One million playing Pokemon

There have been very few instances in which I have cried purely to do joy or laughter.  One instance that faintly rings a bell and most recently has been watching Barney destroy Guile on saltybet.  In one moment, I saw Barney losing ferociously to a overbearing, "sonic boom" giving Guile, but then the screen goes black, the "I love you" song pops up with Barney's face in the foreground, the screen goes black again, and the next thing you see is Guile...dead with no health on the ground.  Why that is funny?  Because once a person has spent over 12 hours in a computer lab doing the most tedious data crunching and writing, anything seems funny to death.

This time was Twitch Plays Pokemon, where everyone signed up to twitch can write down an action on the chat box, and then that action will be displayed an enacted by the main character in the game Pokemon Red.  So if I signed up and typed in "down", sometime in the future, the character will see I wrote down and then move down.  Now, imagine that, but with everyone around the world typing in responses like that.  Now imagine that constantly going, 24 hours a day.  Right now, the game has been going on for about 5-6 days, and they have received 4 or 5 of the 8 badges.  They are right now in Saffron city doing something insane.  However, the concept of watching hundreds of people with no communication with each other shouting out orders to a single character was just too funny.  Watching the chaos of a million players playing a single player game like stock market junkees on Wall street yelling out orders.   The idea was hilarious and seeing the commands streaming down endlessly in a near chaotic pattern, but simultaneously organized enough to not only bypass the initial part of the game, but succeeding in winning 5 badges throughout the game was mind blowing.  It brings along this idea that radiolab once brought up, which was that the group might be more intelligent than the single being.  That might not be true in this case as it might take a single person one day to complete a game that is taking a million nearly 6 days to do, but the fact that any progresss has been achieved is amazing.

To this minute, I am still laughing at the consistencies, moments, and actions that occur in this game.  It still surprises me, and still puts me on edge.  Thank you.