Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

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motohagiography

Whenever I see twitter/social clone ideas I think of a bar game from my snarky too-clever-by-half friends and I used to play in the 90s, we called "pitch it," where you had to express a tv show or movie as the pitch the writer made.

Some gems included:

- A guy and a sass-talking car fight crime together.

- Seven Samurai meets the Equalizer, but with american war criminals.

- Screwball comedy but with homages and tropes instead of sight gags and jokes, with an ensamble cast of has beens doing swan song performances.

When I hear about twitter clones, the pitches for platforms become the jokes we make about them:

- a way for old people to yell at each other.

- bully safari, where you can go to antagonize people without conseqences.

- a way for people to share pictures of their butts.

- Orwell's 'two minutes of hate'

- a fame simulator where robots flatter you

- a place for smart people to act stupid

- warcraft for passive aggression

These are mostly empty snark, but some of them can be funny, and they take us out of thinking that we should re-make something we have today with some minor augmentation, independent of the original context it was created, and start looking at what something genuinely new might be.

I came up with a fun game that’s along the line of your snarky movie game. I call it Mixed Up Movies, where you have to create a movie title and description that combines two separate movies into one. You write the description and provide the real actors and the other folks have to guess the name of the movie.

For instance:

Hilarity ensues when a mild-mannered suburban family adopts a troubled San Francisco homicide detective.

Clint Eastwood, John Lithgow, and Margaret Langrick star in?

Dirty Harry and The Hendersons

Or:

A retired English butler reminiscences about his time in service to a Lord’s estate while also trying to convince his fellow townsfolk that recently arrived aliens come in peace.

Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins star in?

The Remains of the Day the Earth Stood Still.

Or:

The boss of a Los Angeles crime syndicate enlists the help of a top British Spy to help recover a stolen briefcase by going undercover at an exclusive high-stakes poker game.

Ving Rames, Daniel Craig, and Samuel L Jackson star in?

Casino Royale With Cheese

The stupid game along these lines that I like is to describe a made up film with a title that rhymes with some known film by modifying the description of the film, e.g.

Dominic Toretto and his street racer friends go around making some ridiculous claims.

An FBI agent must enlist the help of a killer to catch a dangerous fiend, who's crime is shushing people on public transport.

An archaeologist/adventurer is hired to venture inside a proton to see what particles he can find.

> where you have to create a movie title and description that combines two separate movies into one

You might enjoy Says You (public radio show). They do this category from time to time. Most recently 2 weeks ago, SY-2630, round 3, starts at ~20:30 in. :)

If you haven't seen it yet, you might enjoy https://screenrant.com/tag/pitch-meeting/

So much yes. IMHO this is some of the most consistently hilarious material I have ever encountered.

My guesses:

- Knight Rider

- Maybe "The Expendables"?

- No idea, but I feel like I want to watch it!

- Maybe "The Expendables"? -> Pretty sure this is "The A Team"

Yup. You may have appreciated Karate Hobo as well.

Surely Inglorious Basterds?

I'm curious about the last 4! (penultimate one: "HN comment section"?) ;-)

I'm a bit earnest about HN, but if I were to roast it by back-pitching it as a startup, I would say something like:

- a place to be wrong on the internet

- reddit, but with hope

- well.com/../actually

but finally,

- something to appreciate

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