So much of modern life is spent trying to overcome interfaces designed to trick us into doing things we wouldn’t necessarily choose to do, whether that means signing up for a newsletter, paying extra for “trip protection” insurance, or spending 12 consecutive hours angrily debating Obama’s legacy with a Russian computer program. Familiarity breeds comfort, and we gradually stop noticing the signs and guardrails steering us toward clocking more and more engaged time, even as they change our very patterns of thought. So it is always a pleasure to see someone trick an interface into doing something it wasn’t designed for; it’s a middle finger to the systems that bind us, and those are getting increasingly rare these days. That’s part of why Twitter is spending Sunday obsessed with the work of Twitter user Green Chyna (@CORNYASSBITCH on Twitter, a 19-year-old named Landon from Los Angeles in real life), who has figured out how to use threads and quoted tweets to write a Choose Your Own Adventure story in an interface originally designed to limit users to sharing their thoughts, goofing around with their friends, and subverting democracy. Another factor in the story’s viral popularity: The Choose Your Own Adventure story is about being Beyoncé’s assistant, and who doesn’t want to do that? (Besides people who have ever worked as an assistant, I mean.) Clicking on the tweet below will start your adventure, but how it ends is up to you and Beyoncé:
“Being Beyoncé’s Assistant for the Day: DON’T GET FIRED THREAD” begins as a simple story in which one choice at each fork in the road will get you fired and the other will not, but it quickly fractalizes into a surprisingly complex narrative, complete with a Fight Club–style twist ending (if you can find it). And although it may not involve as much wish fulfillment as ClickHole classics like “You Are the Cannibal Lobster-Man of New England. Can You Become the Governor of Maine?” or “Murder, Cheat, and Fuck Your Way Through Boston,” it forces Twitter to deliver something more interesting to its users than misinformed invective interlaced with promoted tweets from Raytheon, which is its own kind of wish fulfillment. Chalk one up for human ingenuity!
