing it right?
 
I have no smartphone and it doesnt sound like its for me, seeing as its what I do anyway.

And most things are mystifying/mundane to me. I really cannot discern.
 
Been watching a lot of videos about this app on Youtube lately, starting with ones posted by a couple of channels I subscribe to, and I honestly don't know what to make of it.

The videos make it seem almost like a creepypasta come to life, or the basis for a cheap and nasty found footage horror movie. I don't doubt things are being played up, even if unintentionally by only including the interesting couple of results from many attempts, and maybe even fabricated - a couple of vids from a subscription of mine felt a bit false, despite it not seeming like something they'd do - and that's frustrating, leaving it hard to draw conclusions. It's also a bit irresponsible.

But then, so's the app itself, or at the very least ill-judged, not least in how it plays up the temptation of the mysterious. Beyond the obvious issue of people blundering into random dangers, if it were possible to hijack the app, that opens up all kinds of worrying scenarios, from mean-spirited pranks to much worse.

I'm probably just being a little paranoid. The more I think about it, the more I lean toward it being coincidences and confirmation bias, and exploitative people taking advantage. Regardless, not an app I ever intend to use.
 
Having heard about it on Euphomet's Nite Drift podcast, I downloaded the app on Tuesday and generated a point about 5k from where I live. It turned out to be on private land, but this afternoon I drove to the nearest point (which is what they recommend, they don't advocate trespassing). A white van that had been driving behind me along the main road turned off with me and followed me all the way to the dead end (a fishing spot by a lake) that I was headed to. The van pulled up alongside me, the driver (sole occupant, looked like a man in his 60s) looked in at me briefly, did a three-point turn and drove off. Other than that there was nothing remarkable about the trip. It was only later this evening when I did a web search to get a sense of others' experiences that I saw that being inexplicably followed is apparently a 'thing' with this app :chuckle:
 
I think this is what happens when people are sent to a particular location.

Nothing strange.

Reminds me of a throwaway line of my tutors "An Out of Doors Experience"
 
Any thoughts on the interesting FT mag forum piece on Randonauts? It's an app/game that takes the user to random locations, but people being the pattern-finders and confirmation biasers they are, some are seeing sinister machinations behind it. It's not random at all! Except it probably is - unless you know better? Users have been finding ghosts and all sorts.
 
Might give this a shot later today - I'm not particularly looking for anything unusual, but it could be interesting to see what's off the beaten track round here.

If nothing else it will generate some new walking and cycling routes.
 
Just returned from our first Randonautical excursion. We headed to Seaford beach in the car, parked, and ran the app.

It took us on a very pleasant sunlit amble through parts of the town I've never walked through before, ending in a spot between two fairways on the municipal golf course on the cliff tops.

This is the terrifying anomaly which resides at the exact spot we were guided to:

IMG_02042021_180142_(1000_x_1000_pixel).jpg

I suppose the stick is quite nicely framed by the dandelions.

However, as a result of the stroll across the course we decided we would both quite like to have a go at golf, so we popped into the club shop and got the details and we're going to book a round.

So the app did actually do what it claims, it led us to something new.
 
<Nods>

But did you encounter the terrifying cryptid that is alleged to have brought the heavily chewed stick?

I have heard they are solely evolved to prey upon humans and that a sinister industry exists to cater to their whims.
 
Kondoru said:
<Nods>

But did you encounter the terrifying cryptid that is alleged to have brought the heavily chewed stick?

I have heard they are solely evolved to prey upon humans and that a sinister industry exists to cater to their whims.
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They enslave humans and pull them about on leashes, demanding affection and food. Horrifying.
 
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