The Baffling Booth

With two hours to kill I decided to try Mystery Manila's Baffling Booth. I have never been inside an Escape Room before, and the Baffling Booth was an opportunity to try something like a mini-version of one. For P150, one gets the privilege of being locked inside a phone booth for 20 minutes. The goal being, quite naturally, to figure out how to get out. I liked the fact that you are really left on your own at the start to figure out what things in your environment are actually clues and then how to apply the clues. That gave the experience a somewhat realistic feel to it. I was thinking the game would make me feel young but it actually made me feel quite old. 😁 It was tough to see inside the not-so-bright booth, and it was particularly difficult to contort my body and hands. Plus there was also the view of all these twelve-year-olds milling around outside, all probably thinking "grandpa is so stupid". 😁

I did not succeed in getting out.

This despite the fact that the staff gave me repeated hints and even an extra five minutes of time. No excuses, I think I simply did not do a good job figuring out what to do with the clues I did find.

I couldn't help but realize though, that as a business, they actually wanted me to succeed, and the reason is rooted in human behavior. People who succeed are going to post the accomplishment all over their social media accounts and talk about how "fun", "challenging", and "fulfilling" it was. People who fail, on the other hand, would probably want to forget it as soon as possible. They wouldn't mention it as much and word-of-mouth simply wouldn't go very far.

This further reminds me of those Facebook tests like "Are you a Grammar God?" or "Are you a Certified Child of the 80s?", usually tests of 15 questions that test your proficiency on a given topic. Keeping in mind that the end goal of the makers of those tests is to get you to share your results and therefore their site, I found out long ago that as long as you answer at least 12 correctly, they will tell you that you got a perfect score. I found this out after being told I had a perfect score, going back, changing a few answers, and still being told I had a perfect score. I don't consider it particularly evil that they do this, just a reminder of what their end goal is. No one sits around making these tests and challenges purely for our enjoyment, their goal is to get us to talk about it, and they know the average human being is much more likely to share something that they are proud about, especially when compared with something that he/she might be ashamed of.

These reflections on human behavior aside, I just want to say my Baffled Booth experience was great. Everyone ought to try it, or something similar, even at least once in their lives.