Tag Archives: alternate reality game

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

Bits N’ Bricks Season 3 Episode 37 – The Surreal History of LEGO Galidor Including Ong’s Hat Segments

The awesome backstory about Galidor with a short history of the Ong’s Hat Project. Link to podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lego-bits-n-bricks/id1542166642 How a LEGO® game console, sci-fi TV show, limb-swapping action figures, and trip to another dimension gave birth to the beloved LEGO toy flop Galidor. 00:00:00 – Prologue 00:00:39 – Bits N’ Bricks: Introduction 00:01:15 – EP37:The Surreal History of the LEGO Galidor TV Show, Game Console, and Action Figures [YouTube only] 00:02:22 – Chapter 1: Project Genesis and Action Figures 00:09:20 – Chapter 2: Kek Powerizer 00:19:17 – Chapter 3: Tom Lynch and the Galidor TV Show 00:27:14 – Chapter 4: An Interactive Website and Alternate Reality Games 00:32:49 – Chapter 5: Ong’s Hat 00:46:55 – Chapter 6: Initial Reception 00:54:24 – Chapter 7: The Video Game 01:02:25 – Chapter 8: Conclusion 01:10:08 – Chapter 9: Season Break Announcement 01:11:37 – Bits N’ Bricks: Credits A written feature and transcript of the entire episode are available at https://www.lego.com/en-us/legogames-25-transcripts Bits N’ Bricks is a regular podcast that dives into the history of the LEGO Group’s decades-long work in digital play, unearthing wonderful stories, conversations with creators, and a wealth of valuable insight. We explore innovation at the LEGO Group through the lens of games and examine the past and the present to learn and better understand possible future scenarios for digital play. ” Welcome to the LEGO Gaming channel! That’s right, a channel dedicated to all things LEGO Games. How awesome is that?! Hold on to your controllers as we take you through a world of exclusive previews, developer walkthroughs, trailers, retro LEGO games, and exciting event coverage! Subscribe to be notified of new videos each week: https://www.youtube.com/LEGOGaming
Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

We the Sheeple: Episode 13: Ong’s Hat

We the Sheeple

Hats are neat. Where would a high-class Kentucky woman be on derby day with out her hat? How many fly ball would outfielders have missed without their trusty baseball caps blocking the sun? How would we have opened a gateway to other dimensions if not for Ong’s Hat? I reiterate, hats are neat.

On this episode we’re talking about Ong’s Hat, one of the early Internet’s oddest legends. Who’d have though all you need to travel to other dimensions are a couple of Ivy League dropouts, a dash of eastern spiritualism and an egg? I’d have guessed you’d need at least an alien or two.

LINK: https://anchor.fm/the-shepard

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

The Math of Hunting Lions

Bibliography of papers on math & physics methods of hunting lions in the Sahara Desert.

The fascinating history of identity and document spoofing by esteemed mathematicians with a wonderful sense of humor. I cited this in the book, Ong’s Hat: The Beginning.

“The material was written up by R. P. Boas and F. Smithies [Smithies 2002, personal communication] and appeared in [Pétard 1938]. Part of JWT’s assistance was in keeping the nonexistence of the nominal author, H. Pétard and of Pondiczery quiet when the Monthly enquired about the paper’s author. The full identification of Pondiczery was Ersatz Stanislas Pondiczery at the Royal Institute of Poldavia. The hope was that someday a document could be signed ESP RIP [Aspray & Tucker 1985]).“

…Albert Tucker: Was it that group that used the pseudonym “Pondiczery”?

Tukey: Yes, but with a somewhat broader reference.

Aspray: For what purpose?

Tukey: Well, the hope was that at some point Ersatz Stanislaus Pondiczery at the Royal Institute of Poldavia was going to be able to sign something ESP RIP. Then there’s the wedding invitation done by the Bourbakis. It was for the marriage of Betty Bourbaki and Pondiczery. It was a formal wedding invitation with a long Latin sentence, most of which was mathematical jokes, three quarters of which you could probably decipher. Pondiczery even wrote a paper under a pseudonym, namely “The Mathematical Theory of Big Game Hunting” by H. Pétard, which appeared in the Monthly. There were also a few other papers by Pondiczery.

Tukey: Somebody with a high principle. Pondiczery’s official residence was in Ong’s Hat, New Jersey3⁠, which is a wide place in the road going southeast from Pemberton, but it does appear on some road maps. There is a gas station that has a sign out about Ong’s Hat.

Aspray: But no sign for Pondiczery?

Tukey: No sign for Pondiczery. Spelled c-z-e-r-y, by the way. Not like the area of India, Pondicherry, which is spelled c-h. Anyway, this was a good group, and it enjoyed its existence. I learned a lot from dinner table conversations.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.gwern.net/notes/Lions

Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

HEX: The Human Exception- Ong’s Hat

Ong's Hat

The town’s not actually a town, as such. And not just because it’s an unincorporated community with a population of zero. The Hat may have only ever comprised one single building: Ong’s Hut. In fact, it’s possible Ong’s Hut is the correct name of the place, but it said Ong’s Hat on the map (the “town” appeared on maps as recently as 2006), and there’s an Ong’s Hat Road nearby.

LINK: https://www.thehumanexception.com/l/ongs-hat/

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

QAnon, Ong’s Hat, and Robert Anton Wilson: Joseph Matheny discusses ARGs and conspiracy theories in the Internet era

When the QAnon movement began garnering more widespread attention a couple of years ago, a number of game designers pointed out the similarities between the ‘Q drops’ – and the associated community puzzle solving in regards to those – and the techniques used in alternate reality games (ARGs) (see here and here, for example). Not necessarily that it was an ARG, but that it (knowingly, or unknowingly) used the methods found in ARGs to hook in new players, and to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction.

So I was fascinated to listen to a recent interview with Joseph Matheny, creator of the now-legendary Ong’s Hat – described by many as the world’s first ARG – in which he discussed QAnon from his own viewpoint (see video embedded below). Matheny notes that he feels obligated to talk publicly about QAnon and Ong’s Hat, because “they’re using my methods and I don’t like that”, and also because people have been comparing the two, which upset him. “I mean…it follows the formula,” Matheny says, “but content-wise, and intention-wise, it’s definitely nothing like it.”

When the QAnon movement began garnering more widespread attention a couple of years ago, a number of game designers pointed out the similarities between the ‘Q drops’ – and the associated community puzzle solving in regards to those – and the techniques used in alternate reality games (ARGs) (see here and here, for example). Not necessarily that it was an ARG, but that it (knowingly, or unknowingly) used the methods found in ARGs to hook in new players, and to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction.

So I was fascinated to listen to a recent interview with Joseph Matheny, creator of the now-legendary Ong’s Hat – described by many as the world’s first ARG – in which he discussed QAnon from his own viewpoint (see video embedded below). Matheny notes that he feels obligated to talk publicly about QAnon and Ong’s Hat, because “they’re using my methods and I don’t like that”, and also because people have been comparing the two, which upset him. “I mean…it follows the formula,” Matheny says, “but content-wise, and intention-wise, it’s definitely nothing like it.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

Coming Soon: Highly Strange

We’re producing our first original on high strangeness. In it we explore the psyche of “strange” through the stories of three people in highly strange situations.

Season One – “Information Golem” looks at the life of Joseph Matheny as he dreams up what perhaps becomes the world’s first online ARG (Alternative Reality Game) known as Ong’s Hat. Launched in the 90’s as an innocent social experiment around story and information, things quickly went left of field. The oddities that surrounded Ong’s Hat are curiosities Joseph still struggles to understand to this day. Joseph has gotten alot of attention lately from the press because of the Quanon craziness and White House uprising. More recently he was featured on Slate Magazine’s Decoder Ring series. Also there’s news of a upcoming Netflix feature on conspiracy creation he’ll appear in. His story touches on the issues that seem to dovetail at the volcanic crossroads where personality and mental health meets randomness and free information. Lots of unruly yet relevant questions get born there.

Listen to “Highly Strange” on Spreaker.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/41996383

 

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

This is not a game

By Tom Dove

Link to the entire article: https://medium.com/@illexical/this-is-not-a-game-44142be5ff2c

Ong’s Hat.

A funny little name. A name on a map of a town that can’t be found.

Emerging on the nascent public internet at some indeterminate point in the late nineties, Ong’s Hat was the prototype for what would become a genre of participatory literature called the alternate reality game, or ARG. An ARG is part adventure story, part puzzle, part esoteric mystery, part scavenger hunt, part online community, all quite weird. They are mostly played on public forums, to capture the widest audience, but their content often spans multiple platforms, and typically multiple media. There have been many thousands of ARGs now, tiny and massive, but one of them was first, and it was wilder than the rest.

Ong’s Hat was by turns surreal, goofy, cosmic, and sinister, drawing heavily on classic counterculture and conspiracy theory lore. In the very early days of the worldwide web, it was doing something in a dispersed form that Mark Z. Danielewski would shortly be hailed as a postmodern genius for doing in the novel House of Leaves: playing adeptly with our ideas about how and why we find things to be true. What makes us believe a thing is real? The course of the game, its story, exists only in inaccurate second-hand reports and archived materials stripped of context now. By accident or by design, all the original online content has long since subsided into the digital sands, but the ghost of Ong’s Hat haunts us still.

 

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

Repost: CORRECTIONS TO BRIAN DUNNING’S SKEPTOID PODCAST ABOUT ONG’S HAT

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A rebuttal on the site josephmatheny.com regarding a recent podcast and article that ran on Skeptoid, by Brian Dunning.

An excerpt:

There’s a podcast/website called The Skeptoid that is run by one Brian Dunning. The website seems to consist of a collection of transcriptions of the Skeptoid podcast, links to the podcast and a personal vita for Mr. Dunning. I learned that recently, Brian Dunningran an episode of the Skeptoid titled: Ong’s Hat, which was, predictably about the Ong’s Hat literary game.

Brian Dunning claims that his podcast, “Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena is an award-winning weekly science podcast. Since 2006, Skeptoid has been revealing the true science behind popular misinformation and urban legends.” His words.

While I haven’t sampled any of the other offerings on that Skeptoid website, I did read the text transcription of Mr. Dunning’s “investigation” into the Ong’s Hat urban legend and found it dismissive and misinformed in the following areas.

Link to full article: https://josephmatheny.com/2019/03/18/corrections-to-brian-dunnings-skeptoid-podcast-about-ongs-hat/

The tl;dr version

 

Alternate Reality Game, Incunabula, Joseph Matheny, Ong's Hat

A collection of Ong’s Hat reviews, interviews and theories.

An entire site full of interviews can be found at josephmatheny.com here’s a selection of the latest:

Playlist of YouTube videos about Ong’s Hat

 

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