Curiosity Traps

In computing, honeypots attract bad actors into interacting with a system. As usual, this principle can be reversed. You can deliberately put out some kind of intellectual honey that will attract good actors instead, and lead to joyful serendipity. If you wear a shirt that says, “Dyslexics are teople poo”, that attracts one kind of conversation; a CERN standard model tee attracts another (in my case: “what’s it mean?”, “dunno”, the end.). The examples are endless – trail race swag attracts conversations with fellow trail runners; wearing something handmade gets the attention of other crafters – but conversations started by conversation pieces aren’t usually that deep or well-targeted. Conversation pieces are decent at starting conversations, but we don’t see that many people face-to-face (well, I don’t!), so there’s a limit to how specific you can make the reference, and still meet people who get it. Henrik Karlsson (are you tired of me referencing Henrik Karlsson yet?) articulated…