Herd immunity was too strong - The Plague is ending
YAR!
The 48 hours are over, the plague is ending ...
For the past two days, the @king-of-disease has been infecting users all over the Steem blockchain, helped by those already infected who proceeded to !sneeze at unsuspecting victims.
But what was it all about?
The idea came from me, @suesa. I wanted to do (another) April Fools' joke, one that would go even more viral than the one in 2018. And what's more viral than a virus?
At this point, I want to thank the following people:
@reggaemuffin, for not just writing the bot, but also running it and fixing smaller bugs along the way to keep things smooth. Without you, this would have never worked out!
@gutenmorganism, who designed the profile picture and banner/footer for the @king-of-disease
@arcange, who agreed to a cooperation between @king-of-disease and Steemitboard
But Suesa, what did we win?
Everyone in the top 200 will receive a Steemitboard badge! Well, that was the plan at least. We did not get 200 people who infected someone, but all the 83 that did will get their badge. Our rating will stay the same.
It will take a few hours until the badges will be assigned, so don't worry if you haven't received yours yet.
How do we know who is in the top 200 83?
To avoid making the game mechanics too predictable, the top 200 83 aren't the people who sneezed the most.
A virus can only thrive, if it's passed on from one host to another. A host that doesn't get sick and spread the virus is effectively useless.
As a result, a point was only given out if the person you infected infected somebody else.
When @apsu sneezed at @reggaemuffin, and @reggaemuffin sneezed at @suesa, @apsu received a point. In turn, for every person @suesa sneezed at, @reggaemuffin gained another point.
Sadly, there were less than 200 people who successfully infected someone who proceeded to carry the plague to someone else ... which is why people who sneezed a lot were added to the ranking too. We got 30 people with points and 53 more people, who sneezed but got no points.
Some pictures of the game statistics will be at the bottom of the post!
How dare you, spam so much as a joke!
The overwhelming majority of reactions to @king-of-disease were positive, and those that didn't participate just didn't sneeze at anybody. Even flags were very rare (4 minor ones on the first day, of which one was withdrawn), and I count that as a sign that most people had a lot of fun.
I intentionally designed the bot in a way that tried to keep the spam low. Only the "new infection" comment was supposed to be a direct reply to the person being infected, the "is already infected" comment was always a reply to the person sneezing. That was supposed to keep notifications to a minimum.
(Yes, @reggaemuffin coded the bot, but the design is still mine.)
At least one person reported the bot to steemcleaners, which was sorted out quickly.
I know of only one person, who I won't call by name, whose reaction to someone sneezing on comments on their post was more than an overreaction ... but I guess there is always someone who has to be the buzz kill.
You know who you are :)
But all in all, people had fun, and that was the main goal. Because my view is that the biggest difference between Steem and other blockchains, is the community.
Steem is fun. Try to have fun with bitcoin, it's more likely that you'll end up less happy than before, especially if the price drops again.
But Steem? With all the games, all the challenges, all the people interacting, Steem is fun. And that's what @king-of-disease was supposed to be: A lot of fun!
Statistics! Statistics!
Now that everything else is out of the way, check out the game statistics @reggaemuffin compiled for you (make the scroll wheel burn!):
First we have a list of the 30 people who really got points. They are sorted by how many points they got. The top 15 of these will get a 5 Star badge. The rest a 4 Star one :)
Then we have a list of all the 83 people who played this game. If we take away the people with a badge already, the top 15 people without points get a 3 Star badge, then next 15 get a 2 Star badge and the remaining 18 a 1 Star badge.
And if you want to know how the plague spread through the network, here are all our winners sorted by their total points, which is the amount of people infected through a chain starting with them. Our king of disease sporting the total 445 infected people in the 48 hours this game ran.
And so put this into a graphical perspective, here is a (really huge, better open in a new tab) graph of the infected and their infections:
And here is a table with the aggregated end result data:
Haha, although I didn't infect anyone, I really enjoyed seeing this play out. We need a fancy time lapse animation of the infection spreading from user to user, that would be... sick! ;-)
As for the buzzkills & spam-cryers, get a fukin snack or something people, pump up your blood sugar, take a nap.
How anyone could see this as spam when it was clearly just a cute & clever little game [ not to mention the short lifespan of 48 hours ] is laughable. Some people need to lighten up, allow yourself to have fun & live will become just a little more bearable 🐻
Good job on throwing this together guys, I liked it [ and this is the first I'm hearing about you @suesa, like your content, you've got yourself a new follower for sure! ]
:^)
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Sadly, I'm not talented enough for a time lapse like that. But if anyone wants to do it, @reggaemuffin has all data details!
Some people are just completely devoid of fun - and I'm saying that as a German :P
And I'll be happy to see you around on my posts in the future! Because my content is about entertainment first too.
💚
@reggaemuffin, if you give me the data I can and will create this time lapse. I had so much fun designing the lil guy and I'd love the excuse to do more with him.
Who knows? Maybe I'll spend way too much time on it and blow it up into some kind of trailer.
Did you do something with the data yet? Because I'd love to see it too.
That'd be awesome, tag me when you release something!
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What a boring place the world would be without jokes and smiles 😜
Life is to short to be serious and not se things light hearted.
Yeay to humor and spreading love!
Agree wholeheartedly! :^)
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The math topic related to this is interacting particle systems. In the case of disease spreading you have some very interested results iwhen you are looking at something to which you cannot build immunity but for which you can get better from over time. When you are dealing with some kind of regular network you can show that depending on infectiousness rate and the network's complexity that it can keep on spreading or naturally vanishes in almost all scenarios. :o)
It would definitely be interesting to build this out to a bigger game with a longer runtime and more rules. But probably some people will get annoyed by it then.
Btw, the data is all in the post if you want to analyze it :P
Would I be remiss to note that one of the above two results would occur not in almost all scenarios, but actually in all possible scenarios?
=)
Sad I missed this fun event. At least I can have fun in the aftermath.
Good point. I poorly formulated that sentence. I mean that there exists a set of rate parameters such that the disease dies out and there exists a set of rate parameters such the disease remains. These two parameter sets are disjoint. ^-^
Hahaha - I had so much fun!!! :D And I love my very unique (and rare! ;-)) batch!
I smiled when I read your opening statement but had to go out which is why I could only start hours later with 'infecting' others. Still got in the top 15, so I didn't do so bad.
I had some internal struggles with just adding a joke to more 'serious' posts which is why I wasn't as aggressive maybe - but writing my post and 'inviting' people to join did help a lot and I felt more comfortable playing that way :D
Love this initiative @suesa! You with the help of @reggaemuffin really made something that made me smile the past few days.
Thanks and big HUGS ;-)
It was a lot of fun and it was very cool to watch you spread the virus :D
Hehehe - you were breaking all ranks with your spreading! I'll make sure next time we need I keep my distance :')
BIG hugs!
Top 15 is awesome, you're very infectious!
Tricking people into getting sick is half the fun anyway
:') Yes it totally is.
I guess this really reveals the level of my humor, cause I found this so fkn hilarious 😂😂 hahaha
It was a really fun idea and I love things that involve engaging to other people and bring smiles, so this was a perfect way to do so.
Thank you for the smiles and cool comments... Lol sneeze
Cool to se the stats... I guess I did good then 😜🤘
I'm such a 💩 Shit!
glad you liked it! We had a lot of fun making it!
I really did 😉👍
I belive you, must have been many laughs making this.
Thanks again!
Have a wonderful week. Cheers!
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Hilarious is what we were aiming for! 💚
And you absolutely made it with flying colours 😂😂 hahaha
Just the comment itself made me roll, then the Awsome character just.... It was Awsome 😉👍
If you guys ever come up with a idea like this again... I'm playing along. Thank you for spreading smiles 😊
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I liked the game :-)
I am hearing this song at the moment. The title image matches perfectly with the virus game^^
@suesa and @reggaemuffin.
I agree, it was a fun game and something that was shared by many. Perhaps next time use positive imagery like spreading hugs or handshakes or apple pie instead of disease....the imagery is more uplifting.
Nevertheless, it is great to see new ideas spurred on and you are right, this is about having fun.
But you have to admit, the viral effect is quite the pun ;)
LOL yes it is. It also might have scared some people thinking they were getting a virus on their computer.
Oh yes, there were some responses from scared people. But we tried to explain it to them if we noticed :D
Ah well...there are no perfect systems and the effort was noble. Too bad there were some that got upset.
Does bring up a bigger question about what is spam and what are the rights someone has to use his/her RC as seen fit.....
On a blockchain level we already know the answer, everything goes as long as you have RC :) and @king-of-disease got 6kSP so it could run smoothly.
But socially speaking, that is up for debate. And it will never please everyone. But most found it funny and recognized the joke, so I think it went well.
Maybe it's pie next year, who knows
There might even be a theme song. I recall Van Hagar had a song that would be quite fitting for the viral spread of hugs or hearts: 'Love is the Source of Infection'.
I thought it was fun and quite dramatic!
Loved it and anyone who wants to complain about a few fun ideas floating around like a virus, just doesn't understand what we are doing here!
Very dramatic, fun game!
!dramatoken
Oh I got sneezed on by @emergehealthier I didn't notice until just now and didn't understand what the game was all about! Poor, foolish, ignorant me. Sigh.
Lol, at least you survived the plague!
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and now it's just over... that's not how this works... we're all infected! Let the plague live on I say... maybe make the symptoms a little less obvious and nobody can complain!
Ahahaha. Good job, guys. :D
So I somehow failed to understand the rules well. Hmpf.
Well, how can you understand something that's not made public until it's too late? :P
I mostly wanted to avoid people abusing an obvious point system.
Keine Ahnung, aber andere haben es ja auch geschafft.