ViralWorld Private preview

2002·Early web, before YouTube

The Game

A game everyone is playing, which you lose by remembering it exists.

You might remember it as you just lost The Game

A trend people joined in with

The story

What this was

Three rules: you are playing, you lose when you think about it, and you must announce the loss. Spread by word of mouth and forum post since the early 2000s, and one of the purest examples of a thing that exists only because people pass it on.

It first appeared in 2002, during early web, before YouTube.

The same internet

Early web, before YouTube

More like this

Related

Nothing related yet. Relationships are recorded where evidence supports them, not inferred from similarity.

Behind the record

Where it came from

There is no original to identify: this spread through many separate posts at once rather than from a first one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is the record.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this, because research established there was not one — it appeared in many places at once.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

What happens
Three rules: you are playing, you lose when you think about it, and you must announce the loss. Spread by word of mouth and forum post since the early 2000s, and one of the purest examples of a thing that exists only because people pass it on.
Keep going

Keep browsing