"It’s a FAT ZERO. HELLO!! A little LATE ADDITION to the numerical symbol chart brought to us from our friends in Arabia, a little bit of trivia that I happen to know about the history of numbers. That kind of little tidbit would serve me well in most trivia games, unless it had been RIGGED FROM THE BEGINNING!"
[ID: Image one is a Spotify playlist titled "i’ve only just begun to pull the thread on this sweater". Its cover image shows Brennan Lee Mulligan on Game Changer saying "I know what's going on here." The following images are all the songs on the playlist. Together, they spell out his whole monologue for the "Brennan Cannot Win" game, as follows (with added punctuation):
"Friends, you would think in a game where there are only two possible correct choices, that one would stumble into the right answer every so often, wouldn’t you? In fact, the probability of never guessing right in the full game is a statistical wonder, and yet, here we are. Introduced at the top of the game as a champion, what do you think that means? Icarus, flying too close to the sun. But it seems Daedalus, our little master crafter over here, had some wax wings of his own, didn’t he? Wanted to see his son fall. Fall from the sky. Oh, how close to the sun he flew! Well I’m not having it. I solved your labyrinth, puzzle master! The minotaur‘s escaped and you’re gonna get the horns, buddy! I cannot win!" End ID]
[Caption transcript: "It’s a fat zero. Hello!! A little late addition to the numerical symbol chart brought to us from our friends in Arabia, a little bit of trivia that I happen to know about the history of numbers. That kind of little tidbit would serve me well in most trivia games, unless it had been rigged from the beginning!" End transcript]
hey sorry we put your players in a time loop. yeah they can only win by learning, and they can only learn by playing. yeah grant o’brien is carboloading next to their podiums. yeah they know that x equals 8 so y must equal 6. no they can’t use the ladder. yeah now they’re doing the wenis. sorry.
Imagine you’re friends with someone who hosts a really popular internet game show, and he invites you on a couple of times and you gain a reputation for winning that gameshow. Then, he sets up a show where the whole point of it is that you cannot win the game, just to break your streak of the whole thing. Your trust breaks just a little bit.
Next time, he asks you to put on a mic pack for another episode of the game show, turns out it’s a heart rate monitor for another episode where you have to sit there and be almost tortured as you attempt to keep yourself calm. Your trust is devolving.
Next time, you come on the show, he tells you to go and wait in the green room and locks you in there, he’s a recording on the screen because he’s locked in the bathroom, he’s been there the whole time, you’re forced to do an escape room to go to work. You don’t know if you can trust him anymore.
Next time, you go on the show, you play bingo, you don’t trust him, something’s wrong, he’s been manipulating players to manipulate players into manipulating players. There was no way for you to win this one, not really.
You are a mouse trapped in a maze
You are a performing monkey at the circus
You are the most popular person on TikTok despite not having a tiktok
You are Brennan Lee Mulligan and this is your life. Sam is your boss, your chief scientist and ringmaster. You will never escape.
Everybody acts like each new Game Changer is a new level of betrayal and psychological torture from Sam towards his friends.
Did we forget that the very first game changer was "Sam wheels out a strange machine and asks the contestants embarrassing personal questions, the veracity of their responses is judged by the Machine.
The machine is actually controlled by the contestant's significant others who have been made accomplices. Forcing their loved ones into revealing shameful truths for internet broadcast."
And sure, he's gotten a bit more personalized with these, constructing a variety of torture chambers for Brennan Lee Mulligan specifically, putting Grant O'Brien in various situations and then bringing his mother onto the set. But deception and betrayal were part of Game Changer from the beginning.
So, when I hear people say "I can't believe Sam WENT THERE" about something all I can do is think to myself
He went nowhere
He's been there the whole time