Category Archives: Contagious

Competitive Pokémon Hax Chants

RF has been playing competitive Pokemon for years, starting with the folkier Smogon (singles 1v1) formats before transitioning to the official Video Game Competition (VGC) format in recent years.

The Text

Pokemon differs from most other turn-based games in that turns aren’t taken independently one after another but rather decisions for a particular turn are made from both players blind (like in game theory) and resolved simultaneously once all decisions are made. Because of this wait time, players are held in suspense after making a decision or even while making a decision, running through probabilities and the different possibilities the turn might resolve. As the game also employs an incredible amount random number generation (RNG), luck becomes a huge element in how a particular game turns out. Much of the game revolves around accounting for best and worst case scenario and, at time, betting on small odds in desperation. This lends itself to chants and prayers for good luck between turns while waiting for a turn to resolve.

The most common chants to shout are “Freeze” (referring to usually a 10% chance to render the opponent to be unable to act until they hit another 10% chance), “Flinch” (referring to the higher chance of rendering an opponent unable to act for the turn), “Dodge” (referring to the chance for an opponent’s attack to miss), and sometimes, as the informant explains that most competitive players are also “degenerate weebs,” “Chance Ball” (referring to the anime Haikyuu!! in referrence to an opportunity to score, or in the context of Pokemon, turn the momentum of the game in their favor).

“Deserved” is also sometimes said when RNG befalls an opponent “post-ironically” as the players know they’re “victim-blaming” the opponent, but also they sincerely mean it, or at least tongue-in-cheek do. Another variation is to say that the opponent was asking for it by putting themselves in a position to be haxed (the term for bad RNG happening to you, derived from “hax” which is a noun referring to the occurence of RNG-based effects.

This leads to the informant’s report of the rising sentiment in the community that luck is partially a skill to the degree that maximizing your odds of getting lucky or minimizing your odds of being haxed is a core skill of playing the game. When a player purposefully makes a play relying on hax in an attempt to turn around an otherwise unwinnable game, that can be somewhat respectable as “playing to your outs” while players who get hax on their side unintentionally are “lucky and bad” for “getting bailed.”

Spectators will join in a lot, rooting for their teammate or friend, but actual players don’t usually do so, only when desperate and no other obvious plays can be made. Naturally, this is because doing so in chat would be announcing your next move, though it’s not uncommon for players to chant it into a voice call or the text chatroot once the animation resolving the turn begins, even though by that point, the random numbers have already been generated. For the same reason, an opponent’s attack missing sometimes isn’t bad luck on their end but rather your own “skillful dodge.”

I then asked the informant whether they think this chant is an invocation or prayer, to which the informant responded that “it depends on the player.” While some players may desperately plea for luck, some other demand it with imperative authority in an attempt to manifest it into reality. The informant himself reports that he always utters it in an invocational form, the odds of willing it into existence proportional to the confidence they call it happening with, such as “watch this dodge right here” rather than desperately wishing with “please.”

I then asked if the informant has noticed differences between the folkier Smogon singles format and the VGC doubles (2v2) format, and while the informant suggests that there is a difference, it is apparently not due to the officialization of the format. The informant explains that smogon singles tend to be “harsher” due to the lower variance over a longer game (because less happen each turn with only two Pokemon on the field as opposed to four with odds that RNG evens out to the expected rates over a longer game), with more toxicity as the format has lower odds of RNG factors (because RNG effects don’t have two targets per instance of use) along with much more room for error (because each individual turn matters less in a longer singles game). Due to the option for players to play around RNG in singles that doubles formats don’t have, singles communities tend to be less forgiving when it happens while doubles communities have accepted that it’s almost inevitable within a game.

Analysis

Given the luck required of this game, the use of an incantation, sometimes even in imperative form as if manifesting it into reality reflects a form of contageous magic in verbally invoking an incident, as described by Frazer’s sympathetic magic. The difference between prayer and invocation is particularly interesting as prayer is more associated with blessings and curses, and prayers don’t dominate this chant over this invocations for the same reasons why English doesn’t have much curses and blessings, as the language and its societies have become less religious over the various historical events in the past such as the English reformation derparting from the Roman Catholic church and the Enlightenment era founding ideals of the United States. Coincidentally, invocations and “curses” in the imperative form seem to have overtaken in modern culture as people place more power into their own hands rather than an agnostic higher entity, similar to how people “manifest” something for themselves instead of praying for it or how people command others to “kill yourself” or “get cancer” in the imperative form instead of wishing them eternal suffering in hell in the subjunctive form. In the same vein, many players in the community opt to command hax to manifest for them in an imperative utterance of the chant rather than wishing for it in the subjunctive form.

Gacha Gaming Luck Rituals

The Informant

CM is a long-time gacha player who players multiple different gacha games and stays up to date in the community news of gacha games he doesn’t even play. The informant admits to doing one of the following rituals in the past, having played the game genre since he was 13.

The Text

“Gacha” games are a from of video games that involve a “gacha” element, deriving from the Japanese toy-capsule vending machines of gachapon, in which rewards are drawn through lottery as a monetization system. As a very luck-based system, it lends itself to superstitions and magical rituals, particularly when players are investing their in-game resources into “pulling” for gacha. Most gacha games tend to sell particularly desireable limited characters or equipment, and the lottery mechanic incentivizes players to quite literally perform summoning rituals to “pull” the right character or equipment.

According to the informant, there are two big ways to perform a luck ritual in gacha community. In the past, one method was to change your social media profile picture (Discord, X, etc.) to the target character before you pulled for them. Other people draw summoning circles, placing the phone in the middle of the diagram with merch on the periphery. Some people would assemble entire shrines in dedication of the target character before they roll. The informant recalls an episode where a particular player put their phone into a circle of salt to keep away bad luck before rolling.

In Grand Blue Fantasy, a particular gacha game, the most incentivized way to pull would be to pull 300 pulls at once for an incentivized reward, and you must play a song, like related to the target character, on loop as the game rolls through the 300 pulls. If the player ever repeats a song used for a previous character, the rolls would be atrocious, from an anecdote. The informant also recounts a method where the player would go to a specific location important to the target character or have related characters active in the party while pulling for the character.

Analysis

What I find most interesting about this ritual is the homeopathic nature of summoning for a fictional character, as described by Frazer’s sympathetic magic, despite the target of the homeopathic connection being completely fictional. This operates off the belief that the target character will be bound to other characters, locations, and merchandise that have a connection to them. Setting one’s public profile picture also morphs the player’s cyborg identity to be closer to that of the character, again evoking a homeopathic bond. Because the user’s are invested in the characters and want them to “come home” to their account, they will perform rituals to improve their odds, especially as losing to the lottery odds can be quite costly to an account, forcing the player to either pay for more rolls or miss out on the character. As many gacha games sell their characters through story, the narratives the players experienced with the target character also incentivizes their investment on pulling for the target character, going as far as to perform rituals to better their luck when rolling.

TTRPG Dice Superstitions and Rituals

The Informant

E.T. is a long-time tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) hobbyist and player who has played in several games at real life tables using real physical dice that must be tossed by hand as opposed to digital random number generators. TTRPGs rely on sets of dice of various face sizes in

Text

Amongst E.T.’s collection of dice sets include favored dice sets such as his “pansexual dice.” He insists on carrying the dice, or else “they’ll misbehave.” He “trains” his dice, ritualistically pulling them out one at a time, grouping and categorizing them by face number. Then, all the die are placed highest number up to condition them to roll that number more in the future. He notes that he does not utilize “dice jail” that often, only when a particular dice is especially egregious for a session. Although he reports that trained dice tend not to perform that poorly, the pansexual dice notably acts up every now and then. He insists that training dice work due to the estimated measurement comparison where his digital dice underperform compared to his trained physical dice.

E.T. has a cat that passed away a couple years back, and he uses her food bowl as the “dice jail” for misbehaving dice. The cat had no quality that would help the dice rehabilitate, but it’s a sentimental use for the bowl he’s held onto since. If he’s hosting a game session with players he is not fond of, he will give them dice that have a history of poor performance. Apparently, it is necessary to keep them in specific bags along with charms for “positive vibes.” The favorite dice gets a more spacious satin satch instead of the usual velvet one. He also reports a friend and fellow TTRPG player who puts dice in a mason jar under the full moon to absorb of the power of the moon. This can be either to cleanse unlucky dice or to bless dice.

Analysis

Dice rituals and magic can be fairly easily categorized as Frazer’s sympathetic magic, particularly contageous magic that associates good luck with particular sets of dice. The process of trying to enchant dice by imbuing it with moonlight is contageous magic that attempts to rub off the cosmic force onto the statistical random number generator by association. The idea that dice can be trained to roll higher numbers simply by “conditioning” them with deliberate face placement as a ritual similarly hopes that the time spent on the face with the biggest number will persist in future uses of the dice. Conversely, dice with historically bad luck becomes stuck with the contageous misfortune until a conversion ritual is performed, such as with the mason jar and moonlight. As a fantasy roleplay game, the medium itself lends itself towards players who are inclined and willing to partake in magical and superstitious practices, if not for genuinely belief, at least for fun and roleplay.

Minor Genre: Gesture – The Moutza

  1. Text: Gesture of someone thrusting their open hand forward at someone else, all five fingers spread out. Used in Greek culture.
  2. Informants Context: I come from a family of Greek immigrants who haven’t necessarily chosen to teach me about this gesture, but I’ve inevitably learned it from them. The moutza is the Greek equivalent of the middle finger, for better or worse. It’s definitely less offensive than the middle finger and can be used more playfully. It’s ultimately a confrontational gesture though, meant to be displayed as a form of disagreement. The sign also has some superstitious connotations as technically the person giving the moutza is sending a curse to whoever is receiving it. This curse generally just means bad luck. The place I most often learned and observed this from was with my Papou (grandfather). He’s an entrepreneur, completely self-made from the villages and may rank among the smartest, most boss guys I’lve ever known in my whole life. That said, sometimes he has been known to blow the fuse a little bit, and when he does, it’s the moutza that he whips out (laughter). If he wants to double insult someone, he might throw his other hand behind the one that is already thrust open, layering the two of them like pancakes. That’s the ultimate disrespect. This gesture is recognized by Greeks globally but rarely in other cultures. An open hand like the moutza might even be misunderstood as a friendly gesture by certain cultures, including in America where it could be seen as something like a high-five. I personally use the moutza in a mostly fun way, in the kinds of spaces where I could get away with that kind of offensive joke. For example, when I’m with some Greek friends and we’re having a laugh, I might throw it one of their faces to get a reaction. They’ll understand I’m being funny and play along.
  3. Collectors Interpretation: The moutza is firstly a demonstration of power by Greek people. When used in a non-playful context, the gesture is clearly rooted in a show of force or intention to shame people. This might reflect a greater value on the part of Greek people about personal pride and their eagerness to defend it. Moreover, as a potential way to “curse people”, the practice could be seen as a form of contagious magic. It functions on multiple levels as a demonstration of folklore. The fact that the gesture is not universally understood, reflecting different contexts in different parts of the world, continues to demonstrate its folklore roots. It is a practice specific to Greek people, inside the country and abroad, but nonetheless specific to culturally attuned Greeks. This might also reflect a broader culture within Greece surrounding how its people perceive confrontation. If the purpose of the moutza is to pass shame onto someone who has done you wrong, perhaps this reflects a value towards honor. Shame cannot be of value without dignity simultaneously being a high-priority as well.

Fields

AGE: 21

Date_of_performance: May 9, 2025

Language: English

Nationality: American/Greek

Occupation: Student

Primary Language: English

Residence: United States of America

No Hitter Jinx

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student

Residence: San Diego, CA

Text:

When a pitcher is throwing a no hitter or a perfect game, nobody in the dugout is allowed to talk to the pitcher and nobody at all (including teammates, fans, broadcasters, and anyone else watching) is allowed to say the words “no-hitter” or “perfect game”. If you talk to the pitcher or if you say no-hitter you will jinx the pitcher and they will give up a hit.

Context:

Both of these rules are common practice across baseball, and my friend has experienced both of them first hand. In high school, one of his teammates had a perfect game going through 6 innings; when he was not on the mound the pitcher sat by himself at the far end of the dugout and nobody, including the coaches would talk to him. Normally coaches would ask how a pitcher is feeling after every inning and give them advice, but the coach stayed far away. The pitcher successfully finished the perfect game. As a fan, my friend was in attendance when the Mets pitched a no-hitter in 2022. Everybody knew that the Mets had a no-hitter going, and the crowd became more and more excited as they got closer to closing out the game, but nobody ever said the words “no-hitter”. People would count down the number of outs left, or ask each other questions like “do you think they’ll pull it off” but everyone carefully avoided the words “no-hitter”.

Analysis:

Both of these rules are in line with Frazers principles of sympathetic magic. The refusal to talk to a pitcher can be seen as wanting to avoid contact with the pitcher along the lines of the Law of Contact. If a pitcher has a perfect game going and you come into contact with him, then your imperfections could influence the pitcher and ruin his perfect game. The refusal to say the words “no-hitter” or “perfect game” follows a similar idea, but here you are not interacting with the pitcher but rather with the perfect game itself. By saying “perfect game”, a person is indirectly contacting the perfect game (if the perfect game is to be thought of as an object), and by contacting the perfect game the person risks magically ruining the game. Beyond the magical beliefs of a perfect game, there is major societal pressure involved with these rules. If you break one of these rules and a pitcher gives up a hit, people will blame you for it. To avoid the risk of being blamed, people follow these rules whether they believe in magic or not.