You Just Lost the Game—A Wikipedia Revenge Story
"That Was You?" Yes, and I'm Not Sorry.
No one knows who “The Game’s” first loser was. We know it was circulating in U.K. pub culture, especially around Oxford, in the early 1990s. Others have put its origin in the 1970s, the age of punk rock. Quite possibly, when Hamlet said, “there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” this was Shakespeare’s subtle nod, admiration mixed with rage, to the obscure medieval genius who had discovered it.
I didn’t invent it. The offline social phenomenon had been circulating for at least a decade. I am the one who turned it into an online pandemic meme.
As “The Game” was taught to me in June 2004, there are four rules:
To know of The Game is to play the game. (Sorry.)
To think of The Game is to lose the game.
When (2), you must announce your loss.
When (3), everyone else gets a 30-minute grace period in which it does not cause loss to think about it.
The fourth rule made sense in an offline, synchronous context. It protected conversations from too-frequent interruptions. It gave us the right to shut up about it for half an hour. What I discovered, in the context of these rules, was the power of technological asynchronicity. You could email people at night and cause mass loss in the morning. The world learned that this is the point. So, Rule #4 became obsolete and dropped into obscurity. Today, when you lose, everyone loses—a perfectly pyrrhic defeat.
As I said, I didn’t come up with this. A humble servant, I changed nothing. I cannot call it mine because it is nobody’s, and that is the point. No one wins. No one dominates. It continues.
Why would anyone play this, when nobody has to? I’m still not sure. Why did I turn an offline oddity into an online infohazard? Revenge.
In 2003, I designed a card game called Ambition. I achieved its design target with brutal precision. It’s an excellent game; it was also destined for obscurity. I solved a problem no one asked me to solve.
I was also a frequent editor on Wikipedia. Like any 20-year-old who had invented something cool, I wanted to show it off. I wrote about the card game. Big mistake. I have no idea what Wikipedia editing culture is like in 2025. Back in 2003–06, though, it was a cesspool. The Ambition article was deleted, re-created, re-deleted, re-created. There were edit wars. There were flame wars. I had a stalker—a sad man who created a page accusing me of having about a hundred sock puppets; I confess that three were hits.
The Wikipedia experience did have value, though. It’s one of the places where I learned how to write. I found articles that were rough or incomplete, polished them up, watched others make further improvements, and developed my skill with language. I was never trusted (the Ambition flamewars) by other editors, but my contributions were respected. Even back then, I was fucking good at what I did.
I can’t find the original date, because the article about “The Game” was deleted and re-created so many times. I would guess it was July or August 2004 when I wrote Wikipedia’s first version of the article about “The Game.” Everything I put in it was factually accurate, except this: I represented it as an internet phenomenon. This was a lie—I was making it one. I wrote the initial article well—it sounded like an adult had written it; it sounded official—while keeping it obscure enough to avoid a deletion debate until I had built enough support to survive one. All said, I didn’t expect to go far. A total reach of 500—a limited, but significant, defeat of my tormentors—would have sufficed.
The article was killed, then resurrected. Killed, then resurrected. I knew “The Game” wouldn’t catch on if it was seen as “mine”—and it truly wasn’t mine—so I worked in the shadows, helping other people’s contributions shine. In 2005, Wikipedia editor Clydeiii joined in and—credit where due—did more to defend and expand “The Game” than I. Soon, lose-the-game websites popped up everywhere to convince the world that, yes, this was a real thing. Circular references were made. Sock puppets were used. Wikipedia deletionists found themselves fighting the Streisand Effect, because every time they tried to kill “The Game,” the keep/delete debate drew more attention and outside sympathy. The collective will for this thing to survive grew stronger and stronger. At some point, it became “notable” by Wikipedia’s definition; then it became inevitable; then it became unstoppable.
March 2008 saw “The Game” win recognition by xkcd. In 2009, 4chan users rigged the Time 100 poll to make the entire world lose. The rest is history. Again, I did not invent this, nor add anything to it. I am not even the first person to mention it online. I’m the first one who made it stick.
Decades later, “The Game” reminds me of a more hopeful Internet in a more hopeful time. In the 2000s, an idea with no clear originator willed itself into existence, conquered the world harmlessly, then melted back into obscurity. Dozens of people all over the world worked together to craft an online social exploit. Every day it survived on Wikipedia was borrowed time, but it thrived. It was the last “thing about nothing” before people started getting hurt by things about nothing. Was there a warning in “The Game”—a harbinger of today’s capitalist disinformation apocalypse? Maybe, but we didn’t see it that way at the time. “The Game” stands in memory as the last time online it was fun to lose.
Legend.