My 30 Days on a TV Game Show - Part One

The working title of the TV show is, "The Bucket-Head Talent Show" (TBHTS).

I had to wait a week for my application to be approved.

When I arrived at the studio, I was given a helmet with some complicated bucket (with a bunch of levers and buttons) attached to the top of it, a mask, a stack of 25 stage-blocks, a couple of coins (an allowance replenished daily) and a water-gun (an allowance replenished daily).

There was also a smart-phone app I had to install so I could track myself and the other players progress.

The playing-area was about the size of a large aircraft hangar, or a convention center.

There were cameras everywhere, thousands of them, constantly recording everyone and all players (and non-players) had direct access to these recordings at any time through the smart-phone app.

The floor was a sort of grate, or grid, and below the floor was a large pit with conveyor belts running the entire length of the playing-area.

When I joined the game there were about 35,000 active players.

I was told that the players could make real, cash-money-dollars by sharing their talents!

So, I painted my mask, strapped on my helmet, stacked up my 25 blocks to make a small stage, and started my song and dance.

Almost immediately, some other players tossed some coins into my bucket helmet! How cool is that!

So I looked up the "event" on the smart-phone app to figure out who gave me the coins and I checked out their song and dance and tossed some of the coins I was handed when I joined into their buckets.

I even got a comment about my first act!

It said, "I am a robot, I found some similar content on the web that you might be interested in." and even provided a direct link! How nice is that! Even though it said it was a robot, (I didn't realize that some of the players were robots! I love robots!) it seemed very helpful, and even tossed me some coins! Cha-ching!

And then, not long after that I got a second comment!

However, when I checked it out, the tone seemed a little more serious.

"Hey pal, we've seen this act before (actually we haven't, we just googled for it this very second and just happened to get a hit), and since you didn't give props to the other website (which may or may not own that particular content or care in the slightest if it gets imitated or re-posted) we're going to shoot you in the face with our water-gun and take the coins you earned on this particular song and dance as well as half your stage-blocks. If you think we've made some error in judgment, please go to this completely unrelated website on your smart-phone and beg for mercy in our private kangaroo-court."

And then I noticed that my song and dance had disappeared completely!

WTF.

Oh, wait a minute, it's behind a "this show has been hidden" button.

Ok, whatever, it was probably a mistake. I checked the link and it was something I had posted myself years earlier!

So I clicked on the weird kangaroo-court link, and filled out the idiotic sign-up form, then I posted WTF in court.

They told me to prove that I posted the other (not necessarily the one true original) link from years earlier (that maybe had 3 total page-views before this happened) by logging into the old page and posting a link to my brand new in-game profile. WTF.

So I dug through some old emails and posted the link I was being extorted into adding. I mean, I'm totally new here, I'm just guessing these guys are legit and not some sort of hacker con-artists trying to socially engineer me into signing up for some BS.

The vigilantes were polite and gave back the coins they had confiscated as well as my stage-blocks.

Oh well, at least that's over, or at least that's what I thought.

I created a few more shows, and they were kinda hit-and-miss, but even the ones that received a lot of coin-flips, weren't adding up to much.

That's when I noticed that some coin-flips were worth a lot more than other coin-flips.

Some coin-flips were 100% worthless.

At first I thought the coin-flip was based on the number of stage-blocks the person had, the performers on taller stages seemed to get more attention.

So I kept on posting song and dance shows, and after about 40 shows, I had about 40 followers, and I had about 40 stage-blocks!

Around that time I got my in-game first friend! They coin-flipped all of my shows! They left some long, insightful comments and critiques! I checked out their shows, and contributed all of my daily allowance of coins to their shows!

Then I checked my coin-flip value and discovered it was 100% worthless!

Then I noticed that I was locked out of the system.

I couldn't post comments, I couldn't post new shows, I couldn't edit my existing shows, I couldn't contribute coins to any shows. I had run out of something call action-points. I didn't even know these were part of the game!

Then magically, my new friend arbitrary-loaned me some special coins!

I didn't even know that was possible!

So the way the arbitrary-loan works, is that the loan-shark can take back their money at any time, and you (the debtor) can't actually spend the coins... BUT you get a much bigger daily allotment of action-points, a much bigger daily allowance of coins to share with other performers AND a much bigger daily allowance of water for you to shoot people in the face and make them drop some of their coins into the grid-pit.

This was great! I was on-top-of-the-world!

I was searching for cool shows and layin' down fat (not worthless) coin-flips! I was posting insightful comments! I was getting a few more followers! But my stage-blocks seemed to be frozen at 40 for some reason.

• to be continued...

ZOMBIEBASICTRAINING

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REGARDING THE STEEM-BOUNTY PROMO,

I want to see if I can find a steemian to make a short web-comic or animated video based on this idea (TBHTS) that might be a way of introducing new players to the game! If you know anybody, or if you're reading this and might be interested in a collaboration, just shoot me a comment!

For everyone else, just let me know what you think!