Thronglets is a NetLogo model that simulates an adorably strange society of digital life forms. Each Thronglet goes about its own little lifeāeating, socializing, stressing outāand sometimes bands together with others to form collectives called Throngs. But they don't just live in their own worldāthey talk to you, in their weird little language.
Tweak the knobs, run the sim, and watch as strange civilizations rise, fall, and maybe whisper a bit too much.
To get started, ensure you have NetLogo installed. This model was developed using NetLogo 7.0.3, so it is recommended to use this version or later.
You can download the latest release of the model from its GitHub Releases page. For the development version, you can clone or download its GitHub repository directly.
Once everything is set, open the thronglets.nlogox file located in the
nlogox folder to start exploring!
Thronglets draws inspiration from the 2025 Black Mirror episode Plaything, which explores interactions between humans and digital beings, as well as the emergence of a collective intelligence.
The interface is completely fictional and does not reflect actual software functionality. The visual frames were extracted from the thronglets game.
Contributions are always welcome! Whether you want to report bugs, suggest new features, or help improve the code or documentation, your input makes a difference.
Before opening a new issue, please check the issues tab to see if your topic has already been reported.
Copyright (C) 2025 Daniel Vartanian
Thronglets is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.