Choose Your Own Beyoncé

Out on twitter — right now! — a beautiful thing is happening. It’s a twitter-based simulation of being Beyoncé’s assistant, dealing with problems like the singer’s dress getting crinkled and events like Beyoncé showing up festooned with bangs.

For those not in the know, this is what’s known as a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA). The novel form of this was popular back in the 80s and early video games followed this pattern as well. In the current example, by picking a choice (the choices are presented as response tweets) you try to navigate the perilous terrain of being Beyoncé’s assistant. At each step you’re posed with choices to offer her different kinds of food or different lighting or facetiming with different children.

Like the fantasy adventures that dominated CYOA literature in the past, it’s a dangerous, arbitrary adventure with numerous dead ends. You can find that out by diving in and playing it. Or you could rely on someone like me pulling the choices out and visualizing them using a form of network layout optimized for this kind of data. It lets you look at the whole thing all at once.