ARG. I’m addicted.

By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the alter­nate real­ity game that’s pro­mot­ing the upcom­ing Nine Inch Nails album. If this is news to you, Rolling Stone (of all places) has a good sum­mary of what’s going on. “Leaked” tracks on USB keys found in bath­rooms, images embed­ded in audio sta­tic, future dystopia — inter­est­ing stuff. The part of me that enjoys con­spir­acy the­o­ries and Dale Gribble-esque con­jec­ture about shad­owy gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions is eat­ing this up.

I don’t know why stuff like this always sucks me in. In my pre-blogging days, I was fas­ci­nated by “The Beast,” a sim­i­lar pro­mo­tional ARG for the movie A.I. The Year Zero cam­paign was devel­oped by the same com­pany who cre­ated “The Beast,” 42 Enter­tain­ment, so watch­ing the devel­op­ments and insights form around the net (espe­cially at the Echo­ing the Sound bul­letin board) gives me a curi­ous sense of deja vu.

And unlike “The Beast,” the object of this pro­mo­tion has the poten­tial to not com­pletely suck.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 9% [?]