How I won "the game"
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
So yesterday I got that post-it-note with just the words "the game" on it. I had no idea what it was, and it freaked me out for the first two hours of my day. Then I found out who put it there, and what it means, and its really not that scary.
You can read this:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-game
But I'll paraphrase it here.
"the game" was invented in 1977 by members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society. "the game" is a set of rules where by merely thinking about the game, makes you lose the game.
I researched it a little further and it turns out 4chan popularized it. For those of you who are internet savy, they need no introduction, but for those of you less "in the know" I'll explain them in stories you may have heard about.
4chan is an internet message board that offers complete anonymity. They don't require any personal info to post and they don't keep logs. You probably first heard of them from their battle against the Church of Scientology. All those Guy Fawkes masks, and people outside of the churches...that was all set up by 4chan.
You might have heard of the recent attacks on the MPAA and RIAA's websites. Also orchestrated by 4chan. But they just don't do mean things to evil corporations. Oh no, they are also responsible for most of the internet memes you read about. Rick rolling? Yeah, that was 4chan too. And by the time you were rick rolling your friends, they were off doing the NEXT big thing on the internet.
If you think about it...these guys are the Henry Thoreau's of our generation. No no...stop it, I can see you are getting angry. HDT was all about civil disobedience. Breaking the laws that were unfair, and that's exactly what these guys are doing. I don't want to get all preachy because the "right to steal music and movies" is clearly different then the "right to not pay taxes." But the idea is there. If "the people" want something, or don't want something (in this case, to pay for music) it should be that way. Its a government for the PEOPLE, not for the CORPORATIONS.
The problem is "We the People" have given all our power (ie MONEY) to the corporations. So now they have that power...and LOTS of it. In essence, NOT paying for music and movies is just a way to take the power BACK.
But I digress...4chan made the game popular, and apparently it's leaked out into popular culture because if I know about it...its gotta be old news :)
There is good news. I won the game. Later in the day I received this message:
So I hunkered down and got that post live!
to which they replied "I'll do you one better" and I shortly received this email:
So I won "the game", forever. It's on the internet, it must be true.
You, however, just lost the game.
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