Experimental Poetry 3

5/16/19

some games of Bric Brac Woe

Consider a simple game of tic-tac-toe, but with what people think of a player based on the outcome of a game. I considered almost gushing praise if they won, being very rude if they lost, and somewhat rude treatment if it was a tie. I also left the door open for some impossible games just for fun. I thought of this idea when reading (mostly extremely rude) Internet (couch potato!) commentary on sports players based on game outcomes, and then thinking it would be interesting to apply to a game that everyone knows and where the stakes are much less.

To do this, I simple randomly filled a 3x3 grid with x's and o's. I didn't really care if there was an almost equal amount of x's and o's. I then created some simple logic to check for 3-in-a-row vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. I also have some very basic checking for board configurations, but, again, the logic needs to be updated if you want the spreadsheet to make only technically possible games, because that wasn't really my goal here.

Then, after a winner is determined, I randomly sample from lists: "good" (if x wins), "bad" (if x loses), "tie" (if tied game), or "impossible" (if very odd game).

To create a Bric Brac Woe poem, please see this spreadsheet. You are free to edit it as you please, but please credit Statisticool.com if you use this idea. Note that I probably have some very bad and inappropriate language in there, but it is just for effect, and based on what I read from the peanut gallery. It was to reflect what I read - the absurdity of the sports commentary. I personally don't think/act/write that way. Again, you should edit the lists as you'd like.

What is my favorite game of Bric Brac Woe? The following one, where people gush about how good x is, yet o didn't even bother showing up, and/or x cheated. This happens a lot in real life, and is not a good test of x's skill whatsoever. This exercise taught me that while we obviously shouldn't hate for poor performance, less obviously we probably shouldn't idolize for good performance. Some things are just games.

Thanks for reading.

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