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27 Apr 09 - 11:22 PM (#2620163) Subject: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Stilly River Sage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_%28mind_game%29 So this one is more banal than most. And for more of the story, follow a couple of these links. The question seems to be Moot, according to an entry on Facebook (I have a teen-aged son who put me on this track). I accidentally hit "return" instead of quote earlier in setting this up, so I hope it goes through. If there is a "the game" thread with nothing else in the title, a clone is asked to delete it. Thanks! SRS |
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27 Apr 09 - 11:25 PM (#2620166) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Stilly River Sage Fro the L.A. Times blog: North Americans are worrying about swine flu. PC users are worrying about the Conficker virus. And companies promoting democratic Internet polls have to worry about 4chan. Members of the underground message board appear to have successfully gamed Time's third annual World's Most Influential Person poll. Time has relented and officially crowned the founder of 4chan, who goes by the alias "moot," as the winner. Time directly addresses the apparent orchestration by 4chan to influence the poll's results in its follow-up article. Moot "handily beat the likes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Oprah Winfrey," Time writes. "To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective, it's worth noting that everyone moot beat out actually has a job." The obvious jab at moot, whose real name is believed to be Christopher Poole, is understandable. Time reports that moot, whom the magazine profiled last summer, had no knowledge of an organized . . .
Even before moot amassed the 16 million votes he got in his overwhelming victory, some bloggers speculated that 4chan users had not only boosted his rank, but also collectively influenced the order of the first two dozen or so nominees. Take the first letters of the first names of the top 21, and it spells the phrase "Marble cake, also the Game." Aside from being a delicious pastry, marble cake is apparently the name of the chat room where the website's users have gathered to organize anti-Scientology protests. And the Game is an ongoing psychological experiment played by young people worldwide. A blog called Music Machinery, clearly reporting outside of its usual niche, has a rather detailed analysis of how 4chan manipulated the poll. This would certainly explain why Anwar Ibrahim, a Malaysian politician, nabbed second place. The allegedly successful attempt at swaying the poll's results is surely a relief to 4chan users. After their failed try at stealing the Twitter race to a million followers less than two weeks ago, the win for moot proves that 4chan hasn't lost its touch. Next year, Time should change the name of its poll to the Internet's Most Influential Person. |
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27 Apr 09 - 11:38 PM (#2620173) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Stilly River Sage Lots of possibilities for theoretical linkages in a thread on this subject. Following many of the possible leads through linguistics and philosophy wouldn't take a bright practitioner too long, not to hit the high points. But the bandwidth consumed by those who want to argue about it could be mind-boggling. SRS |
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28 Apr 09 - 12:30 AM (#2620189) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Stilly River Sage Malthus comes to mind. He influence Darwin, but not in the way he might have hoped for. |
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28 Apr 09 - 02:04 AM (#2620204) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Amos What a huge cloud of semantic frippery!!! A |
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28 Apr 09 - 10:04 AM (#2620453) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: SINSULL Thought this was about the new "game" being played by pre-teens and young teenagers. They stranglwe themselves until just before they pass out. Supposedly the high is great. Unfortunately, about 40 of them have died. Parents are being warned to watch for telltale signs including bruising around the neck, belts tied or hanging on bed posts, and bouts of incoherence. Nice... In the 90s the "game" was puring lighter fluid between the thumb and forefinger and lighting it. With a flick of the wrist it goes out - but not always. My neighbor's son damaged the nerves in his hand when the fluid did not go out as planned. What the hell are they thinking? Rant over. Sorry for the drift. |
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28 Apr 09 - 10:35 AM (#2620473) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Stilly River Sage Different game. Head game. Lots of those left over from the Bush administration, I think this might be a continuation of a response to one of those. |
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28 Apr 09 - 11:28 AM (#2620506) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Little Hawk SINSULL - More people trying to win the Darwin Awards perhaps? |
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28 Apr 09 - 01:05 PM (#2620574) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Amos The self-asphyxiation-for-a-high game has been around amongst druggy youths for decades, and part of S-M arcana, I believe, for a century or two...based on very skimpy exposure to the subject. A |
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28 Apr 09 - 04:39 PM (#2620708) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Bill D As to the first part of the "game", not thinking about the game, in my first college psychology class in 1957, Dr. N.H. Pronko picked a girl from the class and promised her 'a new dress' if, whenever he said the word 'pebble', she would not think of 'crocodile'. All it does is show a basic fact about psychology & memory. (See...I have remembered the details for 52 years now.) Those who teach HOW to remember use devices like that to learn long lists of unconnected words. Some of the other 'games' are hardly general knowledge in a generation, but are rather 'in' routines for specific little groups. |
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28 Apr 09 - 05:36 PM (#2620752) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: McGrath of Harlow The Game is an ongoing mind game, the objective of which is to avoid thinking about The Game itself. I think I won. |
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28 Apr 09 - 05:45 PM (#2620759) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Stilly River Sage Actually, there is more to this story--the fact that hackers took over the site and put their man in, for example. |
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28 Apr 09 - 10:26 PM (#2620910) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Bill D Is that about a 'game', or just about hackers and how they like to show their prowess? I read about them getting 'their' guy all those votes, but I can't quite wrap my head around why it's relevant to the progress of generational 'games'. (I, ummm...don't 'get' rap, either...maybe it's my wiring.) |
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28 Apr 09 - 11:45 PM (#2620935) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Stilly River Sage The hackers are players of this game, apparently. I was thinking of the "My mother likes coffee but she doesn't like tea" that was so popular and incomprehensible when I was in college. I still don't get that one. Not a clue. You were the "in" crowd if you got it, and not in if you didn't. I suspect there is a sorting going on with the current game like there was with that last one. SRS |
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29 Apr 09 - 12:30 AM (#2620943) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Kent Davis Stilly River Sage, The rule in the "My mother likes coffee" puzzle, also known as the "Mississippi Bookkeeper" puzzle is that she only likes things...... SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT spelled with double letters. She LOVED the Mississippi Bookkeeper. Kent |
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29 Apr 09 - 12:57 AM (#2620946) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Amos I won the Game all through its early history, when thousands were trying and failing; not a jot or a tittle of the concept came across my mind. It was only when someone posted about it at Mudcat that it spoiled my blissful state of not thinking about it. But I lasted MUCH longer than most. A |
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29 Apr 09 - 02:18 AM (#2620967) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Little Hawk A classic case of misdirecting attention in some way...(the tea and coffee thing). A lot of good jokes are based on that principle. They lead you off on some kind of normal path of thought (which is a red herring), then they blindside you with something else that you never even noticed or didn't give importance to because it didn't seem significant in any way. The sense of total surprise is what provides the humorous response. |
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29 Apr 09 - 10:07 AM (#2621198) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Stilly River Sage Kent, One set of double letters, or more than one set of double letters? Perhaps the folks I played with cheated then, because the pattern of a single set of double letters didn't seem to do it. It was tried. At least it didn't work with them. They were a torturous bunch, though, so I wouldn't put it past them to have put their own spin on it. |
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29 Apr 09 - 11:44 AM (#2621265) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Bill D The only 'game' I think I ever witnessed or (VERY briefly) participated in, was a drinking game called, I think, *ZOOM*. It was a site specific game at a party, where people stood in a circle and shouted verbal commands in a code which defined the next player. You yelled either Zoom, Schwartz, or Porfigliano.. and if you missed your cue, you had to drink something intoxicating. (There even a 4th word added sometimes for proficient players) I don't think that game is exactly in the same category as *THE GAME*, but it was a niche thing for young folks seeking to develop quick response brain reflexes. (I never even encountered the 'coffee'/'tea' thing) |
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29 Apr 09 - 12:00 PM (#2621276) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: KB in Iowa It seems to me that the only way to not lose "The Game" is to not know about it. This is the first I have heard of it but while reading the Wiki article I thought about "The Game" so I lost. We played the 'coffe/tea thing' as What does Sally like? |
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29 Apr 09 - 05:09 PM (#2621468) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Kent Davis Stilly River Sage, As I heard it 30 years ago at West Virginia University, it was just double letters. However, it would be really easy to torture someone by changing the rules each time ("Next time, it'll be the word that ends in 'e'") or by not really having any rules but pretending to, so there is no actual solution. Kent |
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29 Apr 09 - 09:18 PM (#2621606) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Little Hawk Exactly so, Kent. The Germans and Japanese screwed up badly in WWII by not employing that technique when the Allies broke their transmission codes. What they should have done was sent many messages that looked like they were in code but were actually complete gibberish, and the Allied cryptographers would all have been driven into nervous breakdowns trying to break the new "code". ;-) |
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29 Apr 09 - 10:58 PM (#2621637) Subject: RE: BS: 'The Game' - Every Generation Has One From: Bill D Little Hawk... ssssshhhh! Next you'll be telling our enemies to use "code talkers" (I wonder if the Chinese have the equivalent of "valley girls"?) |