Robot Paranoia: THE CAPTCHA GAME

[Triple Zero]

I like the idea of a website that gives you a series of "prove you're a human" challenges, each more complex (and strange) than the previous, until you make a mistake. (Upon which it would give you a blank page with, "Clearance request denied." or something similar.)

whoa i love this idea!

it could start with a few simple CAPTCHAs, then a couple of those weird "pick out the three kittens" selectors, then a "pick the three cute chicks" captcha, then some vague reference to robot sex (it's mandatory), then something reall absurd, and from there it should move on to slightly more active/real life kinds of challenges, finally stuff like "to prove you're not a robot, download these posters, paste them all over town, take pics and post them to Flickr tagged as 'postergasm'".

ironic thing being, if they carry out all these tasks, they're pretty much programmed like a robot

That would be brilliant, in fact.

It would also spread like wildfire, like so many of these sites do, when their purpose is unknown.  Digg, Stumble, reddit etc would mean crazy hits for the site.

hmmmmmmmmm okay. since it's uber-easy to make, code-wise, as it doesn't have to be actual generated CAPTCHAs, just pics with an "answer" or "click on the right spot to continue" kind of stuff made up to look like CAPTCHAs, i might do this.

i should really finish the radiofreediscordia.org site first, though

but brainstorming:

- i want to title it "rabotnik" (rabotnik.blackironprison.com perhaps) or "ja tvoi sluga" (website title) as a reference to Kraftwerk's "the robots"
- front page will have a little news feed saying "News 5/9/2008 - The site is online and live!" and one or two other informationless generic news-items (ideas anyone?)
- big logo that says "JA TVOI SLUGA"
- fill the rest of the page with generic newskool css/html crap that looks shiny
- next to the news feed there is a box that says "To continue, please prove that you're not a robot by solving the CAPTCHA below: [some image of a real easy CAPTCHA stolen from some site, for the one on the front page possibly randomize it between 10 different ones to not give away it's actually static--still easier than writing a CAPTCHA script]

questions:

- what should be on the second page? i'm thinking of slowly changing the layout to different things, but nothing too noticeable.
- there should be a littlebit of (info-less) text
- and most importantly, what should be the excuse for presenting the user with another CAPTCHA? i say the first three screens it should give a semi-reasonable reason, after that the reasons can become more absurd.
- Cramulus, do you happen to have saved a collection of cool oldskool robot pics / robosexual pictures and things, i think it would be cool to start incorporating them after a few screens. plus, a few well-chosen images really helps to make an otherwise nearly empty page look cool, example: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/devival2008

- for info-less content some of the IT/web2.0 stuff could be parodied about dynamic solutions leveraging business potential in a customer oriented way and such. there used to be a fake website made by some dutch guys that did this brilliantly and sold nothing, maybe i can find it. otherwise maybe somebody can write empty content? (somehow i feel that LMNO might be excellent at this)

- maybe after some levels it could start linking to discordian rants (at first not too obviously discordian related) about The Machine and those "Robot Sex" essays Cram made (one or two?)

- another choice is whether to have each level as a new URL so people can bookmark it, or to use sessions and POST forms of which i'll spare you the technical details but it would come down to that the URL stays the same so people cannot bookmark it (or if they do, they would return to the first page before any CAPTCHAs), which would make the game harder to solve, but perhaps also just more annoying to "play". thoughts on this?

- oh i forgot where, but it really should have a 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle somewhere, they're boring as fuck, easily solved by very repetitive behaviour and therefore prove nothing about being a robot or not (heh)

[Cain]

I think a new URL would be better.  The less obvious that this is a game/GASM, less likely people will get bored or catch on too quickly.

Also, I think the less information that is on the site, the better.  So I would say have a generic symbol of some description, and your proceed information.  I would also have the information that the site is now live, and perhaps mention it is version 1.2 or something (suggest an earlier incarnation, getting people to chase shadows).

As for the following pages, I'm tempted to do something occult-y and mysterious.  Not to obviously drawing attention to a Discordian hand behind events, but perhaps hinting at it (some of the symbology and images from, say, the Invisibles would be good.  A faded background picture of the tree of life, maybe on the next page an image of Ganesh if we can find a decent one, symbols from the Rosicrucians etc.. ideas to keep people guessing.  alternatively, we can come up with something else, but I think a theme of some sorts to the imagery would really capture peoples imaginations).  In front of the imagery, there would be a second CAPTCHA input thing.

Randomizing is an excellent idea.  I also like the idea of subtle escalation in excuses presented.  Perhaps another idea, if it is easy enough to code, would be so that people who stick with putting in the CAPTCHA codes for longer before failing get linked to different memebombs and posters.  And maybe once every couple of weeks, change it around so that the results vary.

[Triple Zero]

I think a new URL would be better.  The less obvious that this is a game/GASM, less likely people will get bored or catch on too quickly.

it's just a subdomain, could mean anything?

mainly i just thought of it cause it's free though it might draw interested people to check out the BIP wiki (which has tons of awesome stuff on it by now)

Also, I think the less information that is on the site, the better.  So I would say have a generic symbol of some description, and your proceed information.  I would also have the information that the site is now live, and perhaps mention it is version 1.2 or something (suggest an earlier incarnation, getting people to chase shadows).

great ideas!

and i love the term "generic symbol of some description".

it inspired me to make this:



(i realize it doesn't look nearly spiffy enough, but i was thinking of a sort of generic rainbowish logo like the NBC logo, but then with a sideways pentagon)

As for the following pages, I'm tempted to do something occult-y and mysterious.

why?

hasn't most of the ARG games already done that?

Not to obviously drawing attention to a Discordian hand behind events, but perhaps hinting at it (some of the symbology and images from, say, the Invisibles would be good.  A faded background picture of the tree of life, maybe on the next page an image of Ganesh if we can find a decent one, symbols from the Rosicrucians etc.. ideas to keep people guessing.  alternatively, we can come up with something else, but I think a theme of some sorts to the imagery would really capture peoples imaginations).  In front of the imagery, there would be a second CAPTCHA input thing.

... but ... robots?

also, my flatmate brought me a little clay statue of Ganesh from India, so i can pretty much produce any kind of Ganesh picture, as long as it doesn't have to be in colour.

Randomizing is an excellent idea.  I also like the idea of subtle escalation in excuses presented.  Perhaps another idea, if it is easy enough to code, would be so that people who stick with putting in the CAPTCHA codes for longer before failing get linked to different memebombs and posters.  And maybe once every couple of weeks, change it around so that the results vary.

hmm that's also an idea, i hadn't thought of it that way, i thought it would be simply a kind of game where you have to pass levels, kind of like those "hack this site" games, but instead of hacking your way out of a wet paper javascript bag, you'd have a solve a CAPTCHA ...

there's zillions of ways to go about this. i have more ideas but they require some code and i dunno if i can make that true so i'll keep that for myself, cause it's better to just get something out there first.

[Cain]

If people are thinking this is an ARG, then they are thinking in the wrong direction.  Which is why I want to create that illusion.  The more the impression is created, but the site does not conform entirely to expectations, the more people are going to try and work out what is going on, which means getting other people involved to help them.

It aids the viral spread.  I'm up for other ideas however, it is only a suggestion.  We could also look into somehow using the Zeigarnik Effect to our advantage.

As for domains/subdomains, trust me, if people approach this as an ARG, the first thing they will do is check out the main site, and possibly check domain registry information as well.  And if they see explicity that Discordians may be involved, they will conclude that some sort of trick is being played and possibly not take part.  Secrecy is a great motivator, people love the idea of being "in" on a conspiracy.

[Golden Applesauce]

This is brilliant.  My knowledge of PHP / HTML is nil, so I have no clue how to go about coding captchas.
Therefore I will assist by brainstorming ideas for captchas.

- Traditional captchas in non-Western characters.  As in, "type the letters exactly as they are above," only with distorted kanji or arabic script.

- Trivia questions - can be general knowledge at first, then maybe focus on people like Joshua Norton, "What does 'The Mgt.' stand for?", etc.  Identify artists of increasingly obscure paintings.  Ask users to find the source of images.  (I think this one would be appropriate.)

- Mathematics - I'm thinking like SAT type questions.  Word problems could involve very bizarre circumstances.  And towards the end a differential equation with a simple solution that can only be found by guessing and checking.  NP-complete problems.  Show them a program and ask if it will terminate in finite time.

- Puzzles - Tower of Hanoi, a sliding block puzzle, solitaire, trace a diagram without going over the same point twice, beat a level in Tetris (with scripted blocks), crosswords (lots of room for bizarreness here) or sudoku, traveling salesman problem.

- Call-and-response - Show a famous line, have user input the famous response.  "How about Global Thermonuclear War" -> "Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?", etc.  Leverage your knowledge of non-US movies.

- misc - ask the user to enter at least so many characters of text (a high number); failing them if their input contains 'asdf' or does not use at least 20 distinct letters.  Make them get a chatterbot to say a specific word.  Show a picture of a pipe, ask what it is (the correct response is "Ceci n'est pas une pipe".)  Ask user to create a password; fail them if it is a name, a number, an english word, less than eight characters, contains characters of only one case, does not have any special symbols, or is only letters.  Have them check a Mailinator account for a clue.  A simple math problem where the passing response is '23' instead of the real solution.

[Golden Applesauce]

Not quite there yet, a little pixelated on the edges.  But spiffier.

[Cramulus]

The "reward" at the end could be a PDF they can download. Like a BIP download, or an archive of other stuff we've produced. (seems a bit sweeter if you had to go through some bullshit to get it)

or maybe they get a printable certificate or card to prove they're human.
     That'd be funny - at some point, to prove you're human, you have to supply it with a picture of your face.. then that picture appears on your "human license" at the end.

We could require this capcha check to access some secret part of the PD frontpage. (like if you click on the golden apple in the chao, you get taken to this capcha, then our secret download page)

[Tempest Virago]

Disjointed thoughts in response:

I definitely think it should be a new webpage with no ties to principiadiscordia.com. I think that making it lead back to here would have the potential to kill it before it took off. It could even lead back to us talking about it, which would sort of defeat the point.

I really like GA's ideas. Those are awesome, man. I'm especially into the idea of puzzles, bizarre word problems and captchas with non-Western characters. Save those for much later, I think.

I like the idea of a robot theme, but there's no reason it couldn't have an occult edge to it, as well. I think it should come off as conspiracy theory-ish, if there's a way to tie that in as well.

If the captchas are static (and it makes sense for them to be), then yeah, it should be set up to randomize between a set. And it would be neat to have it change - of course, that requires another degree of commitment.

About info, I agree that we should try to keep it relatively sparse. The less "clues" there is, the better. If we do end up changing it, it could have more and more "clues".

Should the reward be a PDF? I'm inclined to say no, but there is an appeal to the idea.

Something I thought about while I was typing this is the superbad.com site. Obviously, this would be different and we don't want to copy them or anything, but I think we could take cues from it. It's a pretty neat site. It actually does have random articles/stories/etc. stuck in at odd spots, and I like the effect.

[Triple Zero]

We could also look into somehow using the Zeigarnik Effect to our advantage.

yeah, let's use as many angles as possible. i had to check up what the Zeigarnik Effect was again (wikipedia had, as usual, the short and simple explanation).

so, to gain the "+2 Zeigarnik bonus", people need to be interrupted. basically, the interruption is already there, that's the CAPTCHA itself, so the only thing that needs to be added is something people can be interrupted by, with the CAPTCHA.

just an idea: let's say we got a short fiction story on the site. but it's separated into "pages" of 3-5 paragraphs and people need to click "Next Page" to continue reading. preferably "pages" need to end in a sort of tension-building cliffhanger type thing (can be quite subtle/simple, just something to prompt a slight feeling of "what happens next?"). in a different medium, it could also be a webcomic that tells a longer story but divided into 3-4 panel strips, each with some kind of a semi-punchline at the end. [or even a combination of the two]

anyway, after the reader has read 4-5 pages or so, suddenly they're presented with a CAPTCHA. "wtf", they think, but they have to prove they're not a robot to continue, so they do. as they read on, the CAPTCHAs increase in frequency. as soon as there's a CAPTCHA after every page, sometimes CAPTCHAs even start appearing multiple times in a row before people are allowed to read on. meanwhile, the CAPTCHAs also increase in absurdity and complexity.

you get the Zeigarnik bonus, cause people are interrupted constantly, but in addition, every time they overcome the interruption, they are rewarded with more story, or comic, (or whatever).

just an idea. we'd need a good story and/or comic/drawing/etc though.

My knowledge of PHP / HTML is nil, so I have no clue how to go about coding captchas.

that's okay, because we're not going to. the difficulty of a CAPTCHA is that it needs to be generated randomly, from literally trillions of combinations. if you leave that out (we don't really need it) and instead just photoshop a few pictures with blurry letters, it suddenly becomes about a 1000 times easier (you still need a little PHP and HTML, but not much).

or maybe they get a printable certificate or card to prove they're human.
     That'd be funny - at some point, to prove you're human, you have to supply it with a picture of your face.. then that picture appears on your "human license" at the end.

"THE BEARER OF THIS CARD IS A GENUINE AND AUTHORIZED == HUMAN == So please Treat Him Right"

We could require this capcha check to access some secret part of the PD frontpage. (like if you click on the golden apple in the chao, you get taken to this capcha, then our secret download page)

who knows, maybe this is already the case on the Devival 2008 page

I definitely think it should be a new webpage with no ties to principiadiscordia.com. I think that making it lead back to here would have the potential to kill it before it took off. It could even lead back to us talking about it, which would sort of defeat the point.

just FYI, people need to be signed up to read this subforum. if they do so because of a game, hm, could also be a good thing. but, in general i agree with you and Cain for keeping it separate.

I like the idea of a robot theme, but there's no reason it couldn't have an occult edge to it, as well. I think it should come off as conspiracy theory-ish, if there's a way to tie that in as well./quote]

occult robots. why not!

(WOMP?) can we get a picture of these typical 50s robots standing around a pentagram scribbled full of sigils, doing a satanic ritual?

If the captchas are static (and it makes sense for them to be), then yeah, it should be set up to randomize between a set. And it would be neat to have it change - of course, that requires another degree of commitment.

randomizing a bunch of (image, answer) tuples is a piece of cake, code-wise. you just need more images.

About info, I agree that we should try to keep it relatively sparse. The less "clues" there is, the better. If we do end up changing it, it could have more and more "clues".

or the idea i sketched above, of a website that looks like a fiction-writer's showcase site, or a story webcomic, that slowly turns into a bizarre CAPTCHA game.

Something I thought about while I was typing this is the superbad.com site. Obviously, this would be different and we don't want to copy them or anything, but I think we could take cues from it. It's a pretty neat site. It actually does have random articles/stories/etc. stuck in at odd spots, and I like the effect.

to be perfectly honest, personally, these kinds of sites piss me off. there's a fine line between sites like
http://deoxy.org -- which is chaotic by nature, but makes an effort with categories, and has got some pretty awesome texts
and
http://fusionanomaly.net -- which is slightly more navigatable than superbad.com appears to be at first sight, but still uses what web-designers call the "mystery meat" way of navigating and is basically a fucking maze where you cannot find anything (and if you do, it's usually of dubious origin)

but, i do get your point. i wonder what's there to learn from it, though.

[Tempest Virago]

just an idea: let's say we got a short fiction story on the site. but it's separated into "pages" of 3-5 paragraphs and people need to click "Next Page" to continue reading. preferably "pages" need to end in a sort of tension-building cliffhanger type thing (can be quite subtle/simple, just something to prompt a slight feeling of "what happens next?"). in a different medium, it could also be a webcomic that tells a longer story but divided into 3-4 panel strips, each with some kind of a semi-punchline at the end. [or even a combination of the two]

anyway, after the reader has read 4-5 pages or so, suddenly they're presented with a CAPTCHA. "wtf", they think, but they have to prove they're not a robot to continue, so they do. as they read on, the CAPTCHAs increase in frequency. as soon as there's a CAPTCHA after every page, sometimes CAPTCHAs even start appearing multiple times in a row before people are allowed to read on. meanwhile, the CAPTCHAs also increase in absurdity and complexity.

you get the Zeigarnik bonus, cause people are interrupted constantly, but in addition, every time they overcome the interruption, they are rewarded with more story, or comic, (or whatever).

just an idea. we'd need a good story and/or comic/drawing/etc though.

I like this! I especially like the idea of it being a comic.

or maybe they get a printable certificate or card to prove they're human.
     That'd be funny - at some point, to prove you're human, you have to supply it with a picture of your face.. then that picture appears on your "human license" at the end.

"THE BEARER OF THIS CARD IS A GENUINE AND AUTHORIZED == HUMAN == So please Treat Him Right"

I forgot to mention Cramulus's idea in my other post, but I do like the idea of a certificate/cared proving you're human.

If the captchas are static (and it makes sense for them to be), then yeah, it should be set up to randomize between a set. And it would be neat to have it change - of course, that requires another degree of commitment.

randomizing a bunch of (image, answer) tuples is a piece of cake, code-wise. you just need more images.

Yeah, I more meant if the ones that are being randomized change occasionally. You'd have a new batch thrown in every couple weeks, or whatever.

to be perfectly honest, personally, these kinds of sites piss me off. there's a fine line between sites like
http://deoxy.org -- which is chaotic by nature, but makes an effort with categories, and has got some pretty awesome texts
and
http://fusionanomaly.net -- which is slightly more navigatable than superbad.com appears to be at first sight, but still uses what web-designers call the "mystery meat" way of navigating and is basically a fucking maze where you cannot find anything (and if you do, it's usually of dubious origin)

Yeah, that's fair. I find them entertaining, but I can see how they would piss somebody off. I guess what we're looking for is something more linear, right?

[Golden Applesauce]

just an idea: let's say we got a short fiction story on the site. but it's separated into "pages" of 3-5 paragraphs and people need to click "Next Page" to continue reading. preferably "pages" need to end in a sort of tension-building cliffhanger type thing (can be quite subtle/simple, just something to prompt a slight feeling of "what happens next?"). in a different medium, it could also be a webcomic that tells a longer story but divided into 3-4 panel strips, each with some kind of a semi-punchline at the end. [or even a combination of the two]

anyway, after the reader has read 4-5 pages or so, suddenly they're presented with a CAPTCHA. "wtf", they think, but they have to prove they're not a robot to continue, so they do. as they read on, the CAPTCHAs increase in frequency. as soon as there's a CAPTCHA after every page, sometimes CAPTCHAs even start appearing multiple times in a row before people are allowed to read on. meanwhile, the CAPTCHAs also increase in absurdity and complexity.

This.

Maybe tie it into the CYOA site? Only that would obviously give it away....

[Darth Cupcake]

Why be proving your a robot? Why not be proving you aren't a SHAPE SHIFTING REPTILIAN INVADER?

Everyone knows they cannot perform the same brilliant mind-antics that certifiable humans can.

[Tempest Virago]

Why be proving your a robot? Why not be proving you aren't a SHAPE SHIFTING REPTILIAN INVADER?

Everyone knows they cannot perform the same brilliant mind-antics that certifiable humans can.

Well, that's what the CAPTCHAs are for... proving you're human and not a spambot. So it's just taking that to another level.

Besides, robots are awesome. Why not robots?

[dr retard]

Besides, robots are awesome. Why not robots?

YEs! where´s the page where robots have prove that they are not humans?

[Triple Zero]

Besides, robots are awesome. Why not robots?

YEs! where´s the page where robots have prove that they are not humans?

hidden from us humans.

but there's already loads of pages like that out there.

say you get a page that has 10 links. you click on one of the links, get another page with 10 links. click on one of the links again, get another page with 10 links.

say this is 4 levels deep, there's 10,000 paths to be taken on this website. one of these paths leads to the special secret robot-hangout.

a bot could easily probe these 10,000 paths in half an hour or so and find the one that's different. a human, not so easily.

ring any bells? seen any pages like this in your web-travels?