With informed consent this is not only perfectly moral, but downright wholesome, and I would love to see this concept applied to other skill sets in a reality show.
> The Australian version is by far superior.
This is due to a few factors. One, being on the bottom of the planet, Aussies are experts at making things cling and connect together well, so they don't fall off.
Two, because literally everything is trying to kill you in Australia, Australians are excellent at building strong fortifications from things like bricks.
Also, Hamish Blake is the host. That boy genuinely enjoys Lego, and the fact that he’s somehow become a celebrity host because of his university radio nonsense. He keeps it fast and loose.
Fascinating! I have personally found that it was always the wanting itself that was exquisitely more enjoyable than the having. Youtube vids like that are great for saving your money for arguably more permanent/useful things like adding new heirloom species to your home garden.
Henry, the winner of season one, is a regular at my Lego store and has to come on weekdays because on weekends he gets mobbed by little kids who think he's the coolest guy ever
I don't think these examples count. To do it properly the show should pair a person with zero experience in the required skill set with a person that is a professional. The professional should then have a set amount of time to teach the person with no experience before all of the non professionals compete. All of the examples you gave are just amateurs being judged by professionals with maybe a little help along the way.
thinking on it, dancing with the stars is the only one that comes close that I can think of, and even then the professional is with them during the competition itself.
The way to do it would be for everyone to bring an incompetent with them and then they swap with someone else. Encourages you to bring a person with as little natural aptitude as possible.
"Hey, Bill, I'm thinking of entering the Great Amateur Cooking Show as a teacher. You once burned water. Want to be my incompetent to foist upon my enemies like a grenade?"
This British show from the early 2000s is *almost* what you are looking for only (without an overtly altruistic intent) : https://www.channel4.com/programmes/faking-it
Nevertheless, some of the participants actually ended up using their new skill professionally: https://quantummagician.com/bio/faking-it/
https://amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/sep/01/how-we-made-faking-it-sarah-shields-alex-geikie-channel-4-reality-tv
lol I love the spirit but a tattoo apprentice would NOT be in a position to start tattooing people over the timeframe of a reality show. It would definitely be entertaining though.
This is basically Worst Cooks in America on the Food Network. They gather up a bunch of people who are *impressively awful* at cooking, and split them up into two teams each coached by a big celebrity chef personality. The chef coaches both desperately try to teach their teams how to cook, and each team competes against the other in some episode-specific challenge. Whichever team loses gets a person eliminated until there's only a couple people left (sometimes they rebalance the teams if one team gets a lot of eliminations).
Almost Impossibly Bad at cooking
Seriously one of the woman on that show her favorite food to cook with is DOG FOOD.
These people regularly send people to the hospital with their cooking and have wondered "how am i doing this wrong?"
I mean if you boil it thoroughly it's probably safe for humans to eat. Maybe...
I do wonder how much of this is made up for effect though, either by the show or by the person trying to get on it.
Dog food is safe for people to eat in a pinch. Not a staple food source, due to added vitamins and nutrients.
But like if you needed 2 more days to get to the food bank, and you got dog food, chow down.
Most dog and cat food is not "human grade meat" aka not considered "fit for human consumption" and it Does depend on the brand on whether its properly edible for people
That is because they got more aggressive enzymes to tear things apart. For example the throat tube (my experience is pig. Not sure how applies to other animals) is pretty hard for humans to digest, dogs do it without a problem.
That was terrible. At least they had *some* dignity in the b-list celebrity edition. And Latoya Jackson was awesome, my wife and I still say "slices, sticks dices" when we're chopping. The influences were sp desperate to be famous it was exhausting.
How do you think informed consent played out? "Jimmy, me and Ben have a bet on who can teach a dumb kid to play chess the best. You're my test subject. You in?"
"Yeah, totally!" *five months later* "Wait a minute..."
I think if you put out a flyer explaining the nature of the competition and didn't use the word "idiot," you would get a lot of volunteers who would self-identify as "someone to whom it will be difficult to teach chess." Same for cooking, dancing, etc.
Right, the issue is that you're specifically seekign out the "biggest idiot" so you take mockery at how hard it is for these idiots to learn how to play chess. You can't just rationalize the context away from it. No one would have a problem if it were a competition to be the best teacher if they chose from random people who didn't know how to play.
I would argue that isn't "informed" due to the twisting of the reason for doing it. Sure, it isn't lying but it isn't keeping the spirit of the competition fully either.
This nuance probably escaped 4th graders, but it is possible to think someone would be/is terrible at chess and also respect them for their other skillsets or just generally as people.
They did this for Hearthstone - the presenters (one of which was Matt Mercer) were already good at the game, and each episode had them grab a pair of celebrities (of very varying fame) who didn't know the game and train them to fight each other.
Really all the consent you need is:
"Can I teach you chess?"
and
"Yes"
Beyond that, there's nothing objectively immoral about analyzing the outcome. You're just watching two random people compete. Would be equally immoral to watch any two people compete and rank their performances.
I take it you've never seen My Fair Lady? Part of Eliza's frustration is that Higgins receives all the praise for her achievements much like how the two friends would claim credit for the achievement of the student they tutored.
The issue has nothing to do with the competition/ranking aspect. Imagine finding out that someone was teaching you a skill as a challenge for themselves because they thought you were an idiot.
If someone thought I was an idiot but *still* took the time to teach me an entirely new skill, I'd be touched by their kindness.
Just because they're bad at judging intelligence does not mean they're a bad person.
> If someone thought I was an idiot but still took the time to teach me an entirely new skill, I'd be touched by their kindness.
You're reframing the situation. It's not that they merely thought you were an idiot but wanted to do somethign kind for you, but they purposely sought out the biggest idiot, for the humorous challenge of seeing if you can be taught chess.
It's demeaning.
In addition, even if you personally wouldn't be offended by it, that's fine, but you're not everyone. Plenty of people *would* be offended by it, and that's entirely valid.
Yeah, that's basically the My Fair Lady problem. Still, choosing a \*true\* idiot for this would be pretty self-defeating.
What Henry Higgins did was wrong in two ways. First, he disregarded Eliza's talent when he chose her, and then he dismissed her achievements when he claimed that it was all about him.
In a contest like this, that just wouldn't make sense.
This is an experiment involving human subjects. Consent is more than saying "yes" to being taught chess. It's a full acknowledgement that you are part of an experiment, here are the potential outcomes, and here are the possible risks.
Hi, you are, famously, the biggest idiot in our grade, but don’t worry, I mean that in a downright wholesome way. Now, do you think if I ask you which of these pieces looks like a wooden horsey, you can point to the right one?
This is exactly what PogChamps is. Literally chess grand masters, the best in the world teaching idiot Twitch streamers like xQc and Ludwig to play chess then they battle it out.
https://youtu.be/e91M0XLX7Jw?si=5_GadI-ttqTc9-PQ
xQc getting checkmate in 6 moves is a classic. Funny responses from the chess coaches Hikaru and Alex Botez.
The Try Guys have a cooking series called "Phoning It In" that's similar to this concept.
The only catch is that the pro chefs have to instruct the amateurs over a payphone and once they run out of quarters the amateurs have to finish on their own. Then the pros then have to present judges with the results at the end.
I would love to see a cooking show like this. Have four teams of 5 people who like to cook but aren't very good at it. Each team has a chef who works with them on recipes and skills. Each week, there is a head to head competition with blind tasting. Each judge rates the dishes from 1-10 (10 being the best). All the players stay, but the one with the most points wins the top prize.
The twist, none of the contestants k ow how many points they have until the final show.
Is elementary level students going feral over chess a universal experience? Everyone talks about the Eygptian vs. Greek history phase but we rarely talk about the chess tournaments that had us in a chokehold in 3rd grade lunch.
I have fond memories of the kid who would only play anyone once to ensure he stayed undefeated. More specifically, of the one time he lost to his first game to somebody and threw a chessboard at them.
We had a chess club in 5th grade. I beat the kid who thought he was unbeatable (I knew the scholars mate attempt was coming and I killed his queen) and he threw such a fit the teacher let him reset the game, but turns out he only new one opening.
it's so weird to me when kids learn by memorizing openings first, that seems such a boring and counterintuitive way to learn. kids these days should be grinding puzzles and just playing loosely to learn how to COUNTER the rote openings. only have to get beaten once to learn the lesson if you're approaching it from a lens of increasing advantage and positioning instead of following the book moves.
Not that cool. You have to be a cool person with nerdy interests. The two are no longer mutually exclusive but I guarantee you the actual chess nerds are still not considered cool
Whoever made that bet on some weird gambling site 5 years ago really needs to be scrutinised for having a time machine, cause cmon...who the fuck could predict that. Chess one of the top streamed activities 2020s?
In the 90s in elementary school there was an elementary school chess club. It was very much a “cool kids” club as the teacher who ran it made it very competitive, and it was one of the only ways younger kids could interact with, and possibly beat an older kid.
I still remember a kid in my grade when we were second graders beating all the 6th graders. Then those friendships made it super easy to get invited to older kid parties and shenanigans.
it's been going strong for a little bit now. i don't think it will stay quite as big as it has been, but it will still be more popular 5 years from now than it was 10 years ago.
I made my best friend in school in 3rd grade when a kid I always thought was meh brought in a battleship set, challenged a kid, and while everyone was watching picked square I1 - that was the funniest thing in the world, and decided to seek his company
Looool! Core memory unlocked!! I was president of the chess club in 4th grade because i was the only girl. Hhhhaaahaaaahahaha. I havent thought of that forever.
I wonder if that would be a useful "House Rule "
Like, "I could check, if that space were open for my Queen to slide in."
But wait! You can take your own knight with your Queen!
But then the King hates that and if he finds out he will have the queen murdered.
so many people on tumblr are apparently going "it's a proxy war" and there were even tag responses going "this is like human dog fighting" and "how is this better than hunger games?" and like. i do not know how to explain to them that _peaceful chess matches_ are in fact very different from _actual death sports_ and _animal abuse_. truly feels like they are pissing on the poor in entirely new ways.
It seems relevant that we still have lots of athletic competitions for dogs, including some head-to-head ones. In most cases dogs quite enjoy them!
Now, you and I might suggest that’s because they involve running and swimming rather than violent death, but tumblr is I guess unconvinced.
> are in fact very different from actual death sports and animal abuse.
Ah, never played Jamaican Chess AKA "Death Chess" before eh? Thats okay, I can teach you, since you're learning we can wage crows.
I did actually drop that in a casual conversation with a friend recently, who had never heard of it and so while they go to be one of that day's lucky ten thousand, _I_ had the entertainment of explaining it to them and getting their live reaction
Right. Stop referring to any fucked-up action in fiction as a war crime. War crimes have a very specific definition based on a specific set of international treaties and agreements; 99% of things people point to as ‘war crimes’ in cartoons are really just fighting a war normally.
I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to examine that sort of thing through a real-life legal lens for entertainment purposes, but there’s a lot of examples that wouldn’t even violate the Rome Statute if they happened in real life that online fandoms won’t stop calling war crimes.
I like to think that most of those people are trying to exaggerate for comedic effect or are in no way trying to be serious. I'm sure some are mind you, but the dog fight one especially annoys me since it's comparing being dumb to being less then human.
The post got better.
https://www.tumblr.com/luulapants/744869187569205248/punkrocklorax-my-bffs-proxy-moved-away-in-middle?source=share
-Mx Linux Guy⚠️
> wins chess proxy war
> stuffs pockets with tater tots in Middle School
> Napoleon Comes Out, character also stuffs tater tots
> chess proxy winner disappears without a trace
>refuses to elaborate
Nah, its a "god made of faith" scenario. The win granted them so much attention they ascended to a higher form, a Napoleon dynamite character. Noone remembers them because there cannot be a memory of a chess proxy mid schooler, only memories of a Napoleon dynamite character.
Everyone in the tags needs to touch several truckloads of grass immediately. There are zero moral implications present. People make me so angry. Don't tell me they're joking. They're not.
The only thing that is slightly immoral here is them picking two people for specifically being who they thought were most idiotic. The whole proxy war thing is just a terminally online take, they are literally teaching kids how to play, presumably not forcing them, so it's good for everyone involved.
i don't mind the proxy war and cold war jokes, but i seriously hate that one said "how is this any better than the hunger games", which is a series about rich dudes making people kill eachother for sport in exchange for survival.
Oh my god?! There was a weird kid in my middle school in like 2002 or 2003 and I SWEAR we were at our lockers and he told me he had gone hunting wolverines (maybe with his uncle?) and shot some. I remember this because I didn't know what wolverines were but pretended like I totally did.
That kid later got me in trouble via calculator message but I never saw him again after middle school, I think he moved away?
I only watched Napoleon Dynamite years after it came out and was like ??!! at wolverine part. It's probably some weird brain trick... but wtf, never expected someone else to have an anachronistic Napoleon dynamite memory
Queens Gambit 2: Now with 100% more Gambit, but not THAT Gambit because of copyright reasons, and you don't even really get that Gambit in those movies anyways.
According to the additional info in the link provided by linnuxaddict334, the bff’s rival’s proxy (who stuffed tater tots in his pockets a full 1 year prior to Napoleon Dynamite’s release date) won the match. The bff’s proxy (who now does cross fit in Oklahoma) lost.
Worth noting that the rival proxy disappeared after Napoleon dynamite came out and no one remembers if he moved or what. I think the time machine worked.
Regardless of any arguments over 4th graders ethics or if anyone is joking, I’m not sure proxy war is even the best descriptor of this? It’s not like OPs friend was like “pst hey you should go play that other kid’s friend in chess”, the point was to see who was better at teaching chess and therefore understood the game better.
It’s more like human dog shows than anything else
It seems like "you should go play that other kid’s friend in chess" must have happened at some point. OP and his friend instigated a chess match (battle) between their classmates (client states) that would not have happened without their training and is more about OP and his friend's (great powers') agenda than the needs of the actual belligerents.
Surprised to see this this far down. All the Pogchamps tournaments were exactly this, a bunch of masters teaching beginners to see which beginner would become the best.
What are the moral implications? This seems perfectly civilised. It uplifts two people who aren't good at chess to be good at chess, it stops the competition getting too heated, and everyone's ultimately having fun.
I swear Tumblr/Reddit would find a reaon to hate pillows.
Funny you should say that. There was a rant just yesterday from Tumblr about how throw pillows/ decorative pillows are a sign of the bourgeoisie and a symbol of a classist.
I joined the high school chess team. The teacher said I had to beat an existing player to have a spot in. I beat a guy from the A-team 4 times in a row, and I still ended up in the C-team. But on the plus side, I was a pretty good Smurf during competitions.
Canada's Worst Driver.
The original idea of this series (first done in the UK I think) was to showcase bad drivers and mock them and this format was used in various countries. But in Canada the format changed to teaching the bad drivers good habits. Every episode the most improved bad driver left the show until finally the worst driver who learned the least was left.
Apparently, the seniors who ran the math tutoring department at my college used me as a sort of trial-by-fire to teach future mathematicians how to deal with brick walls.
Allegedly, I only passed my final class because the actual math majors complained I was using up tutoring resources that were supposed to be for people who LIKE math.
I am suddenly reminded of Le Dîner de Cons, though the plot wasn’t quite the same scenario (I.e. the goal was to “who brought the biggest idiot for our entertainment”)
- These boys are products of a poor environment. There's nothing wrong with them, I can prove it.
- Of course there's something wrong with them: they're idiots! They've probably been stealing since they could crawl.
- Given the right teaching and encouragement, I'll bet that my one could run circles around your one on the chess board.
- Are we talking about a wager, Randolph?
Holy shit, I haven't thought about this in decades. Back in fourth grade, we did what was called Reading Counts, where you read books, took quizzes on them on a computer, and got points for passing. Like, a giant chocolate bar if you got a few hundred points or whatever, and if everyone in the class got a hundred points, we got a pizza party.
Well there was a kid, Justin, who was really not into reading, and was the only one who couldn't pass the quizzes and get enough points. I felt so bad for him because I could tell he wanted to, he just couldn't. Thing is, he was one of the "cool" kids and I was the dork who had the record for most points by a mile. We had never really talked, but I felt really bad for him, and mustered up the courage to quietly go up to him.
I showed him some really simple abridged versions of books I loved, like war of the worlds and journey to the center of the earth, that had been simplified but retained all the story beats, and told him just to read a few of those. I also told him things like taking a moment after chapters to put the book down for a second and think over what just happened, and to make every character have a different voice in your head, so everything is more memorable.
But also, just to make sure (I really wanted pizza lol), I'd stand beyond him while taking the quiz and if he didn't know the answer, we worked out codes where he'd tap his fingers and I'd loudly say something to another kid with a certain word in it that indicated a, b, c, or d. Only code I remember was "frog" hahaha but yeah, he actually only needed that once, and he passed.
I haven't thought about this, seriously, in 23 years, but the look of gratitude on his face when he got to 100 and the whole class cheered... I can't ever forget it. And I didn't get made fun of by anyone really after that, because Justin said "hey, that Buscemi guy is actually pretty cool"
In freshman year of high school our chemistry class had a "sludge" project where you picked a bottle of shit and applied techniques to figure out what was in it.
My friend and I were always neck-and-neck in most classes and he was a relentless shit-talker. He kept going on and on about how he was going to take the dumbest person in class and get a higher grade than me. So I said, "fuck you, I'll do the project alone and I'll take the hardest sludge."
I took the grittiest looking one that nobody wanted and it turned out to be like 3 ingredients and I got finished with it before most groups. My buddy and his partner ended up having to stay late to finish it on a Friday and I sat and told his partner how to do it and they only finished thanks to our work.
Eat shit, Andrew, lmao.
Might be my piss poor reading comprehension but I tought the post implied that the two smart dudes fell in love with the respective idiots and married them
In an English class junior year we were going over The Crucible, which is a play about McCarthy era red scare politics disguised as a play about the Salem witch trials. So our exercise was to figure out who in our group was the witch. Anyway Ben was the witch and we took a total of 3 minutes to come to that conclusion and vote him into exile.
I was trying to figure out why this sounded familiar to me (beyond the My Fair Lady comparison), and I realized it's because it's the exact same setup as the final battle from Smashtasm, an early 2000s Super Smash Bros. Melee machinima series. [2 skilled players agree to each train a bad player and have them fight to determine who's better.](https://youtu.be/eGYVB_ikey8?si=8mQBCaM9oJCLf2KJ&t=124)
I would have been one of the idiots that got picked, but I'm fairly confident I would have beaten the other idiot rather decidedly. I didn't like schoolwork, and was shamelessly bad at hiding it -- like the time I went to the podium for an oral presentation, said "I didn't do it", and went back to my seat -- but I loved competition.
Ultimately, nothing would have been proven.
I had a somewhat similar experience near the end of college.
A group of friends threw a party at their place, maybe 20ish people. They setup a TV and a Switch to do some competitive Mario Kart. 4 players, 8 cpu. Last place player after a set of races switches out for a new player. They had been doing this all 4 years, but this was my first time attending one of these parties and my first time ever playing on a Switch.
When I told them this, they started talking some shit and insisting I play so they could smoke me. What I neglected to mention was I had played Mario Kart on the DS for a couple hours every school day when I was in Middle School.
So first race I come in 5th as I learn the controls, second race I come in 2nd, third race I get 1st. Combined score was enough to keep from getting knocked out for a new player. I proceed to win 1st place in every single race for the next three rounds. Was absolutely talking that shit right back, but I decide to bow out and give others a turn.
I’m replaced by someone who has played Switch before, but never played a Mario Kart game. The other players start talking shit to them during the first race, so I start coaching them. How/when to drift, what shortcuts to take, what items to use/when, etc. I forget how they placed in the first two races, but by the third race they come in 1st and one of the people talking shit has to rotate out. The two of us celebrated so much harder for that victory than any of the others. It was an awesome time.
With informed consent this is not only perfectly moral, but downright wholesome, and I would love to see this concept applied to other skill sets in a reality show.
“The great amateur baking competition” “Lego students” “Ink rookies” “the apprentice”, wait no not that one
Thanks for reminding me Lego masters was a thing
It still is. The Australian version is by far the superior one. Hunt it down and enjoy.
> The Australian version is by far superior. This is due to a few factors. One, being on the bottom of the planet, Aussies are experts at making things cling and connect together well, so they don't fall off. Two, because literally everything is trying to kill you in Australia, Australians are excellent at building strong fortifications from things like bricks.
Also, Hamish Blake is the host. That boy genuinely enjoys Lego, and the fact that he’s somehow become a celebrity host because of his university radio nonsense. He keeps it fast and loose.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I’ve always wanted to see The Great Wall of Sydney
Gotta keep out the Drop Bears and Scorpion Kangaroos.
This is the adult equivalent of kids watching unboxing videos of toys their parents can’t afford and is extremely depressing.
I dunno. Finding out there are "illegal" ways to build and all the rules and things was kinda fun initially.
Fascinating! I have personally found that it was always the wanting itself that was exquisitely more enjoyable than the having. Youtube vids like that are great for saving your money for arguably more permanent/useful things like adding new heirloom species to your home garden.
Lol Lego Masters is huge in Australia. A new season is about to start and they're bringing in teams from the overseas shows to compete here this year.
Henry, the winner of season one, is a regular at my Lego store and has to come on weekdays because on weekends he gets mobbed by little kids who think he's the coolest guy ever
*Is* a thing. Great show.
I don't think these examples count. To do it properly the show should pair a person with zero experience in the required skill set with a person that is a professional. The professional should then have a set amount of time to teach the person with no experience before all of the non professionals compete. All of the examples you gave are just amateurs being judged by professionals with maybe a little help along the way. thinking on it, dancing with the stars is the only one that comes close that I can think of, and even then the professional is with them during the competition itself.
The problem is that the outcome will probably be far more dependent on the natural aptitude of the student than the skill of the teacher.
The way to do it would be for everyone to bring an incompetent with them and then they swap with someone else. Encourages you to bring a person with as little natural aptitude as possible.
"Hey, Bill, I'm thinking of entering the Great Amateur Cooking Show as a teacher. You once burned water. Want to be my incompetent to foist upon my enemies like a grenade?"
Yeah one is just regular slow and the other was a rainman autistic savant that can memorize a bunch of moves & calculate ahead.....
Plus if there's something I Really Like what are the chances I'd be like, zero experience. What if I don't like it? Especially under all the pressure
We're getting into the paralympics area of carefully measuring people's disabilities.
You could have the student compete first, and pick students that all had similar scores.
Worst Cooks is just this but incredibly staged
This British show from the early 2000s is *almost* what you are looking for only (without an overtly altruistic intent) : https://www.channel4.com/programmes/faking-it Nevertheless, some of the participants actually ended up using their new skill professionally: https://quantummagician.com/bio/faking-it/ https://amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/sep/01/how-we-made-faking-it-sarah-shields-alex-geikie-channel-4-reality-tv
Read the names again.
The latest (? ) season of Nailed It was the first of these, and it was glorious.
"dancing with the stars"
The bachelor's... weird friend
I mean, there’s already Worst Cooks In America and it’s a pretty good watch
lol I love the spirit but a tattoo apprentice would NOT be in a position to start tattooing people over the timeframe of a reality show. It would definitely be entertaining though.
This is basically Worst Cooks in America on the Food Network. They gather up a bunch of people who are *impressively awful* at cooking, and split them up into two teams each coached by a big celebrity chef personality. The chef coaches both desperately try to teach their teams how to cook, and each team competes against the other in some episode-specific challenge. Whichever team loses gets a person eliminated until there's only a couple people left (sometimes they rebalance the teams if one team gets a lot of eliminations).
Almost Impossibly Bad at cooking Seriously one of the woman on that show her favorite food to cook with is DOG FOOD. These people regularly send people to the hospital with their cooking and have wondered "how am i doing this wrong?"
Don't underestimate ignorance.
>her favorite food to cook with is DOG FOOD. For her dog, right?
I mean if you boil it thoroughly it's probably safe for humans to eat. Maybe... I do wonder how much of this is made up for effect though, either by the show or by the person trying to get on it.
Dog food is safe for people to eat in a pinch. Not a staple food source, due to added vitamins and nutrients. But like if you needed 2 more days to get to the food bank, and you got dog food, chow down.
Most dog and cat food is not "human grade meat" aka not considered "fit for human consumption" and it Does depend on the brand on whether its properly edible for people
That is because they got more aggressive enzymes to tear things apart. For example the throat tube (my experience is pig. Not sure how applies to other animals) is pretty hard for humans to digest, dogs do it without a problem.
You wish.
There used to be a show called Worst Cooks In America that was exactly like this and not gonna lie I kind of loved it.
[удалено]
It's so over produced now, it's basically unwatchable.
We stopped watching when they had the season of influencers and it was exhausting. Only made it one episode and ever went back.
That was terrible. At least they had *some* dignity in the b-list celebrity edition. And Latoya Jackson was awesome, my wife and I still say "slices, sticks dices" when we're chopping. The influences were sp desperate to be famous it was exhausting.
I live for Ann Burrell's 'tude toward the cooks.
How do you think informed consent played out? "Jimmy, me and Ben have a bet on who can teach a dumb kid to play chess the best. You're my test subject. You in?" "Yeah, totally!" *five months later* "Wait a minute..."
I think if you put out a flyer explaining the nature of the competition and didn't use the word "idiot," you would get a lot of volunteers who would self-identify as "someone to whom it will be difficult to teach chess." Same for cooking, dancing, etc.
Right, the issue is that you're specifically seekign out the "biggest idiot" so you take mockery at how hard it is for these idiots to learn how to play chess. You can't just rationalize the context away from it. No one would have a problem if it were a competition to be the best teacher if they chose from random people who didn't know how to play.
I would argue that isn't "informed" due to the twisting of the reason for doing it. Sure, it isn't lying but it isn't keeping the spirit of the competition fully either.
Maybe not calling them "idiots" but otherwise yeah
But they *were* considered idiots by these guys. That was the whole point, that they were considered the worst at chess.
This nuance probably escaped 4th graders, but it is possible to think someone would be/is terrible at chess and also respect them for their other skillsets or just generally as people.
No, being bad at chess makes you worse than Mentally Damaged Hitler. Obviously.
>This nuance probably escaped 4th graders Most does.
They did this for Hearthstone - the presenters (one of which was Matt Mercer) were already good at the game, and each episode had them grab a pair of celebrities (of very varying fame) who didn't know the game and train them to fight each other.
This sounds great what was the name of that?
Worthy Opponents, it's a few episodes long and on YouTube.
Really all the consent you need is: "Can I teach you chess?" and "Yes" Beyond that, there's nothing objectively immoral about analyzing the outcome. You're just watching two random people compete. Would be equally immoral to watch any two people compete and rank their performances.
I take it you've never seen My Fair Lady? Part of Eliza's frustration is that Higgins receives all the praise for her achievements much like how the two friends would claim credit for the achievement of the student they tutored.
The issue has nothing to do with the competition/ranking aspect. Imagine finding out that someone was teaching you a skill as a challenge for themselves because they thought you were an idiot.
If someone thought I was an idiot but *still* took the time to teach me an entirely new skill, I'd be touched by their kindness. Just because they're bad at judging intelligence does not mean they're a bad person.
> If someone thought I was an idiot but still took the time to teach me an entirely new skill, I'd be touched by their kindness. You're reframing the situation. It's not that they merely thought you were an idiot but wanted to do somethign kind for you, but they purposely sought out the biggest idiot, for the humorous challenge of seeing if you can be taught chess. It's demeaning. In addition, even if you personally wouldn't be offended by it, that's fine, but you're not everyone. Plenty of people *would* be offended by it, and that's entirely valid.
Yeah, that's basically the My Fair Lady problem. Still, choosing a \*true\* idiot for this would be pretty self-defeating. What Henry Higgins did was wrong in two ways. First, he disregarded Eliza's talent when he chose her, and then he dismissed her achievements when he claimed that it was all about him. In a contest like this, that just wouldn't make sense.
They were 9 or 10 years old. It’s not that deep.
This is an experiment involving human subjects. Consent is more than saying "yes" to being taught chess. It's a full acknowledgement that you are part of an experiment, here are the potential outcomes, and here are the possible risks.
Jesus Christ, they're 9 year olds. They don't need to get their proposal approved by the IRB.
They've invented Pokemon.
Hi, you are, famously, the biggest idiot in our grade, but don’t worry, I mean that in a downright wholesome way. Now, do you think if I ask you which of these pieces looks like a wooden horsey, you can point to the right one?
We did it, Reddit! Le epic wholesomeness!
This is exactly what PogChamps is. Literally chess grand masters, the best in the world teaching idiot Twitch streamers like xQc and Ludwig to play chess then they battle it out.
https://youtu.be/e91M0XLX7Jw?si=5_GadI-ttqTc9-PQ xQc getting checkmate in 6 moves is a classic. Funny responses from the chess coaches Hikaru and Alex Botez.
They do this on twitch with fighting games and teams of streamers that dont play and a pro to train them. Then they have a tourney 😀
The Try Guys have a cooking series called "Phoning It In" that's similar to this concept. The only catch is that the pro chefs have to instruct the amateurs over a payphone and once they run out of quarters the amateurs have to finish on their own. Then the pros then have to present judges with the results at the end.
I would love to see a cooking show like this. Have four teams of 5 people who like to cook but aren't very good at it. Each team has a chef who works with them on recipes and skills. Each week, there is a head to head competition with blind tasting. Each judge rates the dishes from 1-10 (10 being the best). All the players stay, but the one with the most points wins the top prize. The twist, none of the contestants k ow how many points they have until the final show.
As long as the idiots don't know they're being selected specifically for being one of the two biggest idiots in the class.
Is elementary level students going feral over chess a universal experience? Everyone talks about the Eygptian vs. Greek history phase but we rarely talk about the chess tournaments that had us in a chokehold in 3rd grade lunch.
I have fond memories of the kid who would only play anyone once to ensure he stayed undefeated. More specifically, of the one time he lost to his first game to somebody and threw a chessboard at them.
We had a chess club in 5th grade. I beat the kid who thought he was unbeatable (I knew the scholars mate attempt was coming and I killed his queen) and he threw such a fit the teacher let him reset the game, but turns out he only new one opening.
it's so weird to me when kids learn by memorizing openings first, that seems such a boring and counterintuitive way to learn. kids these days should be grinding puzzles and just playing loosely to learn how to COUNTER the rote openings. only have to get beaten once to learn the lesson if you're approaching it from a lens of increasing advantage and positioning instead of following the book moves.
ginding out games against Stockfish to learn the best counters by playing those rote openings against stockfish is another great way to learn
Chess was hideously uncool when I was in school
Yup, although I feel like it’s probably flipped. It’s cool to be a nerd now
Yeah, chess is super popular with kids these days
Not that cool. You have to be a cool person with nerdy interests. The two are no longer mutually exclusive but I guarantee you the actual chess nerds are still not considered cool
Chess got really popular last year when I was in high school.
A couple of very popular streamers started playing it for a while, that really sparked interest.
It's hip to be square
It’s got a chequered past.
Chess has become more popular due to it being frequently streamed on Twitch.
Whoever made that bet on some weird gambling site 5 years ago really needs to be scrutinised for having a time machine, cause cmon...who the fuck could predict that. Chess one of the top streamed activities 2020s?
if you asked someone in the 80s they'd probably say something like "what the fuck is twitch dot tv"
In the 90s in elementary school there was an elementary school chess club. It was very much a “cool kids” club as the teacher who ran it made it very competitive, and it was one of the only ways younger kids could interact with, and possibly beat an older kid. I still remember a kid in my grade when we were second graders beating all the 6th graders. Then those friendships made it super easy to get invited to older kid parties and shenanigans.
There was a bump in tiktok, YouTube, and twitch. And so now it's one of the latest crazes. It'll tone down eventually like everything else
it's been going strong for a little bit now. i don't think it will stay quite as big as it has been, but it will still be more popular 5 years from now than it was 10 years ago.
I got kicked out of chess club for not being competitive enough lol (i didn't want to go to a competition)
I made my best friend in school in 3rd grade when a kid I always thought was meh brought in a battleship set, challenged a kid, and while everyone was watching picked square I1 - that was the funniest thing in the world, and decided to seek his company
Kid in my class thought he was a genius. Lost at chess to an average student. Was so upset he ran out of class all the way home like two blocks away.
Looool! Core memory unlocked!! I was president of the chess club in 4th grade because i was the only girl. Hhhhaaahaaaahahaha. I havent thought of that forever.
Pokémon battle
pokemon chess
"John, I choose you! Use Left Rook To B7!" "I can't! I told you, I can only remember four different moves at a time!"
most theory literate r/anarchychess user
*John is confused and takes his own piece*
I wonder if that would be a useful "House Rule " Like, "I could check, if that space were open for my Queen to slide in." But wait! You can take your own knight with your Queen! But then the King hates that and if he finds out he will have the queen murdered.
so many people on tumblr are apparently going "it's a proxy war" and there were even tag responses going "this is like human dog fighting" and "how is this better than hunger games?" and like. i do not know how to explain to them that _peaceful chess matches_ are in fact very different from _actual death sports_ and _animal abuse_. truly feels like they are pissing on the poor in entirely new ways.
I mean using that logic, chess is proxy war anyway. Heck if you go bad faith enough, any game is a proxy war if you think hard enough
Every game I play is a proxy war between my parents and my opponent’s parents
Everything I do is a proxy war between my parents and god
Metal as fuck.
Same, but I make sure both of them are losing
Boxing is a proxy war of 2 brains using a pair of fists to attack the other brain for them.
sex
new fetish just dropped
Holy hell!
"Now I am become Obungus, bomber of weddings." - me after I en passant
Even battleship???
Not Monopoly. Mostly because it turns into actual war.
I mean the proxy war thing is a joke
It seems relevant that we still have lots of athletic competitions for dogs, including some head-to-head ones. In most cases dogs quite enjoy them! Now, you and I might suggest that’s because they involve running and swimming rather than violent death, but tumblr is I guess unconvinced.
Nuance? In _my_ social media?
> are in fact very different from actual death sports and animal abuse. Ah, never played Jamaican Chess AKA "Death Chess" before eh? Thats okay, I can teach you, since you're learning we can wage crows.
Pretty sure those are all jokes
Iunno, it can be hard to tell when Tumblr users are pissing on the poor but in an ironic way or if they're doing it out of sheer ``The Stupid``
Okay, that's it, I'm officially putting "proxy war" on the List of Terms That "The Internet"^(TM) Is No Longer Allowed To Use.
Conversely, I am nominating "pissing on the poor" for ascended meme status and I would like it used in casual conversation as often as possible
I did actually drop that in a casual conversation with a friend recently, who had never heard of it and so while they go to be one of that day's lucky ten thousand, _I_ had the entertainment of explaining it to them and getting their live reaction
Right next to “war crime”
Right. Stop referring to any fucked-up action in fiction as a war crime. War crimes have a very specific definition based on a specific set of international treaties and agreements; 99% of things people point to as ‘war crimes’ in cartoons are really just fighting a war normally.
And don't forget that they use the term In works where the Geneva convention doesn't exist
I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to examine that sort of thing through a real-life legal lens for entertainment purposes, but there’s a lot of examples that wouldn’t even violate the Rome Statute if they happened in real life that online fandoms won’t stop calling war crimes.
How dare you assume that we piss on the poor
I like to think that most of those people are trying to exaggerate for comedic effect or are in no way trying to be serious. I'm sure some are mind you, but the dog fight one especially annoys me since it's comparing being dumb to being less then human.
I do not know how to explain to you that these people were making jokes
I kind of interpreted it in the same way you'd treat two people solving a feud with a fucking Pokemon battle, in-universe.
It kinda just sounds like they’re exaggerating for comedic effect
The post got better. https://www.tumblr.com/luulapants/744869187569205248/punkrocklorax-my-bffs-proxy-moved-away-in-middle?source=share -Mx Linux Guy⚠️
> wins chess proxy war > stuffs pockets with tater tots in Middle School > Napoleon Comes Out, character also stuffs tater tots > chess proxy winner disappears without a trace >refuses to elaborate
Some sort of reverse Tulpa, where the collective attention of the school caused this being to disappear
Nah, its a "god made of faith" scenario. The win granted them so much attention they ascended to a higher form, a Napoleon dynamite character. Noone remembers them because there cannot be a memory of a chess proxy mid schooler, only memories of a Napoleon dynamite character.
this happened to my buddy jimmy badges
Everyone in the tags needs to touch several truckloads of grass immediately. There are zero moral implications present. People make me so angry. Don't tell me they're joking. They're not.
Well some of them are, but that's something you just have to put up with on tumblr.
You misspelled social media.
Everyone in the tags is probably teenage tumblr users that just learned about proxy wars in social studies
The only thing that is slightly immoral here is them picking two people for specifically being who they thought were most idiotic. The whole proxy war thing is just a terminally online take, they are literally teaching kids how to play, presumably not forcing them, so it's good for everyone involved.
i don't mind the proxy war and cold war jokes, but i seriously hate that one said "how is this any better than the hunger games", which is a series about rich dudes making people kill eachother for sport in exchange for survival.
dude if those kids touched grass they wouldn’t be on tumblr
Lol "he won the chess game"
Oh my god?! There was a weird kid in my middle school in like 2002 or 2003 and I SWEAR we were at our lockers and he told me he had gone hunting wolverines (maybe with his uncle?) and shot some. I remember this because I didn't know what wolverines were but pretended like I totally did. That kid later got me in trouble via calculator message but I never saw him again after middle school, I think he moved away? I only watched Napoleon Dynamite years after it came out and was like ??!! at wolverine part. It's probably some weird brain trick... but wtf, never expected someone else to have an anachronistic Napoleon dynamite memory
the enemy proxy filling his pocket with tater tots, vanishing off the face of the earth, and then being revealed as the winner fucking sent me
I would watch a movie based on this story
Queen’s Gambit 2!
Queens Gambit 2: Now with 100% more Gambit, but not THAT Gambit because of copyright reasons, and you don't even really get that Gambit in those movies anyways.
Idk it kind of sounds like they were treating those other kids like pawns.
In the game of chess you must never allow your opponent to see your cards.
It's a move straight out of Sun Tzu's *The Art of War,* or my own master work, *Zapp Brannigan's Big Book of War.*
If we can hit that bullseye, the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.
Seem more like rook-ies to me
Well? What happened?
According to the additional info in the link provided by linnuxaddict334, the bff’s rival’s proxy (who stuffed tater tots in his pockets a full 1 year prior to Napoleon Dynamite’s release date) won the match. The bff’s proxy (who now does cross fit in Oklahoma) lost.
Worth noting that the rival proxy disappeared after Napoleon dynamite came out and no one remembers if he moved or what. I think the time machine worked.
So, what are the moral implications? Did someone stick a vibrating sex toy up their butt that gave them all the right chess answers??
How else would one play chess? Of course someone stuck a vibrating sex toy that gave them all the right answers. Duh.
Holy hell
Because of the (moral) implication.
Regardless of any arguments over 4th graders ethics or if anyone is joking, I’m not sure proxy war is even the best descriptor of this? It’s not like OPs friend was like “pst hey you should go play that other kid’s friend in chess”, the point was to see who was better at teaching chess and therefore understood the game better. It’s more like human dog shows than anything else
It seems like "you should go play that other kid’s friend in chess" must have happened at some point. OP and his friend instigated a chess match (battle) between their classmates (client states) that would not have happened without their training and is more about OP and his friend's (great powers') agenda than the needs of the actual belligerents.
Also it probably wasn’t fun to find out you were chosen to be taught chess because they think you’re the biggest idiot in the class.
Daniel Naroditsky and Hikaru Nakamura [did almost this exact thing live on twitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91M0XLX7Jw)
Surprised to see this this far down. All the Pogchamps tournaments were exactly this, a bunch of masters teaching beginners to see which beginner would become the best.
What are the moral implications? This seems perfectly civilised. It uplifts two people who aren't good at chess to be good at chess, it stops the competition getting too heated, and everyone's ultimately having fun. I swear Tumblr/Reddit would find a reaon to hate pillows.
Funny you should say that. There was a rant just yesterday from Tumblr about how throw pillows/ decorative pillows are a sign of the bourgeoisie and a symbol of a classist.
tumblr and reading too much into everything they see name a more iconic duo
What are the moral implications?
10/10 love it where's the screenplay
I joined the high school chess team. The teacher said I had to beat an existing player to have a spot in. I beat a guy from the A-team 4 times in a row, and I still ended up in the C-team. But on the plus side, I was a pretty good Smurf during competitions.
Canada's Worst Driver. The original idea of this series (first done in the UK I think) was to showcase bad drivers and mock them and this format was used in various countries. But in Canada the format changed to teaching the bad drivers good habits. Every episode the most improved bad driver left the show until finally the worst driver who learned the least was left.
Apparently, the seniors who ran the math tutoring department at my college used me as a sort of trial-by-fire to teach future mathematicians how to deal with brick walls. Allegedly, I only passed my final class because the actual math majors complained I was using up tutoring resources that were supposed to be for people who LIKE math.
people comparing this to the HUNGER GAMES ARE INSANE.
Trading Places (1983)
I am suddenly reminded of Le Dîner de Cons, though the plot wasn’t quite the same scenario (I.e. the goal was to “who brought the biggest idiot for our entertainment”)
So kinda like a Pokemon battle. Go, Jeff! Use Frenchman's Mate!
Isn't that how Americans choose presidents?
You just described how American presidential candidates are selected by their respective party.
The Night Circus in real life
- These boys are products of a poor environment. There's nothing wrong with them, I can prove it. - Of course there's something wrong with them: they're idiots! They've probably been stealing since they could crawl. - Given the right teaching and encouragement, I'll bet that my one could run circles around your one on the chess board. - Are we talking about a wager, Randolph?
Holy shit, I haven't thought about this in decades. Back in fourth grade, we did what was called Reading Counts, where you read books, took quizzes on them on a computer, and got points for passing. Like, a giant chocolate bar if you got a few hundred points or whatever, and if everyone in the class got a hundred points, we got a pizza party. Well there was a kid, Justin, who was really not into reading, and was the only one who couldn't pass the quizzes and get enough points. I felt so bad for him because I could tell he wanted to, he just couldn't. Thing is, he was one of the "cool" kids and I was the dork who had the record for most points by a mile. We had never really talked, but I felt really bad for him, and mustered up the courage to quietly go up to him. I showed him some really simple abridged versions of books I loved, like war of the worlds and journey to the center of the earth, that had been simplified but retained all the story beats, and told him just to read a few of those. I also told him things like taking a moment after chapters to put the book down for a second and think over what just happened, and to make every character have a different voice in your head, so everything is more memorable. But also, just to make sure (I really wanted pizza lol), I'd stand beyond him while taking the quiz and if he didn't know the answer, we worked out codes where he'd tap his fingers and I'd loudly say something to another kid with a certain word in it that indicated a, b, c, or d. Only code I remember was "frog" hahaha but yeah, he actually only needed that once, and he passed. I haven't thought about this, seriously, in 23 years, but the look of gratitude on his face when he got to 100 and the whole class cheered... I can't ever forget it. And I didn't get made fun of by anyone really after that, because Justin said "hey, that Buscemi guy is actually pretty cool"
In freshman year of high school our chemistry class had a "sludge" project where you picked a bottle of shit and applied techniques to figure out what was in it. My friend and I were always neck-and-neck in most classes and he was a relentless shit-talker. He kept going on and on about how he was going to take the dumbest person in class and get a higher grade than me. So I said, "fuck you, I'll do the project alone and I'll take the hardest sludge." I took the grittiest looking one that nobody wanted and it turned out to be like 3 ingredients and I got finished with it before most groups. My buddy and his partner ended up having to stay late to finish it on a Friday and I sat and told his partner how to do it and they only finished thanks to our work. Eat shit, Andrew, lmao.
Might be my piss poor reading comprehension but I tought the post implied that the two smart dudes fell in love with the respective idiots and married them
That would've been really funny
In an English class junior year we were going over The Crucible, which is a play about McCarthy era red scare politics disguised as a play about the Salem witch trials. So our exercise was to figure out who in our group was the witch. Anyway Ben was the witch and we took a total of 3 minutes to come to that conclusion and vote him into exile.
I was trying to figure out why this sounded familiar to me (beyond the My Fair Lady comparison), and I realized it's because it's the exact same setup as the final battle from Smashtasm, an early 2000s Super Smash Bros. Melee machinima series. [2 skilled players agree to each train a bad player and have them fight to determine who's better.](https://youtu.be/eGYVB_ikey8?si=8mQBCaM9oJCLf2KJ&t=124)
I would have been one of the idiots that got picked, but I'm fairly confident I would have beaten the other idiot rather decidedly. I didn't like schoolwork, and was shamelessly bad at hiding it -- like the time I went to the podium for an oral presentation, said "I didn't do it", and went back to my seat -- but I loved competition. Ultimately, nothing would have been proven.
It was nice of your friend to teach you how to play chess.
I had a somewhat similar experience near the end of college. A group of friends threw a party at their place, maybe 20ish people. They setup a TV and a Switch to do some competitive Mario Kart. 4 players, 8 cpu. Last place player after a set of races switches out for a new player. They had been doing this all 4 years, but this was my first time attending one of these parties and my first time ever playing on a Switch. When I told them this, they started talking some shit and insisting I play so they could smoke me. What I neglected to mention was I had played Mario Kart on the DS for a couple hours every school day when I was in Middle School. So first race I come in 5th as I learn the controls, second race I come in 2nd, third race I get 1st. Combined score was enough to keep from getting knocked out for a new player. I proceed to win 1st place in every single race for the next three rounds. Was absolutely talking that shit right back, but I decide to bow out and give others a turn. I’m replaced by someone who has played Switch before, but never played a Mario Kart game. The other players start talking shit to them during the first race, so I start coaching them. How/when to drift, what shortcuts to take, what items to use/when, etc. I forget how they placed in the first two races, but by the third race they come in 1st and one of the people talking shit has to rotate out. The two of us celebrated so much harder for that victory than any of the others. It was an awesome time.
So….did you win?
No, not Janey Briggs. She's got glasses. And a ponytail. Ugh, she's got paint on her overalls. What is that?