The Game (mind game)
The Game ( German: the game ) is a running joke and Internet phenomenon to a game whose sole aim is to forget the game. The Game is thus not an actual game that can be played actively. The "players" rather spread allusions to it, especially the message, you have lost the game, so as to bring others to lose. For instance, every reader of this article has inevitably lost The Game. It can therefore be seen as such an indication.
The Game is mainly known in the English-speaking world, but has spread throughout the world; so there are hundreds of Facebook groups about it, one of which has the largest approximately 200,000 members. Especially at American universities The Game is very well known, but is "played" too high schools and middle schools more often.
The game
There are the following basic rules for The Game stated, be varied and made more precise:
There is no generally accepted way to win the game (sometimes mentioned that you would have won the game when the Queen publicly admits that she has lost the game ); players can only try not to lose as long as possible. The supplement " [ for example ] by a note passed in class at excitable friends" to the third rule shows that it is mostly about the schadenfreude to see others lose.
If one remembers the game and announced this, one remains a certain amount of time, depending on to lose three seconds and a half hour the game again from the consciousness - and thus automatically continue playing the game. That you lose the game in this way over and over again, is " the whole perverse whole point of an otherwise senseless pursuit ," writes the newspaper, The Kansas City Star. The interviewed pop culture expert J. Fred MacDonald said: "I have no doubt that Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot could talk about it ."
Manifestations
Since the game is not to win, the players develop strategies to make others lose: For example, writing sticky notes with the message " You lost" ( " You have lost " ), spray graffiti on bridges or write notes with references to a website that deals with the Game. Students tell how they as a group in a mall invaded the game, and she made this known gave loud. " Then we heard a few people simply any people in the store, say it, which was quite amusing. " Countless notes, as well as messages about losing the game, spread across Facebook and Twitter. Meanwhile, T -shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, mugs and posters about The Game to be produced, different websites dealing with the phenomenon. As part of the Internet culture, it is also taken up by webcomics: Real Life Comics described the rules of the game in November 2007; published in March 2008 xkcd strip with a short message: " You just won The Game. It's okay!! 're Free " ( German: " You just won the game It's alright You're free. "! )
Origin
The origins of the game are unknown. As a possible origin among others, two men are given, which missed the last train and would have had to spend the whole night on the platform. She had tried not to think about their situation and whoever did it first, I lost. The first documented mention of the game on the Internet is from the year 2001.
The game is an example of the theory of ironic processes, also known as the White Bear Phenomenon ( "White Bear " phenomenon ), after which, makes an attempt to avoid a certain thought this much more persistent. A classic example of ironic processes is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum from his travelogue Winter records of summer impressions from 1863: " Ask yourself this task: Do not think of a polar bear, and you'll see that this damned thing every minute will be in your head. "
Points
According to certain rules, particularly in the Americas, you can earn with the reconnaissance of other points. There are different scoring systems for these points. The method most commonly used is that you multiplied the number of people that you have already taken to lose with age, when they lost themselves. So has anyone who has told two people of The Game and 17 even found out about it, 34 points. In some online shops that can buy articles on The Game, you can buy the goods for real money if you have a certain number of points. The problem with the points is that it e.g. can not be defined precisely by loud exclamations, how many points you have now.