Thomas Walker has worked in the advertising industry for over 18 years. He has accomplished author, a frequent speaker, a world-recognized history on a subject that doesn't matter at all. Please welcome Thomas Walker. Hello. Alright, so we've talked about a bunch of things related to rock. Everything from monuments and mountains and you name it. This is what I think of when I think of rock. I think we closed this powering down on a poorly chosen pair of scissors. So me, this is what it is truly all about. And for about 10 years it actually took about a third of my attention. Here's another rock. This is actually called Argy's Rock. It's probably my parents cottage. One drunk in evening with my brother in a late fall. We played a best of 13 match to pick who has to get wood for the fire. It was a disaster. I totally destroyed them. But what the interesting thing is it was really intense. And what happened at night created something called the World Rock paper scissors society. And obviously I haven't been literally serving people since 1918. We've developed a bit of a backstory on that. So when the hangover worked off, I was still kind of left with this notion that you know what? There's even more to this game that I actually thought about. So it's an excuse to start a website. Excuse me, but this is what websites look like in 1995. This website was equal parts, game theory, armchair psychology and applied bullshit. So what happened was it created a bit of a culture. People started talking about it. And so this what you see here is what we call gametes. And that is a series of free moves made with strategic intention or a short-hand way. So you've got power moves like the avalanche or potentially more theoretical intellectual moves like the scissors sandwich. Now as many you probably realize a game that is blade largely with hands doesn't leave much of a trace in the ecological record. So we were allowed to create the culture and history of rock paper scissors without any constraint of facts. We got a lot of our inspiration from communist and cultural revolution imagery because it was really powerful. People always had their fists out. It was the labor movements and everything like that. And it was something that meant a lot to us and just seemed to work really, really well for the movement. So gradually we had this website people were coming to it. We started selling memberships in the world rock paper scissors. We started selling shirts. And we started making some money off it. And strangely enough there was a lot of people who got most of it. So we did probably what anybody would do and we took all of that money and said okay this is going to be a prize person. We're going to hold a party for our friends and we're going to call it the goddamn world championship rock paper scissors. So we did. This is one of one of the events that we actually put on. And you can see the intensity that is actually involved in a game like this. This is the 2004 champion Lee Ranch find where excellent player. And what we realized that we were really kind of on to something because it was actually the first time we held this event. It was a lineup three walks long and so the snowstorm to actually get into the event. We're scalp and tickets a couple of years later we had CBS ABC, BBC, all elbowing each other to try and get pictures of this guy, a master of motion, a molla who is a rock paper scissors. He really is the Michael Jordan of the sport. The cool thing about it was he was a Michael Jordan. He was the best person in the sport because we told him he was. Around this time we actually got contacted by a book agent who managed magically to get six publishers interested in publishing the official rock paper scissors strategy guide. This is something that some of the times you choose to know their regrets to this very day. But we also had a group of calorie people following us around creating a documentary on the subject. And actually in 2007 this film rock paper scissors technique tragedy one of the one the audience choice award itself. As we started thank you very much. As we started expanding a little bit other countries started sending their champions to the world championships. And believe me you've never experienced anything until you've had to deal with the ego of a rock paper scissors national champion. It was unbelievable. One of the hardest decisions I ever had to make in my life. This is true. I'm not lying to you was whether Fox or ESPN should get the television rights to rock paper scissors championships. In the end Fox got it and I learned a really valuable lesson. Rock paper scissors is not as good a televised sport as you might think it is. So we can do that again. In 2008 we actually won a rock paper. I'm sorry we won a Guinness World Record for the largest rock paper scissors competition. When I found this out like the 12 year old inside me like peed his pants with excitement. But the adults in me made me realize that the Guinness is really jump the shark. One of the one more interesting things that happened was it was a Japanese gentleman who sold an art collection that was worth approximately $20 million to the castles and a bunch of others. He couldn't decide which of these venerable auction houses should sell it. Who got it? Rock paper scissors was the largest most expensive rock paper scissors match in history of $12 million. Okay. So we talked all about this stuff. I got back up for one half second and just say it's not a game of chance. You might think it is but it actually is. It's two people making an active decision on that. They are subject to it and I've scutted the data to prove it. Over thousands and thousands of matches that happen at our events. You would expect this would that if it were truly random it would be a third to third for each of these various throws. But obviously Rock is the choice of most rock paper scissors players at about 37% and people tend to shy away from scissors. So I'll leave you with one final thought and that is I'm sure all of you are familiar with the gentleman by name of Seer Bans is one of the top seven rock paper scissors strategists in the world. And his line is something that I will never forget. When he said paper is the answer should rock to be the question. Thank you very much. Thank you.