The Game is a mind game in which the objective is to avoid thinking about The Game itself. Thinking about The Game constitutes a loss, which must be announced each time it occurs. It is impossible to win most versions of The Game. Depending on the variation, it is held that the whole world, or all those who are aware of the game, are playing it at all times. Tactics have been developed to increase the number of people who are aware of The Game, and thereby increase the number of losses.
The origins of The Game are uncertain. The most common hypothesis is that The Game derives from another mental game, Finchley Central. While the original version of Finchley Central involves taking turns to name stations, in 1976, members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (CUSFS) developed a variant wherein the first person to think of the titular station loses. The game in this form demonstrates ironic processing, in which attempts to suppress or avoid certain thoughts make those thoughts more common or persistent than they would be at random. [1]
How this became simplified into The Game is unknown; one hypothesis is that once it spread outside the Greater London area, among people who are less familiar with London stations, it morphed into its self-referential form. [2] The creators of "LoseTheGame.net", a website which aims to catalogue information relating to the phenomenon, have received messages from multiple former members of the CUSFS commenting on the similarity between the Finchley Central variant and the modern Game. [1] [3] The first known reference to The Game is a blog post from 2002 – the author states that they "found out about it online about 6 months ago". [4]
The Game is most commonly spread through the internet, such as via Facebook or Twitter, or by word of mouth. [5]
There are three commonly reported rules to The Game: [6] [7] [8] [9]
The definition of "thinking about The Game" is not always clear. If one discusses The Game without realizing that they have lost, this may or may not constitute a loss. If someone says "What is The Game?" before understanding the rules, whether they have lost is up for interpretation. According to some interpretations, one does not lose when someone else announces their loss, although the second rule implies that one loses regardless of what made them think about The Game. After a player has announced a loss, or after one thinks of The Game, some variants allow for a grace period between three seconds to thirty minutes to forget about the game, during which the player cannot lose the game again. [4]
Strategies focus on making others lose The Game. Common methods include saying "The Game" out loud or writing about The Game on a hidden note, in graffiti in public places, or on banknotes. [7] [10]
Associations may be made with The Game, especially over time, so that one thing inadvertently causes one to lose. Some players enjoy thinking of elaborate pranks that will cause others to lose the game. [5]
Other strategies involve merchandise: T-shirts, buttons, mugs, posters, and bumper stickers have been created to advertise The Game. The Game is also spread via social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. [5]
The common rules do not define a point at which The Game ends. However, some players state that The Game ends when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom announces on television that "The Game is up." [8]
The March 3, 2008 edition of the webcomic xkcd declares its reader the winner of the game, [11] and therefore free from the game's "mindvirus." [12] [13] [14]
The Game has been described as challenging and fun to play, and as pointless, childish, and infuriating. [4] In some Internet forums, such as Something Awful and GameSpy, and in several schools, The Game has been banned. [7] [10]
The 2009 Time 100 poll was manipulated by users of 4chan, forming an acrostic for "marblecake also the game" out of the top 21 people's names. [15] [16]
Mornington Crescent is an improvisational comedy game featured in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (ISIHAC), a series that satirises panel games.
Skat, historically Scat, is a three-player trick-taking card game of the ace–ten family, devised around 1810 in Altenburg in the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. It is the national game of Germany and, along with Doppelkopf, it is the most popular card game in Germany and Silesia and one of the most popular in the rest of Poland. A variant of 19th-century Skat was once popular in the US. John McLeod considers it one of the best and most interesting card games for three players, and Kelbet described it as "the king of German card games." The German Skat Association assess that it is played by around 25 million Germans – more than play football.
Ghost is a written or spoken word game in which players take turns to extend the letters of a word without completing a valid word.
Cee-lo is a gambling game played with three six-sided dice. The name is derived from the Chinese name for the game, which is literally the numerical sequence four-five-six. Although many variations exist, there are certain common rules, including the use of three dice and common roll combinations, such as rolling a 4-5-6 to win, 1-2-3 to lose, and other combinations which establish a point for comparison to rolls by other player(s).
In Scrabble, a challenge is the act of one player questioning the validity of one or more words formed by another player on the most recent turn. In double challenge, if one or more of the challenged words is not in the agreed-upon dictionary or word source, the challenged player loses her/his turn. If all challenged words are acceptable, the challenger loses his/her turn.
Randall Patrick Munroe is an American cartoonist, author, and engineer best known as the creator of the webcomic xkcd. Munroe has worked full-time on the comic since late 2006. In addition to publishing a book of the webcomic's strips, titled xkcd: Volume 0, he has written four books: What If?, Thing Explainer, How To, and What If? 2.
xkcd, sometimes styled XKCD, is a serial webcomic created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe. The comic's tagline describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". Munroe states on the comic's website that the name of the comic is not an initialism but "just a word with no phonetic pronunciation".
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, music, history, technology, anime, physical fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Registration is not available, except for staff, and users typically post anonymously. As of 2022, 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of whom approximately half are from the United States.
Rickrolling or a Rickroll is an Internet meme involving the unexpected appearance of the music video to the 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up", performed by English singer Rick Astley. The aforementioned video has over 1.5 billion views on YouTube. The meme is a type of bait and switch, usually using a disguised hyperlink that leads to the music video. When someone clicks on a seemingly unrelated link, the site with the music video loads instead of what was expected, and they have been "Rickrolled". The meme has also extended to using the song's lyrics, or singing it, in unexpected contexts. Astley himself has also been Rickrolled on several occasions.
Mister Splashy Pants, or Mr Splashypants, is a humpback whale in the South Pacific Ocean. It is being tracked with a satellite tag by Greenpeace as a part of its Great Whale Trail Expedition, which was working to raise awareness about whales threatened by the Japanese Fisheries Agency's hunting of 50 humpback whales annually. The whale's name was chosen in an online poll that garnered attention from several websites, including Boing Boing and Reddit, quickly becoming an internet meme. Mister Splashy Pants became the subject of a TED Talk by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, titled "How to make a splash in social media."
Trollface or Troll Face is a rage comic meme image of a character donning a mischievous smile, used to symbolise internet trolls and trolling. It is one of the oldest and most widely known rage comic faces.
Canvas Networks was a website centered on sharing and remixing media, particularly images. The website was established by the founder of 4chan, Christopher Poole. It closed in 2014.
A creepypasta is a horror-related legend which has been shared around the Internet. The term creepypasta has since become a catch-all term for any horror content posted onto the Internet. These entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories that are intended to frighten readers. The subjects of creepypasta vary widely and can include topics such as ghosts, cryptids, murder, suicide, zombies, aliens, rituals to summon supernatural entities, haunted television shows, and video games. Creepypastas range in length from a single paragraph to extended multi-part series that can span multiple media types, some lasting for years.
8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan, is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration. The site has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, racism and antisemitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings. The site has been known to host child pornography; as a result, it was filtered out from Google Search in 2015. Several of the site's boards played an active role in the Gamergate harassment campaign, encouraging Gamergate affiliates to frequent 8chan after 4chan banned the topic. 8chan is the origin and main center of activity of the discredited QAnon conspiracy theory.
/pol/, short for Politically Incorrect, is an anonymous political discussion imageboard on 4chan. As of 2022, it is the most active board on the site. It has had a substantial impact on Internet culture. It has acted as a platform for far-right extremism; the board is notable for its widespread racist, white supremacist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, misogynist, and anti-LGBT content. /pol/ has been linked to various acts of real-world extremist violence. It has been described as one of the "[centers] of 4chan mobilization", a title also ascribed to /b/.
Finchley Central is a humorous game in which two players take turns naming stations in the London Underground. The first person to name Finchley Central is the winner, with humor coming from the fact that there is nothing stopping either player from naming the station at any time. Mathematics professor Jonathan Partington compares Finchley Central to the concept of polite refusal, describing the reciprocity and the game's solutions to be isomorphic as he somewhat facetiously notes:
An opening move of "Finchley Central" is too much of a cheat, and you might wish to start with, say, Liverpool Street, when, assuming that your opponent isn't rude enough to reply with Finchley Central, leaves you with a mate on your second move.
Internet manipulation is the co-optation of online digital technologies, including algorithms, social bots, and automated scripts, for commercial, social, military, or political purposes. Internet and social media manipulation are the prime vehicles for spreading disinformation due to the importance of digital platforms for media consumption and everyday communication. When employed for political purposes, internet manipulation may be used to steer public opinion, polarise citizens, circulate conspiracy theories, and silence political dissidents. Internet manipulation can also be done for profit, for instance, to harm corporate or political adversaries and improve brand reputation. Internet manipulation is sometimes also used to describe the selective enforcement of Internet censorship or selective violations of net neutrality.
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The NPC, derived from non-player character, is an Internet meme that represents people deemed to not think for themselves; those who lack introspection or intrapersonal communication; those whose identity is deemed entirely determined by their surroundings and the information they consume, with no conscious processing whatsoever being done by the person themselves. The meme gained further viral status on TikTok in 2022, with the surge of "NPC Streamers". The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the imageboard 4chan, where the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced.
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Media related to The Game (mind game) at Wikimedia Commons
Wikinews interviews manager of site 'Lose The Game' at Wikinews 
