Counting

**Counting** is the national sport of Gobcord and has been popular in the server since 2021. The sport has been played for over 50,000 years in the form of finger counting, colloquially referred to as "fingering," and has been known to have been played by numeric notation, the modern form of counting, since the Neolithic age. The sport was popularized sometime in the 2010s in Discord servers with "counting channels," in which people would count from 1, one at a time, with a certain set of rules on how many people can count at once or what is considered a legal "count." Since these rules were often deliberately made arbitrary and/or restrictive, the first person to break any of the rules would lose, and the count would restart from 1. The sport was introduced into Gobcord by Pink as a personal psychological experiment.

## Counting in Gobcord

Counting was introduced into Gobcord by Pink on 23 April 2021 as part of a convoluted psychoanalytic observation on Gobcord's members. It is thought that the experimentalism of counting to Pink was more of an excuse to mess with people; this purportedly false experimental merit would be later used to argue against the initial discontinuation of the sport. Counting was divided into two channels; the actual "counting channel" and a channel dedicated to the coding of the rules which would be followed in Gobcord counting and general counting discussion. The rules of the game, created by Pink, went as follows:

1. *You count*
2. *Leave a space between the number and whatever text you may want to add*
3. *Only standard numbers* [Arabic numerals] *count, no fancy fonts or emotes*
4. *No editing messages or I* [Pink] *will know*
5. *Anything that isn't a count will reset the count, if you reset the count on purpose you instantly die*
6. *Leave at least three spaces* [let three different people count after you] *before doing another count yourself (to prevent one-man counting)*
7. *Never question counting* [Originally formatted as the fifth rule]

Anyone who broke the rules would be often temporarily, or in some cases permanently, disbarred from counting and given the "can't count" role. A majority of counters never read the rules, with the most common rule broken being #6. The original wording of this rule, rephrased above in brackets to clarify its intended meaning, often confused counters. Whether this poor wording was intentional or not is unknown. Because of these standards, Gobcord counting requires a minimum of four people to play.

### Terminology

As the sport matured in Gobcord, its players have developed a vernacular to describe certain aspects of the sport.

A "count" is both a game of counting beginning at 1 and continuing until a "break," or a violation of the rules, or an individual message within a game of counting.

"One-man counting" is when only two people continue a count and oscillate between each other, which is prohibited in Gobcord counting.

A "counter" is a player of counting; someone participating in the current count.

Being "cc'd" meant being disbarred from a count after breaking the previous count, where you were given the moniker "can't count," hence the expression "cc'd." This terminology was abandoned after the discontinuation of the competitive sport.

"Meta-counting" is the act of multiple (at least more than one) players appending the same repeating gimmick to their counts for humor or added difficulty.

### Meta

During games of counting, counters often try to string together a joke thread on top of their counting thread. This would either be a thread of similar jokes, song lyrics, or just the same word/emote. The most popular of these meta-counts is "shaprio counting," in which counters, on top of properly counting, also include an emote of conservative pundit and invertebrate pansy Ben Shapiro smirking and the written word form of whatever number they are proceeding. Shapiro counting had a significant cultural impact on Gobcord, as this metaposting is still present in the server.

## Original discontinuation of counting

As popularity of the sport plummeted in the summer of 2021, a convention of Congress (now the Council of Gobernors) decided in a 4-1 vote (with 1 not present) on 21 July 2021 to send the counting channels into the Library of Alexandria to be archived, ending what is retroactively referred to as "Pink Counting." Two days later, on 23 July 2021, coincidentally on the 3-month anniversary of the competitive sport's introduction, Pink Counting was archived forever. The only person to oppose counting's archive was Pink, who argued that his "experiment" was not yet complete. This objection fell on deaf ears. While counting has died in Gobcord in a competitive sense, there is nothing stopping from people playing the sport for leisure, though this rarely happens.

The record for highest count achieved in a game of counting in Gobcord is 401, achieved by counters on 10 May 2021 at 8:56 PM EST and broken by Matt two minutes later. This event -- "401" -- is considered the 9/11 of Gobcord.

### Matt Counting

On 17 October 2021, Gobernor Matt began a new game of counting 3 months after the initial sport was discontinued. The rules of this game were a more concise version of Pink's original five rules:

1. *count ig*
2. *If you make a mistake, you're gone* [amended by rule 7]
3. *You can add messages to your number as long as you add a space after the number*
4. *After counting, wait another three numbers* [players] *so you can count again (i.e.: **1** 2 3 4 **5**)*
5. *After a mistake, the count must be reset to 1*
6. [This gif of someone getting bodied by a Christmas tree]
7. *Okay actually rule 2 may be a bit severe we'll just do it the way we used to; we can forgive some mistakes (bias)* [amended by beginning of Count Games]
8. *Be honest. Do not delete your mistake if any has been made* [added by Sketchy]
9. *Go fuck yourself lmao*
10. *Follow the rules and make sure to not have a little bit of fun, not a moderate amount of fun, but A LOT of fun!!!* [added by Ker]

As opposed to Pink Counting, Matt Counting was administered independently by Matt rather than by Pink and the rest of Congress. To distinguish it from the original sport that was played from April to July 2021, this version of counting is referred to as "Matt Counting," also referred to as "Count Game," with the former game being given the retronym "Pink Counting."

Under Matt Counting, the game was intended to progress as it once did under Pink, but after a count break of 196, Matt opted to switch to a form of counting called "Count Game," in which the second contingency of Matt Counting was tripled down upon and anyone who broke a count would be permanently eliminated from the game. The name for this style of counting originates from the South Korean drama Netflix series *Squid Game*, in which contestants participate in a series of games for a prize of immense money with the stipulation of their loss being death.

Matt Counting ended on 29 March 2022 at 7:31 PM EST after several eliminations, with Ker, Matt, and Sketchy being declared the three Winners of Counting Ever; the winners were each rewarded a fat set of tits on their chests. Three winners were declared instead of one because, in accordance with the rules, counting cannot continue with three people alone. Matt Counting lasted more than double the amount of time Pink Counting ran for.

## 2023 Counting revival

Following the two discontinuations of Pink Counting and Matt Counting, Pink would then revive the sport on 1 November 2023. As opposed to the original Pink Counting, which was overseen by all of the server administration, this form of counting was overseen by one person -- originally Pink, but then newly-reelected owner Sam -- known as the Count Czar, a play on the game Cards Against Humanity.

This version of counting, which continues to this day, maintains the basic rules of counting: digits only, three spaces between individual counts, and a space after every number counted before a message can be appended.

### Official rules

Given the number of reiterations of counting, there have been questions as to what counts as fundamental rules to the game and what counts as circumstantial rules that only applied to that particular version of counting. As of 2023, these are the current official rules of counting:

1. Participants count, in the form of a message, one at a time beginning from 1
2. A count can only be considered legal if it meets the following criteria: - The message which contains the count begins with the number it is counting - The count expresses a whole, positive integer in Arabic numerals in standard text (no special formatting) - The count is one more than the count that precedes it - The count is submitted after 3 people other than the counter have already counted (the 3 spaces rule) - The number submitted in the count must have a space between any additional text appended to the count message
3. If a count violates the criteria above, the offending player is removed from the game and the count restarts from 1

## Psychological Effects

Some certain minor psychological effects have been observed from players of counting, most notably an increase of anxiety and irritability. Initially, after a couple of count breaks, some players began experiencing "gun-shyness" or, more accurately, "count-shyness" -- the anxiety associated with trying not to break a count -- despite not playing the game. Affected persons would unconsciously hesitate from speaking in outside text channels in worry of losing the game, despite there being no game where they talked. Additionally, players -- particularly losing players -- have been vexed by psychological Kafkaism; the feeling of frustration and confoundment under an incomprehensible and nonsensical authority. This Kafkaism is fueled by players' lack of understanding of the rules, and thus believing rules were being enforced with no real purpose or justification.

Ruminating in these two mental phenomena, some players who had been "cc'd," disbarred from playing after breaking a count, exhibited a prideful fickleness in their defeat. After disbarment, some players expressed outrage generalized toward the game chaperones, and demanded they be allowed to count again. Their participation in the game would typically be reinstated after some time; within a day or so. However, upon reinstatement, these players would then refuse to participate in counting and claim that the game was unworthy of their time.

In summary, three distinct psychological phenomena were observed to have affected players of Pink Counting: Gun-shyness/count-shyness, the pervasive fear of breaking a count even when not playing the game; psychological Kafkaism, the feeling of confoundment and hopelessness under the perception of an incomprehensible, unknown authority onset by a lack of understanding or misunderstanding of the sport's rules; and count pride, the frustration of being punished for breaking count followed by the prideful indifference to their punishment being lifted.

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical\_notation#cite\_note-2
2. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number#cite\_note-15
3. ↑ Me
4. ↑ https://grammarist.com/compound-words/gun-shy/
5. ↑ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Kafkaesque#:~:text=Kafka's%20work%20is%20characterized%20by,or%20control%20what%20is%20happening.