Thronglets Code

The world is vicious and people are awful.

If you’ve seen this one, it should instantly make sense. Otherwise it probably just looks like a Rorschach test fell into a kaleidoscope. What it actually is is a direct replication of Malcolm Tucker‘s QR-ish code that either ends or reinvigorates human existence. That is to say that the ending is ambiguous and we’re either doomed or immortal. Or something.

What’s useful is that the abstract shape doesn’t work as a code of any description. If you scan it with your phone camera, nothing happens. Which was kind of a clincher. I can’t really have t shirts linking to stuff I didn’t make. That would be weird. There is, however, a playable Thronglets game available, accessed via a conventional QR at the end of the episode.

So what are Thronglets? Well, they look like Lemmings in a Civilisation environment and are effectively Tamagotchi. Kind of. Invented by Colin Ritman of Bandersnatch (the episode, not the game) fame, they grow exponentially and require endless technological upgrades in order to evolve. Peter Capaldi talks to them via acid and feeds them various PlayStations and Nintendos to advance them and they basically take over the world in some capacity when the pictured graphic is shown to a supercomputer. The cops let him have a little draw on a bit of paper and it’s night night forever. Present day is 2034 and the game was invented in 1994. So it is quite the gestation period.

The overarching message is that AI is inevitably going to take over. That old chestnut. There’s also a cheeky bit of murder in there if all that isn’t horrifying enough for you.