Hide ‘n Tweet

From the Twitter blog Sunday evening came a pointer to the best use of Twitter outside of recycling Steven Wright jokes. Inspired by Richard Connell’s 1924 short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” the Least Dangerous Game is a social hide ‘n seek activity within the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

LDG signed on to the mini-blogging service in late March for their first game, with its creator Aric McKeown hiding at a pre-determined location and publishing clues through Twitter. The game is run twice a month for four hours on a Saturday afternoon. The first follower to find Aric gets a prize and some bandwidth on the Monday podcast.

Unlike Connell’s version, which was set on some remote island without access to a cable modem, the sport of human hunting has evolved to be (a) non-lethal and (b) greatly aided by technology:

We work in cubicals 8 hours a day. Our information is on the internet. We have become the least dangerous game.

Instead of running scared, it’s time we embrace it! As easy as we are to access, the internet also distances us with watered down interactions.

Guessing Aric’s location correctly isn’t the goal; this is a multi-modal activity where you use computer-mediated communication to facilitate a face-to-face meeting.

A local Twin Cities publication, City Pages, profiled LDG last week, revealing some details about the behind-the-scenes process. Aric funds his own prizes, and he has had as many as a half dozen of his now 84 followers chasing him down at any given time. After every outing, he posts a recap that explains the clues he tweeted. According to another blog promoting the first LDG on March 31, 2007, Aric also has another project—MakeMeWatchTV—where he asks his online community to vote on what he should watch on television.

As more and more of my interests point toward some dissertation focusing on local information use, the Least Dangerous Game is an idea that merits wide scale copycatting. Imagine someday coordinating hiding places through Big Tree Top networks and coming up with regular sponsors for prizes. GPS and Chamber of Commerce scavenger hunts are not new, but the use of Twitter and a decidedly local following to generate personal contact is unique. It encourages both use of a new connective technology and an old-fashioned one—local patronage—to get people involved in their communitiy.