Randonautica Is The Latest Trendy App Thanks To TikTok & It’s So Strange
As many around the world continue to practice social distancing amidst the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, one app is encouraging users to go on adventures a little closer to home. If you've seen people recording videos of these adventures and posting them on TikTok, you might be wondering: What is Randonautica and how does it work? Here's what to know about the mysterious app.
Randonautica, which markets itself as "the world’s first quantumly generated Choose Your Own Adventure reality game," gives users a random set of coordinates to track down in their local area. "Randonauts," as users call themselves, can use the app to choose from three different types of locations: An attractor, a void, or an anomaly.
To start, the user is invited to set an "intention" for their quest, which basically translates to them writing what they want to see. After that, they can pick the type of location they want. If you pick an "attractor" location, you can expect to explore a denser area that has lots of different quantum points that translate to coordinates in a set vicinity. If you're looking for an adventure that's off the beaten path, you can choose a "void" to explore an area that's less dense and has fewer coordinates to choose from. Last but not least, you can choose to go to an "anomaly," which the app recommends for people who have a set intention of what they want to see and discover.
While your individual experience depends on your intention and where you live, tons of people have documented a variety of experiences ranging from creepy to introspective on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. In addition to people documenting weird coincidences and Blair Witch Project-like situations, a few people reported that they were sent to private properties or inaccessible locations.
Creepy or not, there's no denying that the app is taking off, mainly from word of mouth through a variety of difference social media platforms.
"It’s sort of a perfect storm of easy tools to create little vignettes and an algorithm that boosts the memetic nature of the phenomena," the co-founder Joshua Lengfelder told Nylon. "People see an interesting adventure, decide to try the app themselves, post a TikTok of what they find, and Randonautica ends up self-propagating."
Randonautica is available for download for both iOS and Android users, so anyone who's bored from quarantine and looking to fuel their wanderlust without traveling too far from home can easily try it out for themselves.
