Celebrating Burn Unit's visit to Boston, we planned a night of stranger interaction tasking. Those sorts of tasks are a lot more fun with a group. So after fortifying ourselves with Chinese food, we went to get ice cream and wrap gifts. The guidelines rongo rongo had announced for our gifts was that small = can be held in one hand and costs about $1.

bunny dragon and Listener both admitted to some unease about intruding on strangers riding the subway, so we agreed that Burn Unit and rongo rongo would lead off. Our tactical plan was to get onto a subway car, trying not to look like we'd all come in together. The designated giver would then select and engaged a giftee while the other taskers tried to take photos without being completely obvious about it, falling over, or dropping the cameras. We would then all debark the train at the next stop after the exchange, regroup, and then get onto another train.

After giving gifts to six strangers, seeing some T station art work, and taking a lot of blurry pictures, we declared victory and parted ways.


from bunny dragon

Mostly what I learned from this task is that more people need to read Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age.  Deviousness is just not taught to kids anymore, and it should be.

It was fun making the beaded trinkets, but I couldn't figure out an opening line that I'd be comfortable with, and that seemed like a great recipe for failure, as the intended target would pick up on my unease.  But it was interesting to see what else people came up with, and it was nice to be an enabler for others.