I Eat Poo | Hacker News Reader

I Eat Poo

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18 pointsdecklin9 comments

I've always been confused by games that seem designed to primarily cause pain for the loser(s) rather than pleasure for the winners.

I realize that in most games, losing is painful to some degree and winning is pleasurable to some degree. But in games like this, it seems that more pain is generated for the losers than pleasure for the winners. It seems like playing is a net losing proposition.

I feel similarly about bets where the prize is not an exchange of value but rather that the loser has to perform an embarrassing or painful act. While this may cause some pleasure for some types of winners, it seems like the net effect is negative.

Humans are competitive. The actual prize in such games is often the satisfaction of being the biggest dork in the group (this is often unrelated to winning/losing.)

It's possible to find pleasure in the suffering of others - in this context not huge suffering so no need to be guilty over enjoying it.

As to lose/lose bets, one advantage is minimal cost. If I bet someone £1 then sure I might win a pound, but I also might lose a pound. If I bet someone an embarrassing act, I'm not risking any money. (Not just the case with money, but the point is that for the winner of the bet to get a net gain it means the loser has a tangible loss, whereas doing something embarrassing you aren't really losing anything.)

This seems like a slightly less insidious (and, arguably, less fun) version of a common drinking game from my college: text or shot. You take turns with a random person's phone, composing a text to a person of your choice -- you show the (unsent) message to the owner of the phone and they can either elect to send the message or take a shot.

(As one might imagine, this is the kind of game that grows even better over time.)

Honestly, for $20 you could post whatever you want on my twitter all day long.

Seriously? If the rule includes the fact that I can't post anything before/after to indicate it was part of a game or bet, then there are plenty of things I wouldn't tweet for $20, or a fair bit more. Setting aside work-related issues (that exist for me but maybe not you), would you be happy having people think you are racist, homophobic, or anything else along those lines that would make people think different of you as a person? There's most possibilities to "embarrassing tweet" than just "I eat poo".

Forget embarrassment: there are things you could post on Twitter, like a threat to blow up a school or a government official, that would land heavily armed people at your door to drag you off to prison on felony charges.

So this is what sociopaths do in their spare time. Note to self: auto-reject anything with this person's name attached to it, forever.

is terrible, this idea

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