Category Archives: Game

Post-Joke Toe-Grabbing

Nationality: American, Irish
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downtown LA
Performance Date: 4.16.14
Primary Language: English

The Informant is 21 years old, is a junior at USC studying Screenwriting, and is from Chicago, Illinois.

Me: Okay, so explain what just happened!

Him: Well, we’re all comedians in this house so we like to tell jokes. So we have a lot of joke competitions? It actually started in my dorm with my freshman year roommate. Whenever someone came over and jokes started being told, and mind you, they’re usually SUPER cheesy…just sad jokes…we’d have the guest pick which joke was funniest between me and my roommate. Whoever the guest deemed had told the funnier joke had to have their toes pulled by the losing joker. Don’t ask me how we decided to do that. I think we were pretty drunk and thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

Me: So, what do you do now?

Him: Well, now I live with 5 dudes, including my freshman year roommate, so we brought it with us not thinking it would really stick. And now there are ALWAYS people over, so that toe-pulling thing happens all of the time now. It caught on! We’re always just yanking on each others’ feet. It’s embarrassing. Don’t ask me why we do it *laughs*.

Me: Who usually wins?

Him: The person who comes up with the wittiest pun, typically. It’s whoever the guest chooses, also! We don’t really even think about it anymore. The people that come over also know the process now, too, so jokes will be told and someone will  just shout “M*******!” and I have to go pull M*******’s toes for him. Actually, people don’t even have to be over and we’ll just do it between ourselves. It’s rare that I get my toes pulled though *laughs*.

Analysis:

This presents an unique folk gesture by involving competition, humor, and an atypical interaction of body parts. The informant seemed almost embarrassed of his house’s little ritual because of how ridiculous even HE thought it was. I remember when it was first performed I was so confused by the course of events. I looked over at the informant after I deemed him the winner, and he turned red with embarrassment at the little ritual of his toes being pulled. Yet, despite his embarrassment, he clearly enjoyed the ritual in the the ways that it brings him closer to his roommates and friends. This shows that a lot of pride can be created from the establishment of a ritual, despite whatever level of ridiculousness it may involve. It’s this exact reason that we always play pranks on someone when it’s their birthday, why clubs have embarrassing inductions for their new members, and why college seniors always try to pull of the biggest school prank. Though they may be embarrassing at times, these rituals create a self-established sense of pride among those involved.

Finding Megalodon

Nationality: American
Age: 28
Occupation: Engineer
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4.10.2014
Primary Language: English

Item:

“The lengths people were going to to try to find this thing were so extensive, I didn’t even bother trying to look since I felt like there wouldn’t be a chance I’d find it.”

In Dice Entertainment’s recently released video game, Battlefield 4, there was rumor of a secret hidden somewhere in it that users spent months trying to find. It was a massive shark, a megalodon, that would apparently appear if you do the right sequence of actions and show up at the right place at the right time. Apparently, it was something someone on the development team added for fun, but wouldn’t tell if it indeed was true.

 

Context:

The informant plays a lot of games and loves easter eggs in games — hidden secrets placed by the developer. He says they range from small scale, like the signature of a designer tucked away in a corner, to large scale, like a massive extinct shark that flies out of the ocean and destroys everything in its path. He says he thinks people eventually found it, but wasn’t sure if they cheated to do that or someone faked it. Apparently, people in these communities band together and put in several hours of work to find these secrets beyond what normal players see.

 

Analysis:

In researching further, it turns out the megalodon is real! Players, after months of searching, found the shark, the last known unfound easter egg in the game. It’s unclear when exactly it was added into the game — either it’s been there since it was released, or the company added it at a later date to surprise fans who had been spreading rumors about its existence. The latter is a really interesting scenario — it’s almost like claiming to have found big foot, but you’re literally in control of whether or not big foot exists. To a certain extent it nullifies the possibility of legends or at least an unknown since the control of existence is in someone’s hands, at least if we allow modification of the original games.

The Mustache Game

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Artist
Residence: Echo Park, CA
Performance Date: 4.19.2014
Primary Language: English

Item:

“Ahahah it honestly never gets old, we lose it every time and nobody is doing anything but staring at it.”

The Mustache Game is a drinking game wherein people make a cut out mustache and tape it to a random spot on a television screen — typically not near the edges. Then, everyone sits around watching TV. If the mustache perfectly lines up with a character’s upper lip, everyone watching drinks. The excitement from the game comes from when the mustache gets extremely close but the character keeps moving around it.

 

Context:

The informant says it’s the most fun drinking game he plays since it’s pretty passive — people can hang out and watch TV but also laugh incessantly at all the near misses. He also claims people can’t focus on anything else so it ends up getting turned off so people can actually talk or do other things. Sometimes he varies the game by having people draw or cut out different types of mustaches or facial hair. He made mention of putting two mustaches on the screen at once, but it apparently has never lined up. If it did, everyone would go crazy, he said.

 

Analysis:

This sounds like an incredibly fun drinking game. It’s really easy to set up, works on a lot of different TV shows I’m willing to bet, and is decently passive. To be fair, it’s not really much of a game — there’s not a ton of user input, a win state, or a risk of loss. But “drinking game” can connote more than traditional games, as its just an activity used as a platform to drink because in honor of. I also like the idea of expanding the rules — different mustaches, multiple mustaches, what channel you choose. It’s a very modern drinking game obviously, but accessible by many.

Jinx, You Owe Me a Soda

Nationality: Indian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/29/14
Primary Language: English

Text:

“Jinx you owe me a soda.”

Background:

If you say the same word or phrase as another person, you would say the phrase shown above to them. Jinx means you aren’t allowed to talk, and you have to give them a soda or they have to say your name three times. My informant said that it means nothing to him, just a game. Fun to play with little kids.

Context:

My respondent recalls learning it as a kid in elementary school, but now he says it when he’s with his little cousins.

Personal Thoughts:

I’m curious to learn more about the origin of this game/saying. I wonder what exactly jinx is referring to, and whether or not it has anything to do with jins.  Otherwise, it seems like a fun little game that kids “play” without getting too serious about it. I’ve personally never see anyone actually follow through with the rules.

Bloody Mary (or Candyman)

Nationality: Asian-American
Age: 27
Occupation: Game designer
Performance Date: April 15th, 2014
Primary Language: English

Information about my Informant

My informant grew up in Hacienda Heights where he went to high school, and received his bachelor’s degree from USC. He is a game designer and is currently working for a social mobile gaming company based in Westwood.

Transcript

“If you, like, look into a mirror, and you say…something three times, usually like ‘Bloody Mary’ or ‘Candyman.’ Those are like two. Um, you like summon them. And it’s very bad. Uh…”

Collector: “Why is it bad? Do they…”

“I don’t know. It’s one of those like you don’t wanna do it, and it’s kind of scary and then you never never do it, I guess? ‘Cause you’re too scared.”

Collector: “So you don’t know what happens when they appear?”

“No, like, there could be presents. I don’t know. They could hurt you horribly; I don’t know.”

Analysis

The Bloody Mary legend is famous among children of many cultures, although it is mostly associated with young prepubescent girls and not boys. The reason being, it is conjectured, is that the Bloody Mary legend in its traditional form is a representation of the onset of menstruation that is in the future for these girls (with the constant concept of blood and with the ritual being performed in front of a mirror that reflects the girls’ own images, meaning that when Bloody Mary does appear in the mirror, she is replacing the image of the girl herself). It is unusual then that in this version that my informant provided me with, it is not only a boy who learned about this but that his version included the possible substitute of a figure called the Candyman. I myself had heard of Bloody Mary but never this male figure. The ritual is very similar, with a candle being lit and the name of Candyman being chanted  a number of times while looking into a mirror. The classic version of Candyman though, as far as I can tell, before the movie called Candyman came out in 1992, was that the Candyman when summoned would either glare at the summoner through the mirror with  his glowing red eyes before vanishing or would kill the summoner with a rusted hook. There is also now a version, which I’m not sure existed before the movie came out, where the Candyman would romantically pursue a female summoner and kill her if she spurned him. It’s interesting that the classic versions of Candyman seems to involve more malevolence (staring, killing) than the classic versions of Bloody Mary (staring, scratching perhaps), but it’s difficult to tell as both figures have been prominently featured in mass media now and their portrayals there have filtered back into the folklore.

For more information about the Bloody Mary and Candyman legends, see:

Dundes, Alan. “Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual Reflection of Pre-Pubescent Anxiety.” Western Folklore 57.2/3 (1998): 119-135. JSTOR. Web. 1 May. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1500216>.

Tucker, Elizabeth. “Ghosts in Mirrors: Reflections of the Self.” The Journal of American Folklore, 118.468: 186-203. JSTOR. Web. 1 May. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4137701>.