If “the Internet is a physical expression of hypertext” (Bolter, 2001), it couldn’t be more fitting to turn to the Internet to create a hypertext game! This game is based on some of the missed connection posts I have collected throughout the past few years from Craigslist Vancouver.
I browse the site once in a while for fun and I always find some intriguing posts. Most of the time it’s people wanting to reach out to someone that caught their eye in passing, and expressing regret for being too shy to initiate interaction. Oftentimes, I find people searching for long lost connections from their past, or recollections of fond memories with those who they are no longer in touch with. Sometimes I come across very cryptic poetry!
As a preface and disclaimer, I did not write any of the content and do not take credit for the collective collaborative efforts of the Internet. I tried to keep most of the posts true to its original form and content as written by their author(s), with only minor stylistic edits for legibility.
One main challenge is creating the links connecting one post to another, as there is no start nor beginning to this game. Mostly, I’ve created the links by association, and players are able to follow the one that piques their interest.
Since craigslist posts are mostly text (sometimes with map next to it to show the location that it happened at), I did not embellish it with illustrations.
Below is a map of what the nodes look like:

Just as we tend to “conceive of hypertext spatially”, every missed connection post is a topographically and temporally grounded node that connects one event to another to “constitute a path through virtual spaces where the reader becomes a visitor or traveler in that space” (Bolter, 2001). This is the feeling I hope to evoke, an observer peering into the lived experiences of others.
I can’t really express or describe why I enjoy reading missed connections so much, perhaps it is something about the serendipity and invisible networks of the universe that creates opportunities for connection in strange ways!
References
Bolter, Jay David. (2001). Writing space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New York, NY: Routledge.
Hi Sophy! I absolutely love the theme you chose. I think it’s so poetic that you used Twine to share your collection of Missed Connections. Both Twine and Missed Connections are based on text, but one is based on the connections between the text, and the other on the connections between people — and through this you connected these two!
I’m very curious to learn more about your thought process in identifying words/sentences to link to other posts. You mentioned that they’re by association — how did you go about mapping this out?
Hello Jocelyn!
You asked a really good question, now that I think about it, the whole process felt somewhat arbitrary and haphazard~
The majority of posts are linked if they had reoccurring words or similar themes.
Some of the associations were more of a reach, since I wanted to evoke the feeling of surprise while stumbling into something unexpected.
Some I purposefully associated together so that there were “lesser known paths” that one could take, and discover something new!
It was a lot of fun making this game, and I hope you gave it a go!
Thanks for sharing! I think the feeling of surprise works really well conceptually given your theme and the medium. In your post for task 4 you mentioned you’re passionate about art — my undergrad was in visual art and my favourite has always been conceptual art, and from that lens I really appreciated your game!