Wonderful! - Wonderful! 212: Chaotic Eye Energy

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

Rachel’s favorite viral poet! Griffin’s favorite limited attention activities!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaSupport AAPI communities and those affected by anti-Asian violence: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hateSupport the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund: https://aapifund.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

🎵 Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. We're here, we're back, we're doing it. They're doing the damn thing. They're in the studio together, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. We're here, we're back, we're doing it. They're doing the damn thing. They're in the studio together, making love eyes at each other.

Yeah. And that can only mean one thing, is that it's time to record Wonderful. I feel like I'm making love eyes. I don't know that you are. Can I tell you something I've learned about myself since I've appeared on video a handful of times for the content that we create?

People tell me that I have like a thousand yard stare going. Yeah. I mean, that's what I'm seeing right now. I don't even think of myself as having sort of intense eye contact or like eye technique. Yeah. No, I don't think it's intense eye contact. I think it's just when you are looking at me, I don't see a lot of emotion conveyed through those eyes.

It's, it's, I think in, uh, because i'm very relaxed right now when i'm around you but like if i'm if i'm being filmed for something i go like deer in the headlights like i blink three times an hour people have been telling me about it since i started doing the zelda randomizer series, the Legend of Fieri, or Trial by Fieri, is that I get so focused on the game and my eyes are just like, boy, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. I did not know that about myself. Another side story. One time I got a craniosacral therapy thing that I didn't realize was like energy healing.

But I'm down to try whatever. Can I couch this a little bit so people don't think that you really actively sought this out? We were staying at a nice place. It's kind of a getaway evening. It's like a health kind of resort. They gave us a booklet of services. It was like a health kind of resort. They gave us a booklet of services.

So Griffin found this on the list and was intrigued. I was like, I have problems with my cranium and sacrum, so let's do it. But it was like an energy thing. And, you know, to each their own. I don't know that I would opt for this again but at the end of it the the therapist was like you have wildly frantic and chaotic energy in your eyes and i was like i haven't stopped thinking about that no i haven't stopped thinking about that because i i wish i had gone to just so we could compare and see like see what is the typical response. How often do people get told about their chaotic eye energy?

Are you the first? I was the most. I've never seen a case like this. A case like this. Anyway, hello. Do you have any small wonders? Oh, maybe the most recent blues game that we watched. Fuck yes. oh maybe the most recent blues game that we watched fuck yes um so blues were uh trailing

against dallas and it was like a few minutes left in the game and dallas got a few unfortunate penalties and the blues tied it up with 23 seconds left yes And then they got another power play, which means that they had more men on the ice. And since they had pulled their goalie, it was six on four. So they had two more men. And they just immediately scored again off this crazy fluke-like bank shot off of somebody's skate. Yeah, Jordan Cairo hit it into one of the Stars players' shin guards. And it just bounced at a perfect 90 degree angle into the goal and the uh this is not necessarily wonderful but it

was fascinating the dallas coach was so outraged by these penalties and the surprise outcome of the game that he took a stick and beat it all over the uh the box where the players sit. And he got fined $25,000 for his tantrum. He didn't even break the stick. So unprofessional. It made me really worry about those Dallas players if they had a coach that was like so off the rails. I don't know, dog. To lose a game in the final 23 seconds of it

when you were like pretty dominant the whole game. That's a tough blow. when you were like pretty dominant the whole game that's a tough that's a that's a tough blow um i'm going to say um i've been our like friend group text group text chain uh in austin we've been like sharing music recommendations lately and that's been really yeah it's been nice you all have like the most active text chain. It's pretty active. And what's great is like our friend group here in Austin is like we all have very disparate musical tastes. Yeah. Like wildly different.

Like, you know, I'm big into like synth pop electronica stuff. fifth pop electronica stuff. But then like we have friends who are like only into like 1940s, like old timey gospel or whatever. Do y'all talk about Bruno? The song, the talking about the don't talk about Bruno song? Yeah. No,

no. I mean, I know the, the, the folks in that chat who have kids have definitely been familiarized with that song many, many times. You know, what's interesting is that I have like a counterpart where all the partners of the people on your thread are on a thread with me. Yeah. And mostly what we share are pictures of our kids.

Oh, we do that too. You know, but, you know, it's fun. It's fun getting exposed to different kinds of art. I think you go first this week i do hit it uh let's go to the no way poetry corner that's good i liked it it's very succinct i was yeah i was excited to do it we haven't had a visit to the poetry corner in a minute uh this is a poet that was actually it's been recommended to me a few times because this poet went viral oh boy uh several years ago with a poem called good bones. Yes. You know, her, you love her. The poet is Maggie Smith,

not the actress. Oh, sorry. I've got ahead of that for you. Yeah. You were not even fast enough to like, I really killed that comedy for you. Yeah.

No, this is a poet named Maggie Smith born in 1977. So not, not the actress that we've all come to know and love. Sure. That's McGonagall, right? McGonagall and the

Dowager Countess. I don't remember anything about Downton Abbey. I don't either. Should we re-watch that? No, I don't think we should. It seems like a very specific time period in our history. So this poem, Good Bones, was actually from a collection that she released in 2017 under the same name. And it blew up and it got recommended to me because of my, as you know, predilection for the poem.

to me because of my as you know predilection yeah for the poem uh but it was also used by a lot of people on twitter and facebook uh in response to just kind of a lot of horrific events um because of the nature of the poem which at first i was like i'm not going to read this poem i want to read one of her other poems because everybody knows good Bones. And then I was like, well. I don't know Good Bones. Yeah, I bet a lot of people don't actually know Good Bones. So I will read that poem. So again, Maggie Smith, poem called Good Bones. Here we go. Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I've shortened mine in a thousand delicious ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways. I'll keep from my children. The world is at least 50% terrible and that's a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird, there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible. And for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you. Though I keep this for my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor walking you through a real shithole chirps on about good bones this place could be beautiful right you could make this place beautiful so that's good and sad yeah i know that's the thing

is that people are like this isn't exactly an uplifting poem no um but a lot of people share that kind of in the wake of of that are really challenging. And even in the last five years since that poem came out, it hasn't gotten better. So before her collection came out, that poem had been published. And so in 2016, in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, this is when it really kind of took off. Like everybody, like Megan Mullally, a lot of different celebrities were like, this poem kind of speaks to what we are trying to do as a nation in the wake of these events, which is like, okay, let's still try and be hopeful. You know, let's realize that there is good and there is bad and there is a way to look at these situations and think that we can grow from them.

And that was, I mean, also, I believe in the specter of the 2016 election, which is like where fatalism became sort of the order of the day. Yeah. And so I read this Slate article from 2020 and they talked about how through this poem, a lot of people kind of found the language they were reaching for but couldn't access. It's not necessarily inspirational as much as it kind of helps you find the words to kind of explain what you are unable to come up with yourself

to, like, explain how you're feeling. Yeah, the writer of the Slade article said, feeling so seen by a work of art is a potent experience, and I transform that feeling into a kind of hopefulness the poem doesn't actually contain. My brain replaced the actual meaning of the poem with the buoyant feeling being seen gave me, which is a lot like hope, which I feel like is a really, really precise way to kind of talk about this. Maggie Smith in that article said that she kind

of still grapples with the legacy of that viral poem. She said, what I'll always be known for is writing this poem about how bad things are, and I'll always be known for is writing this poem about how bad things are and maybe they could be better, but they're bad. She said, her social media feed became kind of a weird

disaster barometer. Every time my mentions tick up, I have to check the news because something bad has happened. Oh, Jesus Christ. Which is like, probably very true. Yeah.

You know, it's interesting that this, there are other poems and poets out in the world who get kind of dismissed because they do go viral. You know, these kind of like short, aphoristic, you know, idealistic pieces of art that go out and people use in the event of complicated times. And then they don't really necessarily get their accolades as a poet because of that. But I just, I love, I love the way that poem ends, that idea of just like, yeah, you're

selling, you know, you're selling this world to your kids, ultimately. You're like trying to get them to buy in to what can be so great about the human experience, even though it is complicated and sometimes terrible. The stuff that people are going through, and obviously varying degrees of horribleness, uh horribleness uh is so isolating in a way because it's it's it's uh too much to sort of comprehend or measure all at once and so like you feel like you are going through kind of your own thing and i think when you have kids that is intensified in a way because it's like i don't understand how to really encapsulate everything that is going on, let alone, you know, teach you or responsibly show you how to do that. Yeah.

And that's, you know, in parenting, that's true of so many things because you really do feel like I am doing this my own way because there's no way to like, there are manuals I suppose you can follow, but like you're getting different results from everybody else. You're doing it a different way from everybody else. So to resonate with like anything like this is, is a genuine, even if the thing I'm resonating with is like, here is how to talk about how challenging things are right now. It's, it is a breath of fresh air to just like have

the diagnosis yeah uh is is helpful yeah uh right around this time uh she also started tweeting these kind of like notes for herself as kind of like pep talks uh which turned into an essay collection called Keep Moving Notes on Loss, Creativity and Change. She was going through a divorce right around the time that all of this was blowing up. And she kind of turned it into a sort of optimism because she would tweet these messages that were mostly for herself, and then get a lot of response to them. Uh, and so she's like, I didn't really envision writing like a self-help book. And she's like, I don't know that that's what this is. Um, but it, it became this essay collection that I think

would probably be really exciting for people if they are needing some support during a challenging time too. Uh, so yeah uh so yeah so again that's that's maggie smith um i bet you will see that poem more now that i have brought it up yeah uh and it obviously as times continue to be challenging yeah well here's what i'll say about that okay to fix it and make everybody feel better okay great the sun will come out tomorrow oh that was a little pitchy oh yeah can i steal your weight yes okay We got a few bomb bombs. And I will read the first one. It is for Ben, and it is from Lainey, who says,

Hi, Sugarbee. Merry end of the year slash beginning of the year, maybe. Definitely. I just wanted to tell everyone how much I love you. There's nobody I'd rather argue about how not everything is math. You're the best cat dad Mr. Meatball and Alfredo could ask for and the best boyfriend I could ask for. Love you.

Two incredibly powerful cat names. Mr. Meatball and Alfredo. I would read a whole graphic novel about those two. Which one do you think was named first? Which one do you think was christened? Ooh, Meatball? I think Mr., oh, I don't know. Alfredo is so good, I know. They're both really good Mr. Oh, I don't know. Either order is so good.

They're both really good names. Damn. Well done. Can I read the next one? Yes. This is for Chris. It is from Ace. Chris, I love the way you tooch that booch and work the hallway like a runway.

You are not just my small wonder, all the big wonders i love that we are almost as cool as rachel and griffin thank you for introducing me to wonderful and for always giving me your final rose i love you almost as much as griffin loves heb super water zero ace whoa these are these are some deep cuts yeah these are super fans here uh Man, I haven't had H-E-P. I know. I forgot about that. Super Water Zero in a while. I wonder if they have like a replacement now. Yeah. I believe they discontinued the Super Water brand.

Maybe they brought it back. Maybe for 2022. I'll have to check. Here is another one. This one's for Andy and it's from Madeline who says, Andy, my wonderful husband, my favorite person. Happy late birthday slash couple months wedding anniversary slash merry holiday I love our cute little life together

but I love you most of all you're the absolute best and the absolute worst and I wouldn't have it any other way looking forward to all our terrible puns and all the magical years ahead a little bit late a little bit late on this message. Yeah. And for that, we do truly apologize. But it sounds like, it sounds like you all have plenty to celebrate. And the love that you share is a love worth fighting for. Babe, you should officiate weddings. I've been practicing.

And to hold and to love together with the magic sometimes I'll marry two bugs that I see outside to just practice them you're in a theater, the lights go down you're about to get swept up by the

characters and all their little details and interpersonal dramas you look at them and think, that person is so obviously in love with their best friend. Wait, am I in love with my best friend? That character's mom is so overbearing. Why doesn't she just stand up to her? Oh God, do I need to stand up to my own mother? If you've ever recognized yourself in a movie, then join me, Jordan Cruciola, for the podcast Feeling Seen. We've talked to author Susan Orlean on realizing her own marriage was falling apart after watching Adaptation, an adaptation of her own work, and comedian Hari Kondabolu on why Harold and Kumar was a depressingly important movie for Southeast Asians. So join me every Thursday for the Feeling Seen podcast here on Maximum Fun.

Thursday for the Feeling Seen podcast here on Maximum Fun. The sordid, nasty underbelly of the horse girl lifestyle. Hot sauce. Addiction to TV and sweaty takes on celebrity culture. And the weirdest, grossest stuff you can find on wikipedia.org. We'll read all of it, no matter how gross. There's something for everyone on our podcast, Baby Geniuses. Hosted by us, two horny adult idiots. Hang out with us as we try and fail to retain any knowledge at all. Every other week on Maximum Fun. May I?

Oh, share your thing? Yeah. Yes, please. Okay, good. My thing is idle games. Idle games. I-D-L-E or O-L? Oh, wow.

Wow, really? You could imagine one of two ways that I'm going with that. Yeah. Because I-D-O-L games, there's definitely like games where you like pay a real dollar and like some sort of, you know, anime priestess pops out of a ball or something. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm IDLE games, also known as incremental games or clicker games. Oh, okay. I also thought maybe it was like the name of some studio or something too.

Ooh, that's possible. There's a lot I don't know. So you don't know what this is? I mean, I can imagine, but I'm sure there's a more precise definition. I mean, I can imagine, but I'm sure there's a more precise definition. I'm curious how you will feel about it, because I feel like on paper, what an idle game is probably sounds like the biggest waste of time ever. And I guess you're not entirely wrong, but I suppose that's shades of gray when you're talking about video games in general, to sort of illustrate how an idle game works, I'm going to sort of talk about the gameplay loop

of one of the most popular ones that was ever released called Cookie Clicker that came out, I believe, in 2013. So in Cookie Clicker, there's a big cookie on the screen. I don't know if it's on phones, but it started as a browser game, and that's where I've played it. Every time you click that cookie, you get one cookie. And that's like the currency played it. Every time you click that cookie, you get one cookie. And that's like

the currency of the game is cookies. And if you click that cookie enough times, you can buy sort of passive cookie generators, like grandma's. Like you could spend 10 cookies that you got from clicking the cookie 10 times. And now you have a grandma who generates like two cookies a second automatically. So you keep clicking that cookie, keep getting cookies, buy more grandmas to up your automatic passive cookie generation until you can purchase a cookie farm, which generates more cookies and is more expensive. And then you start saving up bunches of cookies and you can purchase like upgrades. So like now your grandma efficiency is doubled. And so now your grandmas are really churning out the cookies and you do that until you can afford a cookie factory which just like takes it up to a whole nother echelon so the objective isn't necessarily to cook to click the cookie as fast as possible you can click the

cookie as fast as possible and get more cookies faster. Yeah. Or you can get it to a point where just like the passive generation is just like all it is. And you just leave the browser tab open and come back and you've got 30 million cookies. It's like blockchain. No, honey. Sorry. I barely know what the blockchain is, but I'm pretty sure it's not cookie clicker. Okay. blockchain is but i'm pretty sure it's not cookie clicker okay um and so you just keep keep buying more facilities that generate more cookies and purchase expensive cookie upgrades and so on and

so forth and that is that is the genre some games in the genre take it one step further where you can reset your progress and start over from scratch but in doing so like gain permanent upgrades that will like make it so much faster for you to get back to that point the next time so you can just skyrocket you know and get up into like the septillions of cookies uh because games in this genre usually do go up to like these absolutely bonkers large numbers that are just sort of abstracted out at that point um that's it how does that hit you does that sound like a a fun experience for you um it could be anything too it's not just cookies sometimes there's a game called candy box where it's candies or experience for a little

adventurer you know so my interests tend towards puzzles. Yes. I like puzzle games. Sure. I like the satisfaction of solving something. Yes. And then moving on to the next thing, which is maybe harder to solve. This doesn't sound like that. I guess I'm wondering,

where is the satisfaction coming from? The satisfaction comes from a few different places. I think, you you know having an established level of effort required to like hit some break point right yeah and then being able to like get some sort of upgrade that completely uh uh makes that uh obsolete yeah and now like now i'm getting a trillion cookies per click and i started out getting just one you get this sense of being weak and then powerful and then weak again and then powerful again so like that yeah okay uh incremental jump is is is you know pretty

satisfying and then the games that like add more mechanics onto it where like you're making decisions on, you know, how to spend this one very rare upgrade to get like the maximum benefit so that you can get back to that point the next time even faster. Like there are some strategic decisions that you have to make if you want to like try and make it, you know, try and optimize your output. optimize your your output um these games uh sound parodical of like a lot of role-playing games and mmo yeah i was gonna say when you said becoming more powerful it sort of made me think which is funny because like that's how the genre started so the the the how it is attributed the the first game in this genre came out in 2002 from a dev named Eric Fredrickson, who made a game called progress quest. That was literally just like a parody of ever quest and, and games in that genre where you just click something to get stronger, to watch the numbers go up.

And like a lot of early games in the, in the genre were explicitly that like parodies of, of these games that are all about sort of incremental progress. And a lot of them popped off on a website called Congregate with a K, which was a huge like flash game, flash animation website. And the reason it took off there is because one,

like it was easy to make these games in Flash, but two, Congregate had like a site-wide uh chat that was very active for people who like played games on that website so people would gravitate towards these idle games that were very low intensity very low interaction so that they could just kind of have something on while they chatted with with their buddies and so like that was a huge, you know, incubator, I think, for games of this genre. And then, of course, like when mobile phones came out, that was a huge thing. Facebook gaming, when that was like a big deal. A lot of games in that in that that were successful on there, like I'm thinking like Hay Day and, you know, Mafia Wars, those style of games incorporated elements from from the genre

and it's what made those games like as sticky as they were interesting yeah and like the the the idle game genre itself is like incredibly sticky because a lot of games make it so that when you're not playing you're still generating the passive currency so that you know it behooves you to come back tomorrow and have this huge bank wait like knowing that that huge bank is waiting for you makes people come back there's also this this genre is hugely monetized for like real life transactions where it's like hey you want to just double your shit then two dollars that's it give me two bucks and we'll double your shit uh which you know if you are putting that much effort into clicking a cookie like i think i feel like you are fertile ground for those sorts

of micro transactions to take place um some games like have stories and have finite like endings uh there's an ios game called a dark room that is just a text-based like clicker game but it's all about like rebuilding this destroyed society by going out and gathering sticks and then building a bonfire to attract more people to your village to send them out to get sticks. And then it just escalates

to you're building a spaceship or some shit. But most games are just infinite. Cookie Clicker is infinite. There is no end to Cookie Clicker. It just goes and goes and goes and goes and goes. And I'm sure that that has merit for people too. I just, I enjoy these types of games because I feel like I have room in my life

for these sorts of very passive, very low intensity games where like I can't uh i've been looking forward to this uh expansion to this online final fantasy game i've been playing forever uh that like came out i think november and i have barely touched it because it's like our shit is just bonkers right now yeah but i can get on my phone and click a thing a few times and get some some upgrades so that next time i come back i can get more upgrades yeah there's something also very zen like about it for me because i love i love the kinds of games that this genre was created to parody and so like even though this genre you know almost doesn't want itself to exist there they are very they are very compelling games well and

it's like perfect for the phone right exactly yeah that's that's the thing like the idea of going to my like desktop computer and playing this game like doesn't really seem like it would happen but if it's like i can hold it in my hand while i'm like waiting for my oil to be changed yeah like that makes total sense to me and And then there's some that me and Justin and a lot of people at Polygon when we were working there got into this game called, I think, Tap Titans 2, which is very- That's fun.

Phonetically pleasing, where you could like, you had like a guild. So like other real players and you could like work together to like take down these big boss monsters using the quintillion you know damage points or whatever that you had built up by clicking and clicking and clicking so you can almost like you know show your swag off to your friends where it's like yeah i'm a septillionaire of of this one idol i've clicked a lot guys yeah um and and those kinds of hooks are very clever too um

yeah i've just always i've always enjoyed justin is huge into this genre i feel like he's the one that i usually maybe not so much these days uh i have definitely been less of a consumer since we had our second child but i i think it speaks to a type of person that just sometimes wants to just vibe out and not and just just go smooth brain for a while and let let the let the game wash over us uh so that's that's what i got this week i'm saying that because i am playing an idol game right now that has been uh scratching scratching the edge do you want to say what it is it's's called, I don't remember the name of it. It's called, uh, Idol Slayer. And it's just like,

you're a little guy running around and you get new swords. It sounds like any other video game. You run around, you click a button, you get more swords. That's it. Okay. But it's fun.

It's doing it. Hey. Hey. Thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. So many great shows there that you're just going to love when you go to MaximumFun.org and just start clicking randomly.

And hey, our live show. Thanks for everybody who watched it. Yeah. Yeah. We had a really good time. And we had a lot of great viewers that raised a good amount of money for Austin Batcave. Yes. Thank you so much for that.

The video on demand is still available if you want to get up in it. It's bit.ly slash wonderful ABC 2021. Can you still buy a ticket? You can still buy a ticket and watch it on demand. So it's five bucks or more. And all of that goes to Austin Batcave, which is awesome. We picked the best year in history. Yes, that's true.

To entice you. Yes. If you have not yet purchased a ticket. Yeah. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's literally it.

There isn't anything else. So let's just go ahead and just piss off. We're just going to piss off. It's kind of a weird tone shift, I would say. We're just gonna piss off. It's kind of a weird tone shift, I would say. We're sorry, everybody. We're gonna get out of your hair. Oh, man. We did it again.

Fish and friends go bad after 35 minutes is the saying. Yeah. I'm on it. I'm on it. I'm on it. I'm on it. Maximumfun.org

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