Does Tetris Hate Me?

Interviewer: Today my guest is writer Rick Cummings, whose newest project is the website doestetrishateme.com. Well, Rick the first and most obvious question, is, I think, “Does Tetris hate me?”

Rick: Well, I don’t necessarily know your, or anyone’s, personal situation, but the answer is most likely yes, Tetris hates you.

Interviewer: Huh. I guess this was never a question I asked myself before. Is there any way you could explain how you came to this conclusion?

Rick: Well, first, I have played Tetris. So I know from first-hand experience that Tetris hates me. Second, other people have reported that Tetris hates them. While this is anecdotal, several million dollars of public university research has gone into studying the problem of Tetris’ irrational hatred of its players, and every study concludes that, while there is no known reason for it, Tetris absolutely hates you, me, and anyone else that plays it, ever.

Interviewer: I always suspected that, but I was never really sure.

Rick: Well, now, let’s be careful. We can’t let our personal confirmation biases get in the way here. Just becase have personally witnessed the viciouis hatred Tetris has for humanity doesn’t mean that it actually exists. We must point to the evidence. Without science we are simply dumb beasts, sir.

Interviewer: Oh yes of course.

Rick: Of course.

Interviewer: Of course. Can you offer any theories into how this hatred inherent to Tetris came to be?

Rick: Well, as you say, all I can offer are theories. The first, and most commonly pervasive on the internet, is that Tetris is a Communist propaganda tool meant to brainwash our children into a pointless life of efficiently stacking blocks. Ask any factory worker or Gulag prisoner what he does all day. “I stack blocks,” he will say. “All day I stack, and if I do not stack, supervisor will whip me.”

Interviewer: Well, isn’t that similar to our beautiful free capitalist society?

Rick: Ah, you’d think that, but no. You see, here in America, you have the choice to not stack and thus starve.

Interviewer: I see! Those insidious commie bastards!

Rick: Indeed! My second theory is actually predicated on the first. Once the Communists had programmed the initial hatred subroutine into Tetris, someone, possibly a disgruntled block stacker working in the basement of Tetris headquarters, inserted a short piece of Terminator code into the game. This Terminator code was left over from the main CPU of the unit destroyed by Sarah Connor in 1984–

Interviewer: Ah, I remember that!

Rick: –and so it has an unrelenting and unending hatred for all things fun. And Sarah Connor.

Interviewer: That poor woman! Hasn’t she had enough to go through?

Rick: You’d think. But she’s very good at Tetris.

Interviewer: How does this hatred manifest?

Rick: Well, pretend you’re playing Tetris.

Interviewer: [pretends to, looking quite ridiculous and holding an imaginary control pad]

Rick: Say you’re playing and you make a mistake.

Interviewer: [playing] Whoops!

Rick: That mistake is then compounded by the semi-random choices Tetris makes in order to give you the next piece.

Interviewer: [still playing] I needed a line piece, not a square!

Rick: So, while it seems that pieces are mostly random and your mistake was slight, Tetris is actually going to inevitably lead you to failure. Because it hates you.

Interviewer: [stops short, looks incredulous, then angrily:] FUCK THIS GAME! FUCKING COMMIES!

Interviewer: [hurls imaginary control pad into ground, gets up, stomps on it, marches offscreen, comes back immediately and perfectly composed]

Interviewer: So tell me, Rick, how does your new website work?

Rick: Well, that would be a trade secret, but I can tell you this much: we use a proprietary algorithm that combines multiple results from your Tetris scores, a full medical history, and a short personal essay, then throws out all those results and Trey, our webmaster, flips a coin. That coin has “Yes” written on both sides, and so the algorithm always returns “Yes” because honestly, Tetris hates everyone.

Interviewer: That seems terribly complex.

Rick: Well, so does Tetris.

Advertisement