Twitch Plays Pokemon...With 80,000 Other People

 A new level of chaos was introduced to me by my roommate last night. We've all played a video game intended for just one player. Perhaps you've even gotten creative and tried to play with two people at the controls (my brother and I once played on the same Guitar Hero guitar for a song. Awkward, yes. But definitely do-able). However, can you fathom thousands of people controlling the same player? As it turns out, this is happening as we speak.

About a week ago the game was started, and using crowd sourcing a single game of Pokemon Red is currently being controlled by thousands of people by entering commands into a chat window. (Don't ask me how any of this works; I know nothing about crowd sourcing or anything that makes this possible. It's all magic to me). It was started as a social experiment, I'm told, with users voting to implement anarchy or democracy. That means that either everyone will enter commands as they want (anarchy, which is currently happening) or democracy will be put into place and a select few will enter commands.

 Surprisingly, these 80,000 or so players have actually gotten about halfway through the game in a week. If you watch the game being played for a few seconds you'll quickly understand why that's so amazing. After watching Red bonk into walls for a while, try to use random items at the wrong time, and get through battle after tedious battle I was astounded that any progress had been made. I was also astounded that I was even watching the madness, especially after my roommate told me that a religion had formed because of this.

Yes, a religion. With a Pidgeot-Jesus, a holy Helix Fossil, and an evil "false prophet" Flareon being kept in the PC by a gatekeeper Drowsee.

I don't understand it. I don't want to understand it. But I am certainly amazed at what technology has managed to do with the game, and the attention of thousands of viewers and players who are so heavily invested in the success of the game that they genuinely feel upset when things go badly. Like when Hitmonlee was released. I imagine it was quite sad....