Most instances of human social interaction, e.g. language, the market economy, Friday night at the local meat market, the R3 comments section, etc., can be thought of as games, wherein "players" compete or cooperate to earn "payoffs" such as money, romantic attention, status, "street cred," or unbridled hilarity, endless bons mots and witty good cheer. Two basic types of move a player can make in a social game are a "pass," which creates the opportunity for one or more other players to make their own moves, or a "block," which limits other players' moves, or may even end the game. Using the R3 comments section as a familiar example, open-ended comments that encourage further comments are passes. Comments that discourage other posters from commenting or attack the game itself, e.g "whatever," "meh," "stupid," or "TLDR," are blocks. "Referee" comments, like ":|" or "uh..." fall somewhere in between, and usually indicate that two or more players aren't "on the same page," i.e. playing with a mutually comprehensible or satisfactory set of rules. In a zero-sum game like hockey, blocking is part of what makes the game challenging and fun. In the non-zero-sum game of blogging, passes are good, referee comments are sometimes necessary, and full-out blocks are usually bad, except in intentionally different sub-games (like "Can you fight?"), because they tend to hurt the game itself. To conclude this post (which by now is breaking one of R3's most sacred rules, the Rule of Economy), game theory suggests that R3 is (usually) a pretty good game. RATING: 93%
(Image of the "Serpinski Penis Game" from xkcd.com.)
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