“The game is out there. And it’s either play or get played.” Truer words, this time from The Wire‘s Omar Little, have never been spoken when it comes to the LDBC. And having just completed year 14 of the game being the game, it continues to surprise and amaze me, especially when it gets picked up or mentioned in unexpected places.

This year marked a good one.

The LDBC blog periodically receives pingbacks, which are notifications that another site or blog has linked to yours. Most of the time they’re spam, and sometimes they can be part of a DoS attack, so I don’t usually get excited about them. I just trash them or mark them as spam and move on. So when I received an automated notification about a pingback from a site called Aesthetics for Birds, I assumed it was a pet shop or some such thing trying to score a link back to their site.

Wrong.

It was better.

It’s a site run by a group of philosophy professors from various universities. And in this case, Texas State University Assistant Professor of Philosophy Anthony Cross was discussing his own downfall, courtesy of an AI-generated bit of ordnance that allowed Flo Rida to be weaponized. And he was far from the only victim of that new evil this time around.

But yet again, I’m struck by how far the fear of The Boy metastasizes year after year. I mean, I took one philosophy course in my freshman year, and all I remember is the professor, oozing condescension as he spelled out some elementary concept, asking us: “Do you understand that? Is it getting through to you?”

And I didn’t. So, realizing I was in over my head, I never took another class in that subject.

But here I am now, the steward of a game I’ve sworn to make as stupid and goofy as possible, inadvertently roping in someone undeniably more intelligent than I am. Because ultimately, we all need plenty of meaninglessness in our lives.

And I’ll bet Professor Cross could explain why.

Which reminds me of when, while working at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, I laughed at myself when telling my boss about all of the time and effort I put into a seemingly pointless holiday game.

“No, we need that!” she said. “We need more stupid stuff! Go and out do that!”

So I have. And every year, more and more people join us.

But experience has taught me that if you commit to being stupid long enough, life will find a way to make it resonate just the same.

For sadly, this year marked the departure of one us, too. As you’ll see in one of the Tales from the Trenches after the jump, Mara Fitter was introduced to our annual struggle by her sister Fawn, who passed away before the game officially ended this year. But they talked about it and decided: Fawn would go as far as she could in 2023 and, if she hadn’t heard the dread tune by the time she needed to go, Mara would declare victory for her.

Fawn won.

And if this dopey game provided the two sisters with a little distraction during a rough and sad time, then I’m honored to have helped in that tiny way.

The game and all of you helped me, too, even if you didn’t know it. I just capped a year and a half without full-time work, complicated by some other life issues, by landing a great job. Which means that running the 2022 and 2023 games gave me something fun to do that didn’t involve filling out applications, interviewing, and getting rejected and ghosted. And I thank you all for that.

Gratitude. I’m heading into 2024 with a whole lot of it. If you are, too, and you’ve got a bit of extra cash to give, please consider donating to Americares. As always, it’s not a requirement. But they do good work.

Otherwise, wander on down below to see the LDBC-elfies, stats, and more, and take good care of yourselves until we meet again next Black Friday.

Don’t forget to be good to one another. Everyone’s trying their best.

For Stephen!

And for Fawn.

Puh-rum-pum-pum-pum, people.

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