Hey gang! I& #39;m super excited to share something I& #39;ve been planning for a while now! I& #39;m going to be running a social experiment for how easily a person can be made emotionally attached to a piece of cardboard!
Please check this thread for details and updates :)
The basic gist is that each participant will have a piece of cardboard about 80cm x 40cm / 30" x 15" strapped to their back. They will carry this around with them at all times and will not be allowed to take it off, except in specific circumstances which I will get into later.
So in order to make people attached to the cardboard in some capacity, it needs to be given some form of communication that makes it appear slightly more "alive". In order to achieve this, I& #39;ll be attaching a small voice chip module to the cardboard, allowing it to speak.
However, it& #39;s important to remember that the point is to demonstrate how easily a person can be made to feel attached to a piece of cardboard, and so giving the cardboard any form of personality in the things they say would undermine the entire experiment. So what do we do?
It& #39;s simple! We just need to ensure that the voice lines the cardboard produces are completely devoid of any personality or character. However, we still want the cardboard& #39;s dialogue to be based on the participant& #39;s given surroundings so it can still act as a companion of sorts.
This is how the experiment ties in to my masters degree in computing. The cardboard will also have a GPS attached that will pull from the Google Maps API to get surrounding points of interest to the participant, whether it be the nearby shop, restaurant, the subway you& #39;re on, etc
Rather than simply announcing these facts, however, we want to make sure the participant is focused on them, properly listening to the cardboard as a companion. Otherwise they may be able to simply ignore the these voice lines, regardless of how loud they are made.
To combat this, the cardboard will also be fit with a pedometer. When the cardboard comes in close proximity to one of these points of interest, the sound module will begin loudly beeping to let the participant know that it has something to say.
This beeping will be incredibly irritating to ensure the participant engages with the social experiment. In order to stop the beeping, the participant must completely stop their movement. Everything they are doing has to come to a halt to allow the cardboard to speak until done.
The voice lines themselves will be nothing more than the emotionless ramblings of random statistics, mostly percentages, about the given point of interest. Now, at this stage, all these electronics attached to the cardboard are going to need to get energy to run from somewhere.
These devices will all run off of one battery, which we will intentionally ensure will have a low charge that will last, at most, 5-6 hours. When the battery runs low, within its last hour, the voice module will play a distinct chime sound to let the participant know.
As well as that single chime sound, the voice module will also regularly play the same continuous beeping noise attributed to its Point-of-Interest facts, demanding the participant stop everything they are doing to listen to the cardboard tell them it needs its battery changed.
Changing the battery, by the way, is mandatory. The participant is also expected to carry this cardboard around for a total of anywhere between 40 to 60 hours, giving them ample time to connect with this incredibly loud, but incredibly inanimate object.
At this stage you may be wondering: Isn& #39;t this quite the nuisance? And my answer? Yes. The annoyance of hauling around a piece of cardboard everywhere simply wasn& #39;t enough. If you can become attached to this, you might even become attached to clods of dirt. But it& #39;s possible.
However, you might even now be thinking: How on earth could anyone really become attached to this cardboard? Well, here& #39;s the clincher. At the end of the participant& #39;s time with the cardboard, it will produce one new voice line: That it actually has feelings for the participant.
The cardboard will immediately be shredded and all its technology destroyed as the participant watches.
This will complete the experiment and the participant can go home. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😃" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit geöffnetem Mund" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit geöffnetem Mund">

If you are interested in participating, it would help a lot and please DM me! Thanks for reading! https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="❤️" title="Rotes Herz" aria-label="Emoji: Rotes Herz">
UPDATE: I will unfortunately be cancelling this experiment. It appears that a much more efficient version was performed in 2011, when Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. As it turns out, people can very easily become attached to obnoxious cardboard. :)
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