serendipity

I wrote on 18 May about the art of the flâneur, aimless wandering in order to serendipitously discover city life. Apparently there are now apps devoted to being a flâneur. Install Serendipitor on a smartphone and it will tap your location and issue instructions for your peregrinations—“Pick a person and follow them for two blocks.”

I discover this in an article in last Saturday’s big paper. GetLostBot monitors your routines via your phone’s GPS capability and suggests the coffee-house round the corner rather than your usual. It’s the enemy of predictability. MeetMoi connects you with strangers on your walk, giving commands like “look for someone who seems lonely and ask to walk with them for a while.”

Apparently these apps are tapping into recent findings from happiness research. If we suspect a bad outcome from something—exam results, a medical test—we can’t live with the uncertainty of not knowing. But if the outcome is going to be pleasurable, the pleasure of anticipation outweighs that of knowing the good outcome then and there. A pleasure delayed is a pleasure doubled, sort of thing.

An ambiguous pleasure, like which way turn at the end of the street, gives rise to the ‘pleasure paradox’: while we desire to understand the world, that robs us of the pleasure of unexpected events. The article’s author finds it strangely exhilarating to be told to carry out random activities, like asking to take a stranger’s photo.

To me these apps are actually anti-flâneur. Surely the whole point of being a flâneur is to use one’s own imagination about where to turn, and how to behave when one reaches an unknown place or destination. Having your phone decide? No thanks.

I go to the Google store to download any one of these apps. The outcome: not found. Not one of them.

Rock on.