The geranium flower belongs to the genus Pelargonium, which derives from the Greek pelargo (stork), supposedly because the seed head after the plant flowers is long and pointed like a stork’s beak. In floriography, the yellow geranium flower symbolizes “an unexpected encounter,” and one could argue that the concept of storks delivering babies that we have all heard of is connected to the idea of a chance encounter. Contrary to their elegant appearance, geraniums also give off a smell that insects are adverse to, giving some varieties potential insect repelling properties. The gap between the flower’s appearance and the surprising effect of its scent is a curious combination, perhaps lending the geranium a certain kind of unexpectedness.

When thinking about encounters, we often separate them into the unexpected and the expected. Expected encounters are desired, planned, and ultimately carried out, while those that are unexpected are not intentional and happen by chance. Some opinions say nothing is by chance, and that a complicated interweaving of various factors means any encounter is inevitable. Still, I can’t deny that the idea of the unexpected encounter is an exciting one. At times, it’s the incalculable things that spark inspiration. “Serendipity,” a word that has found its way into the vernacular of Japanese business, similarly refers to the phenomenon where a series of coincidences leads to something of value that is different from what you first set out to find. As such, when people share their experiences with serendipity they are often about them being guided towards fortuitous outcomes. The word “serendipity” was actually coined in 1754 by the English writer and politician Horace Walpole. It comes from a fairy tale he read as a boy called The Three Princes of Serendip, a tale of adventure where princes from Serendip (Ceylon, or present-day Sri Lanka) keep encountering unexpected things along their journey. A combination of their wisdom and their accidental findings ultimately lead to the discovery of new knowledge that they had not been searching for. That brief summary alone is exciting, and it is heartwarming to imagine the story filled with happiness that ensues.

Perhaps our hopeful expectations for coincidence is in defiance of the fixed lifestyles of today. Another factor is that even as we begin to question fixed conventional ideas on what is right or wrong and the like, customs of all sorts are being reinforced in insular environments, killing any momentum, or will, to try to undo those problematic conventions. However, even in such insular communities, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many of these environments to switch over to a “new normal.” This may be a paradigm shift that resulted from people in already oppressed environments jumping at the chance for change. The relatively recent Japanese buzzword oya-gacha (random parent vending machine) refers to the fact that children can’t choose their parents. There is a pervasive feeling of resignation that the environment you are born in determines the rest of your life. But on the flipside, there has been a clear upsurge in the younger generation of jobseekers who are not scared of challenging themselves. With a positive “where there’s a will, there’s a way” kind of attitude, they choose to begin their own startups in favor of careers in big established companies that were previously highly sought after. This trend seems to be on the other side of the coin that represents the chaos of the current times.

But regardless of an increase in youth who choose to take on unknown, unstable environments, predetermined “tracks” designed to guide people are still very much present. Lines from old TV shows often had characters asking why they should live life on tracks laid down by someone else, in defiance of society. However, I feel like there is actually a different phenomenon today where people get stuck circling around on preexisting tracks. By this, I am referring to filter bubbles and echo chambers, which are purposefully produced based on algorithms and a vast amount of data, leaving people with incredibly narrowed perceptions. When people get stuck idling their time away watching YouTube videos or shopping online, unable to stop themselves from surfing the web, it’s a type of addiction designed to sustain user attention and keep them hooked. Unless they are able to realize this for themselves, they will be stuck in that never-ending loop. On top of this, filter bubbles insulate people to show only the information they want to see through social media, and echo chambers result in increasingly biased opinions by echoing back like-minded views, interests, and information. These all enable the spread of disinformation and fake news, dividing people’s views and opinions. An “attention economy” is at the base of this issue, triggered by an advertisement model that gains profit by attracting people’s attention to get more clicks. Exacerbating this appalling environment is an attitude that cares only about profit, fixated on making people consume content with focus solely on whether the information is enjoyable or gratifying rather than whether it is actually correct.

I would like to take a look at some cases of “unexpected encounters” that shed light on the issues stemming from algorithms and alert people who have gotten stuck in questionable habits. The first is “HetzJaeger. Antifascist Algorithms.”

Fascism is on the rise again globally, particularly in Germany, and the ultimate entry point to it seems to be music. Streaming platforms such as Spotify and YouTube actually have thousands of fascist songs available, and if that wasn’t bad enough, algorithms recommend these songs widely, increasing the chance of coming across such songs. This is precisely an issue of the aforementioned filter bubble and echo chamber happening with music. However, the act of enjoying music itself is generally relatable and rarely criticized. As such, the issue is left unaddressed and mostly unnoticed. Even though the streaming platforms knew about the proliferation of this issue, they did not take down these songs and bands and did nothing effective to prevent the spread of fascism. This is when Laut gegen Nazis (Loud against Nazis), an organization that combats fascism in all shapes and forms, took action to change the situation and transform service provider attitudes on these platforms.

The method was ingenious—to use the very algorithm creating the vicious cycle to fight the problem. They decided to analyze how the music recommendation algorithm worked and implement a countermeasure by tricking the algorithm with a Trojan Horse type strategy. They started by creating a fake band called HetzJaeger that seemed to advocate Nazism and promoted its “debut” with a teaser song that met the appropriate parameters of the algorithms. In other words, they attempted to connect with fascist music fans who selectively listened to such songs in one fell swoop, and gained instant immense popularity. But this band was a decoy. On the anniversary of Hitler’s seize of power, a month after HetzJaeger’s debut announcement, the algorithm automatically presented the entirety of the song and its true message—to speak out against fascism—to all corners of the German fascist scene. The lyrics conveyed the outcry of public opinion against fascism and demanded that streaming platforms tighten up their restrictions, resulting in a huge public response. Exposed to this surge of public scrutiny, streaming platforms were pressured to remove more than 700 fascist songs and bands that had previously been available.

Of course, meticulous preparation was required to pull this off. The proprietary algorithms that these services use are naturally kept secret, which made analyzing them a challenge. They therefore used a music streaming data analysis tool called Chartmetric to painstakingly identify the most popular fascist rock songs, their fan base, and the most influential playlists in the genre. Then they brought experts on board from record companies that provide streaming services, as well as those with insight into the German fascist scene, incorporating them into a team that screened YouTube and Telegram to understand how to optimize the Trojan Nazi band’s song for recommendation. Then anti-fascist musicians wrote the music to release based on that data, so the song’s effectiveness on the algorithm was all but assured. A teaser of the resulting “fascist” rock song was set to lyrics using the most frequently used slang, trigger words, and syntax among fascist enthusiasts, and streamed on the major streaming platforms Spotify, SoundCloud, Deezer, Amazon, Apple, and YouTube.

Simultaneously, social media experts infiltrated major fascist groups on Telegram and Instagram to endorse the teaser, getting people to “like” their posts. It was an impressive strategy that integrated experts across fields, overcoming the challenge with the right people in the right roles. This kind of tactic that only allows one shot at success obviously requires thorough preparation and multiple layers of safeguards, and the meticulous preparation put into the project was undoubtedly the reason for its triumph. In the end, awareness for this topic rose 500% and 200,000 supporters gathered to swiftly submit petitions calling for platforms to strengthen their restrictions against fascist content, achieving the aforementioned result.

Even if one were to come up with the idea of deciphering an algorithm and turning it as a weapon against the thing it usually promotes, the sheer amount of preparation required as well as the all-out use of technological skill and knowhow is daunting to think about. My hat is off to how they pushed through without giving up when it was never clear whether such a feat was fully possible. Meanwhile, it is exhilarating to see how the scheme so elegantly supplanted the songs and bands that existing fascist groups consolidated over, which essentially functioned as the forerunners of their ideology. There are influencers everywhere that draw people in with powerful messages, with enough charisma to potentially make people forget about small variabilities in right and wrong. This scheme created a new “voice” to guide people to a morally correct path with a clear understanding of the power an influencer can have, using the narrative of the seeming emergence of a new forerunner in the scene, like something you might see in politics, which is brilliant. Laut gegen Nazis fabricated a new influencer to challenge others in the scene, and after maximizing endorsement within the target group, they did a one-eighty and put out a message that completely went against the ideology they had pretended to represent. To those in the fascist communities who had always celebrated their like-minded views within a bubble, this must have been an unexpected shock of shattering proportions. As an unexpected encounter that changes the way people think, this is an iconic example that gets the job done in a single, brilliantly executed, shot.

Filter bubbles are not limited to online searches. You could actually find yourself in a comparable environment in the real world. Thinking back, there is a surprising amount that has been imprinted in our brains as part of our lifestyles. Upon hatching, birds recognize the first animal they see as their parent and forms an attachment in a process called imprinting. An analogous phenomenon can happen in the human world. Children tag along with their parents and are taught how to keep their behavior in check. Judging right from wrong is also often done by learning from surrounding people such as friends and family, frequently creating a set of unspoken rules within a particular group. Meanwhile, it is very possible for there to be discrepancies between unspoken rules from different groups, and large deviations can develop into conflict. This is exactly the way people from two societies with different rules might each argue that they are in the right. They both seem justified and cannot agree.

However, imprinting in birds has its own rules and there can also be exceptions. For example, chicks that see a human first will identify that human as their parent, but they will not start following that parent around unless the human crouches down when they walk. It seems a human is too tall for the chicks to still identify an upright person as the parent. Apparently it is also possible for chicks to imprint afresh if the timing is right, such as learning to follow an alternative parent figure when presented with one. Once learned and lived with for a long period of time, a rule becomes a habit that continues without question. But certain kinds of stimuli might actually work to subvert such blind habits, as shown by the Hack Market campaign.

Back Market is a major European marketplace for restored devices currently valued at 5.7 billion dollars, ranking 18th on Fast Company’s list of The World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2022. The refurbished products Back Market offers are devices originally returned for having a defect out of the box, or found with an issue before shipping. These are then repaired by the manufacturer to function properly, and their popularity is due to their slightly more affordable price tag. Being much more trustworthy in terms of quality and other factors compared to peer-to-peer secondhand marketplaces such as eBay, Back Market naturally appeals to consumers who wish to purchase hi-tech products at less cost.

However, Back Market’s goal was never to beat out rivals in the secondhand market, but to normalize sustainable consumer behavior. In other words, they wanted to overturn the image that purchasing a refurbished device was a “downgrade” that forced the buyer to compromise, or that there was some kind of negative tradeoff involved. The refurbished smartphones on Back Market are not only cheaper than new devices but also reduce your carbon footprint by an impressive 92%. The objective of their campaign was to prove that choosing their products is the “smarter option” so that people could be confident about opting to buy refurbished items.

In order to get this message across properly, Back Market hacked the way potential consumers shop in order to change their minds right before they were contemplating buying a brand new phone. The campaign was carried out in none other than the Apple Store, the “temple of new tech.” Back Market essentially infiltrated enemy territory and pulled a bold move that is satisfying to see. On April 22nd, when the world’s attention was on environmental issues for Earth Day, Back Market carried out its Hack Market campaign. Using Apple’s own mobile technology AirDrop and new iPhones in Apple Stores, the campaign delivered messages that urged customers to make the more environmentally friendly choice. Every time a potential customer picked up a product on display in the Apple Store, a bot would airdrop a video ad that urged customers to choose Back Market’s greener alternatives over new Apple Store products. It was a daring plan that went right into the heart of the store, transforming the display models into Back Market’s own advertisement medium in a store-wide hack. Messages said things such as, “The salesperson won’t tell it to you, but you can buy this model while reducing its carbon footprint by 92%. Go refurbished.” The numbers concerning environmental impact that they used in the campaign were gathered over two whole years, sourced from studies by ADEME (The French Agency for Ecological Transition) on the environmental impact of buying refurbished versus buying new. Messages that aim for impact generally tend to suffer from exaggeration, but Back Market’s attitude of getting concrete facts and grounding their message in those facts feels sincere and trustworthy. Their commitment to doing their research to make a watertight claim instead of citing convincing-looking but dubious data of the kind you see everywhere is worthy of applause.

As a result, this one-day-only campaign on April 22nd succeeded in reaching approximately 5,200 customers at six Apple Stores across Paris, Berlin, and London. The extraordinary plan was reported by media around the world, and garnered more than 0.1 billion impressions on social media. The Hack Market campaign not only succeeded in giving the brand exposure, but also raised the value of the refurbished product category. In the three countries where the campaign ran, interest in buying refurbished devices increased by an average of 27% and the word “refurbished” became a trending topic on Earth Day 2022. The take-home message here is the novel appeal and highly memorable effect of the campaign’s surprise element: receiving a “message from above” when visiting an Apple Store to buy a new smartphone and it turning out to be from a different company altogether. This again is a case where an unexpected encounter—the theme of this chapter—had a great effect on changing the way people think.