welcome to the chaos

American baking shows will be called something like "Cupcake Knife Fight", there's horror movie lighting everywhere and dramatic stings every 5 seconds. All of the contestants are shit talking each other and fist fighting over the one single deep fryer provided by production. It will show the judges all whispering to each other at their super villain table overlooking the whole kitchen, and one will be like, "Oh my god. Everyone look at Brenda right now. She's straight tanking it." And it will cut to Brenda, who is running around covered in flour and crying and also bleeding for some reason. Then you get a clip from an interview with one of the contestants, and they're like, "I really need to win this. Without this award money, I'm gonna need to close my restaurant, sell my dad, and live out of my car. AGAIN." Then the giant digital doomsday clock overhead lets out a horrid klaxon, the judges tell half of them that their cupcakes taste disgusting, and one of them gets eliminated and sent to walk down the dramatically-lit shame hallway never to be seen again.

you play it while walking around with friends and if you see something and don't know what it is or wonder why its there, you stop and point and say Hey What Is That Thing. and everyone speculates about it. googling it is allowed but preferably after spending several minutes guessing or asking a passerby about it

weird structures, ambiguous signs, unfamiliar car modifications, anything that you can't immediately understand its function. eight times out of ten, someone in the group actually knows, and now you know!

a few examples from me and my friends the past few weeks: "why is there a piece of plywood sticking out of that pond in a way that looks intentional?" (its a ramp so squirrels that fall in to the pond can climb out) • "my boss keeps insisting i take a vacation of nine days or more, thats so specific" (you work at a bank, banks make employees take vacation in long chunks so if youre stealing or committing fraud, itll be more obvious) • "why does this brick wall have random wooden blocks in it" (theres actually several reasons why this could be but we asked and it was so you could nail stuff to the wall) • "most of these old factories we drive past have tinted windows, was that just for style?" (fun fact the factory owners realized that blue light keeps people awake, much like screen light does now, so they tinted the windows blue to keep workers alert and make them work longer hours)