点名.Call the Roll

  “点名”游戏的诞生,虽然难以考证,估计也只有两种可能:一个性格开朗的学生妙手偶得,或者某位心理学研究者处心积虑的研究成果——无论源自何处,“点名”都已成为校内上最风靡的游戏。

  在校内上,风靡是无聊的同义词。在校内上,风靡是孤独的注解。

  人间嬉笑开怀,人后寂寞无奈。平日里与他人聊到天空海阔,最想说的话却大都哽在喉中。“言者无心,听者有意”,他人关心的或许并不是你所在意的;“高山流水,知音难觅”,你想传递的,他人却未必愿意倾听——或者说,他们愿意倾听,只是无法了解。

  欣然或勉强应他人之请,回答几十个问题,写下可能是日之中最长的一篇文字,再把火炬传递给另外几位或亲或疏的朋友——既然我们称“点名”是一个游戏,所谓游戏,就没人把它当真。所有人看某篇文字的时间,加起来很可能还不及作者码字所费的一半。除了极少数关心作者的人——作者可能认识,也可能不认识——绝大多数不过是一目十行浏览一番(幸许还要留下两句无关痛痒的评论),然后彻头彻尾忘记。就像小理发师对着树洞大喊“国王的头上有对驴耳朵”一样,“点名”对于他人而言一个无聊的游戏,然而对于倾诉心声的人而言(未必是纯粹的心声),说出了更在喉中的话、消解了积郁的孤独,那便是游戏的价值所在。

  所以,Falcon,风靡的就是无聊的,可风靡的都是有意思的。你从来不点、不应,我也如此,并非因为彼此从不孤独,而是孤独的时候总有人相伴,于是合唱一首《北京一夜》,如是而已。


It is hard to retrace the origin of the game called “Call the Roll”, but I think there may be only two rational cases: either a kind guy created it accidentally, or a psychics reasearcher produced it calculatedly. Whichever it is, “Call the Roll” has became the most popular game on Xiaonei, on where “popular” and “boring” are one and the same thing, on where “popular” annotates “solitude”.

To smile together, to feel lonely alone. The one who always talk happily and easily with others, maybe hide all the words, which he would like to express most, in his own throat. As the saying goes in chinese “两句谚语不会翻” .So many close friends you would have, so few of them could share your thinking which you want to transfer most. In other words, they actually would like to share, but they could not understand.

Accepting the request agreeably or unwillingly, answering dozens of questions carefully, writting down the longest article in diary possibly, and then passing the torch to other friends kindly — now that Call the Roll is a game, we need not to be too strict with it. The summation of the time that everyone spend for one’s article, maybe less than half of the writer’s spending. Except the ones who take much care of the writer, most of the readers just skim over the paragraphs (sometimes they leave some superficial messages), and then forget them at all. Just as the barber speaking to the hole on the elm,”the king has a pair of donkey airs”, to other people it is a boring game, to the one, who speak out his feeling, it helps him relieve his solitude. That is the value of the game.

So, Falcon, though “popular” and “boring” are one and the same thing, “popular” and “valuable” are equal too. You never call nor recept, neither do I. It is not because we never feel lonely, but since when we are in solitude we have friends. At that moment, let us sing the song, One Night in Beijing, laudly and clearly. 

2 thoughts on “点名.Call the Roll”

  1. Call and Roll
    “点名”游戏的诞生,虽然难以考证,估计也只有两种可能:一个性格开朗的学生妙手偶得,或者某位心理学研究者处心积虑的研究成果——无论源自何处,“点名”都已成为校内上最风靡的游戏。It is of natural historical interest to trace the origin of certain phenomena. As to the origin of the web-game ‘call and roll’, the surviving evidence did not offer any definite suggestion on where it comes from. To make a bold nonetheless reasonable guess, it either stems from ‘a bolt in the blue’ out of some progenitor’s idleness, or springs up from some psychological experiment. Maybe we should not expatiate on the origin of any popular activity: as we answer the questions and roll it over, we do not really care where this call or these questions come from, don’t we?
    在校内上,风靡是无聊的同义词。在校内上,风靡是孤独的注解。In the age of teeming spiritual boredom, paranoid, and solitude, mirrored with material flamboyance and opulence, popularity has became the best way to fill our sense of being bored alone. But how come this happened?     
    人间嬉笑开怀,人后寂寞无奈。平日里与他人聊到天空海阔,最想说的话却大都哽在喉中。“言者无心,听者有意”,他人关心的或许并不是你所在意的;“高山流水,知音难觅”,你想传递的,他人却未必愿意倾听——或者说,他们愿意倾听,只是无法了解。
    American politics, Chinese bureaucracy, European conservatism, or maybe the recent frenzy in the stock market, even the size of underwear of some chick everyone is interested in, etc. We talked about them, but we do not think about them. When one is alone, when he or she is left thinking about the external world and internal ego, we are essentially silent. We do talk, listen, sometimes we even care about what we talk about (remember the size stuff I mentioned above, we do care about it, right?) We try to understand and contemplate – but we do not comprehend.     欣然或勉强应他人之请,回答几十个问题,写下可能是日之中最长的一篇文字,再把火炬传递给另外几位或亲或疏的朋友——既然我们称“点名”是一个游戏,所谓游戏,就没人把它当真。所有人看某篇文字的时间,加起来很可能还不及作者码字所费的一半。除了极少数关心作者的人——作者可能认识,也可能不认识——绝大多数不过是一目十行浏览一番(幸许还要留下两句无关痛痒的评论),然后彻头彻尾忘记。就像小理发师对着树洞大喊“国王的头上有对驴耳朵”一样,“点名”对于他人而言一个无聊的游戏,然而对于倾诉心声的人而言(未必是纯粹的心声),说出了更在喉中的话、消解了积郁的孤独,那便是游戏的价值所在。
    Just answer it, regardless who the hell this call is coming from, regardless whether you are willing or disposed to answer. Just write it and it is likely to become the longest essay you’ve written for years, and roll it, to someone you are already familiar with, or you would like to be familiar with. No one really care about it – not because it is just a game, but for we can not care about it – if we do, we will be lost in answering these questions. The rule of this game has already been made: 1)do not spend more than half of the time for the writer to finish it to read it.2) Leave some comments over, and they’d better be the same lame style of asking and answering. 3) Forget about what you read and wrote, as if you are so severely drunk that every word you say is plainly honest. The meaning of playing this game is quite a bit like getting drunk: you say what you’ve got to say before these words suffocate your throat, and you hope no one would remember it.
    所以,Falcon,风靡的就是无聊的,可风靡的都是有意思的。你从来不点、不应,我也如此,并非因为彼此从不孤独,而是孤独的时候总有人相伴,于是合唱一首《北京一夜》,如是而已。
    Therefore, Falcon, we do fashion because we are bored, although fashion is always interesting. You don’t do it, neither do I, not because we are never bored, but we have got something else to mitigate and melt the boredom that sometime linger around us. Sing ‘One Night in Beijing’, for instance.

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