One of the most persistently popular forms of Internet email lore is the Drinking Game. In it, fans of a particular movie, video game, comic book, television series, book series, or series of hilarious decorated telegrams can combine two things they love : pithy reductionist observations about the thing they love, and getting really, really drunk.
But wait… there is a fatal flaw in the system! Sure, you can giggle your drunken ass off at the Drinking Game of choice once you know all the rules, but what, pray tell, do you use as an excuse for your rampant alcoholism while you are reading the rules in the first place? This is a serious problem, and could lead to such problems as confusion, nervousness, and sobriety.
Well, fear not, intrepid Internet adventurer. We here at the MJB blog (both of me) are here to save you from the perils of momentary non-distraction by providing you with this, the Drinking Game Drinking Game, the Drinking Game you play while reading other Drinking Games.
The rules are simple, and go as follows :
If you found the Drinking Game on your own, take a drink,
If you found the Drinking Game via a popular fan site for the media item in question, take two drinks.
If you found the Drinking Game via the forums on said web site when someone made an obscure reference to said drinking game and you had to Google it to find out what the hell everyone was talking about because nobody would deign to explain it to you, take three drinks.
If you “found” the Drinking Game by following a link sent to you by one of your “friends” who doesn’t remember that you told him you had SEEN this drinking game a million times already, take three drinks.
If you were sent the link to the Drinking Game by one of those helpful older relatives who emails hackneyed Xerox humour to dozens of her relatives who were foolish enough to supply her with an email address and who vaguely recalled you are “into that sort of thing”, and you are, take four drinks.
If, on the other hand, she got her vague idea that you were “into that sort of thing” by overhearing you say how much you hated it with every corpuscle in your bloodstream, finish the bottle.
If the Drinking Game contains genuinely funny and informed insights into to the media item it is based around, take a drink and toast your extraordinary luck.
If it instead contains only fairly obvious insights that would be familiar to any fan, but still gives you the occasional amused chuckle and a warm feeling of connection with other fans who would also get the joke and hence share something in common with your, take two drinks.
If it, sadly, contains only the most blatantly obvious and inane and even somewhat inaccurate insights that any moron who has even heard of the show could make and makes you feel like an idiot for even reading it and makes you want to smack the author with a shovel, take three drinks.
If it, maddeningly, not only contains no insights of any level of wit, and instead contains references that make no sense to anything but the stochastic signal generator of the author’s Four Loko-soaked brain and force you to spend hours researching them on the Internet just to find out in what strange and fell universe they make any sense whatsoever, finish the bottle.
If you are reading the Drinking Game solely for your own amusement and entertainment, take a drink.
If you are reading the Drinking Game because you are looking for funny insights with which to wow and amuse your friends who are also into the same thing, take a drink.
If you are reading said Drinking Game because you want to see if the author’s insights into your favorite media are as awesomely hilarious and LOL-worthy as yours, which of course they WON’T be, because they suck and you RULE, take two drinks.
If you are reading the subject Drinking Game because it is the only way you can experience the warmth of human connection by imagining you have friends, take three drinks. Hell, take my drink too.
If you are reading said Drinking Game with plans to use it in some form that actually involves drinking, finish the bottle and go look for another excuse to drink, you sodden sot.
Well, there you have it, folks. The Internet has once again swallowed its own tail and gone meta. You now have a Drinking Game for Drinking Games. May we all know mercy.