Playing Bandersnatch
I like to play Bandersnatch.
I started playing Bandersnatch before I knew what Bandersnatch was, this is why I loved Bandersnatch the first moment I stumbled upon Bandersnatch.
If my effort to confuse you and get you to stop reading failed then maybe you’ll like this piece.
Bandersnatch is an interactive Black Mirror film which enables you return to previous decision points in the movie and make a different choice then watch how things play out differently as a result of just one different minute decision.
Obviously, I can’t go back to decision points in my life, I’m still searching for the rewind button.🤷🏽♂️
What I do is think about the different key decision points in my life, pick an option different from what I picked previously and then run a mental simulation to see how things would have played out.
I have a crazy imagination so this is easy peasy.
Doing this makes me see how some decisions I took rashly have turned out to be crucial in shaping my present.
Play with me (switches to multiplayer mode), here’s a hypothetical example.
Let’s take a trip into the life of Ajanaku (interesting name).
4 years ago, Ajanaku was involved in a bike accident on his way to work on a Monday morning which left him a scar on his right hand stretching from his elbow to his wrist.
He woke up late that morning and in a bid to make it to work early, he took a bike, the bike that crashed, as opposed to taking a cab as he always does.
He woke up late becaused he had a late-night dinner with his girlfriend the previous day, and he drank a tad too much wine.
This story so far shows us two touchpoints where Ajanaku could have avoided the bike accident.
1. By sticking to taking a cab regardless of being late
2. By waking up earlier
Point 2 is linked backwards to yet another touchpoint — The late-night dinner.
He could have avoided the dinner entirely or taken less wine.
If he avoided the dinner, there is a slight chance he might have lost his girlfriend or they might have gotten into a fight which would lead to other strings of events.
I am restricting the options and touchpoints because Bandersnatch is a hell of a game; I can trace it back to the point where he met his girlfriend, if he had walked away instead of saying hi, the dinner with her would not have existed. He might have also died that same day as a result of being knocked down by a truck because he was busy thinking about how he won’t get another opportunity to meet her while crossing Oshodi Expressway.
We all know the popular (logical) belief about time travel, changing the past alters the future.
Now let’s Bandersnatch into the future.
3 years after the accident, Ajanaku went for a business meeting in Abuja. He went a day earlier and stayed at the Transcorp with a plan to leave Abuja immediately after the meeting the next day.
He got to the hotel by 3pm so he secured his room, changed into a t-shirt and decided to chill at the bar until it gets dark.
While at the bar, someone walks over to him and goes, “That’s a hell of a scar, I’ll love to hear the story, if you don’t mind that is”.
This is how they got conversing and exchanged their cards and contact details.
Ajanaku was a business analyst while that someone was the COO of a “San Fran superstar” tech firm who was also lodged in the same hotel.
Skip to the next few months, Ajanaku is offered a role by the COO and now works with the firm in San Francisco.
All this from “That’s a hell of a scar, I’ll love to hear the story, if you don’t mind that is”.
A scar from an accident which we were looking to prevent earlier.
If he did not drink wine that night, he won’t have had that scar and the entire story would be different.
Let me mention that this is in no way talking about destiny or things being destined to happen, in fact it is slightly in the opposite direction.
This is me trying to breakdown life events and pick out the previous individual actions that collectively led to these events, and also show how changing one constituent as little as not drinking wine at a late-night dinner 4 years ago would have changed a “major” event in the future.
Damn I love this game!
