The Game
You might remember it as you just lost The Game
Its three rules: everyone is playing; thinking about it is a loss; a loss must be announced
2002·Early web, before YouTube
A game everybody is said to be playing, which you lose by remembering that it exists. A loss has to be announced.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- you just lost The Game
- Spread in
- 2002
- Format
- Phenomenon
- What it said
- Its three rules: everyone is playing; thinking about it is a loss; a loss must be announced
- Made by
- Unknown. The usual theory traces it to a game played by a Cambridge University society in 1976
- Origin
- No single original
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
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.
TimelineIn order
- Made
Members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society play a game in which the first to think of a particular London station loses.1
- Found
The first known reference to The Game itself, in a blog post by somebody who had heard of it six months before.1
- Picked up
The webcomic xkcd publishes a strip declaring that its reader has won, and is free.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asIt dates from 1976.
ActuallyThat is the date of the game it may have come from. Nobody knows when or by whom it was turned into this one.1
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
Where it came fromWhat we know
This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. No copy is held here — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things