For those of you who are not familiar with the phenomenon known simply as The Game: welcome! You’re in for a treat.

For those of you who are familiar with It: HA HA! You lose! Pass it on.

The Game is one of those things that you can easily spend too much time thinking about, but you really shouldn’t if you ever want to win It. Put simply, now you know of The Game, you are also now playing It.  In fact, you’ve been playing It ever since you were born, and possibly even before that (if you believe in that sort of thing).

To know The Game is to play The Game. To remember you are playing The Game, however, is to LOSE.

So long as you forget about The Game’s existence, you will not lose. This means that so long as you forget you’re playing, you don’t have to do anything but continue to play. As soon as you remember you’re playing (either on your own, or through being reminded by an object or someone telling you), you lose and are duty-bound to inform everyone around you that they, too, have lost. If someone just told you, you’re allowed to swear at them. Go on, it’ll make you feel better.

So to those of you reading this who, until a few minutes ago, were boasting a 20+ year winning streak I say: unlucky.

Maybe you’ll do better next time.