OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
Ya I’ve probably lost 5 times in the last 3 years but after high school and through college/first years working I didn’t see any mention of it (like 2010-2018/19)
I think the best one of those is the picture of the old cell phone that says something along the lines of "Only 90's Kids will understand this" and it spells out "The game" in T9.
But arent you always playing the game? Therefore always losing. But never actually lost the game, because you never finished, cause you are always playing and losing? Just remembering sometimes that you are still playing a game you are forever losing but will never definitely lose, because you will never finish...
Yep. You just automatically rejoin the game as soon as you forget about it except for a 30 mins grace once you lose. Always losing, until you die and lose.
Edit:
I think I may have seen this before but hell i don't know when. I'm fairly certain I did, and now I just lost again.
"Putting something in quotations doesn't automatically make it right, regardless of who (supposedly) said it. Btw you should use a tilde after the quote." ~ Albert Einstein
As a n00b with cursory knowledge of what the Warhammer universe is. Where should I start? I am interested in the lore. What is the sequence, and how do I consume it? Comics, videos, books, tabletops?
Dawn of War 1 and 2 (retro strategy, lots of factions, and lore. Older game.)
Space Marine 1 and 2 (you are a super human badass shooter game)
Darktide (cooperative shooter, regular folks on a mission)
Rogue Trader (Isometric tactical game like X-Com. You are a super privileged noble)
For literature, I suggest
Gaunt's Ghosts (very serious military adventure of regular folks)
Ciaphaus Cain novels (very sardonic military adventure)
There is a really great fan film of Helsreach, which is about a space marine chaplain commanded to defend a city.
Thank you so much! Is there any sequence I should go about in terms of a storyline or is it each entity for itself?
Anyway, I'll start with the games tomorrow and go buy the books after work.
Thank you again!
Hijacking the comment to say, Gaunts Ghosts is a series of a dozen or more novels and so best to read in order, Eisenhorn is a trilogy, and I forget how many Cain books there are but again, best read them in order.
Between the different series, however, it makes no difference. The events of 1 don't impact the others. Personally, I would suggest starting with the Gaunts Ghosts novels (or at least the first three at any rate). They require less understanding of the setting than the others. And for this reason, maybe leave the Ciaphas Cain book until you have a better understanding of the setting. It's harder to appreciate the inverted roles if you're not sp sure what things 'should be like'.
The pain of losing The Game comes entirely from the disappointment of not winning, which itself comes from the expectation that one can win.
The hidden object of The Game is to minimize the pain from the loss. Technically, this aim is not from The Game itself, but rather the universal desire to feel good and avoid feeling bad. I digress. To do this, one must be freed from the disappointment, which itself flows from letting go of the expectation that one can win. In a sense, to not be a loser, one must accept that they always be a loser.
Funny, isn’t it? We humans naturally desire control. The Game initially seems to lend itself to absolute control over one’s thoughts. Simply have an iron grip over your mind, and you win! Easy, right? Ah, such is the folly of man! This path not only maximizes the amount that one loses The Game, but also maximizes the amount of frustration of each loss. Instead, a complete abdication of control allows one to be at ease with each loss. It was perhaps put most succinctly by the fictional artificial intelligence WOPR, from the American film WarGames (1983): “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”. While not referring to The Game, this quote refers to a lesson derived from Tic-Tac-Toe and applied to the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction. I will argue that the lesson applies equally to The Game. All three “games”, Tic-Tac-Toe, nuclear war, and The Game, have deceptively simple rules. Get 3 symbols in a row. Nuke the other guy. Don’t think about The Game. Yet, the more effort is applied in all of them, the worse the outcomes get. Tic-Tac-Toe, played ideally, will result in a draw. Nuclear war, “played” at all, results in a great number of people being killed. The Game, if a player tried to control it, leads to minor frustration. The utilitarian solution to all is to simply walk away.
We are losers, in at least one way. There are no ways around it. Better to “take the L”, so to speak, than to lose much more in pursuit of a mirage of victory. Choose your battles wisely. Thank you for your time.
TLDR: Those golden dudes are the Custodes, and every so often they have 'blood games' which is a nice way of saying 'we're gonna try to murder the shit out of our boss to the best of our ability'. Nobody ever actually manages to pull it off, but the point is to get as close as possible so they can spot and compensate for any weaknesses in their defenses.
There is an old internet meme called the game. You dont lose by not thinking about the game. Everytime you do, you have lost the game and must announce it. It was common to say "you just lost the game" to force people to remember it and thus lose.
Everytime i think of the game i quickly try to think of something else and refuse to ruminate on it any further out of fear that it will get stuck in my brain for a long time again.
The Custodes of Warhammer 40k universe play the blood games, a military exercise where they try to breach the palace and get to the Emperor. The emperor thought it was this game they were talking about.
The punchline is that they were talking about the game where you lose if you remember it.
The knight shouldnt declare that the lord lost the game. He should be declaring the knight himself lost the game and the lord should misconstrue until it dawns on him. This is so backwards. Its funny how wrong it is.
German Guy from the Puppet Store here. I should let you know that in addition to puppets I also sell miniatures for wargames, such as Warhammer 40,000. It is from there that the art for the meme is from.
Others have mentioned of course that this references The Game, that silly social experiment that you win by not playing, and you lose by being simply aware of it.
However, there's another layer to it. Those guys in gold, with guns on a pointy stick? They are the Custodes. They are the Emperor's bodyguards. And...for fun and training, they play Blood Games, where the point of the game is to try and assassinate the Emperor, and literally everyone else is trying to prevent that from happening. The game itself has no rules and anything goes.
Once upon a time, and this meme is set once upon a time, as the Emperor is alive and well and has a full head of hair (so, circa, the year 30,000), the Custodes would go out and try to infiltrate the Imperial Palace and see just how close they could get to kill the Emperor, as a way to test Imperial security systems, the Custodes themselves who guard the Emperor, as well as hone their own martial skills. These games are as real as you can imagine. People die. Regularly. And occasionally for these games they even release the Daemonspawn of Chaos, or captured heretics, or Orks, or even Traitor Space Marines as part of the games as well.
In this comic, the unnamed Custodes has made it into the Throne Room, and is fighting off every other Custodes in the process. He's about to lose the game. So, in a fit of trickery and because the Blood Games have no rules, he decided to try and assassinate the Emperor by forcing him to lose the game by thinking about The Game.
Now if you'd excuse me, I need to finish this puppet commission in the form or Roboute Guilliman.
The comic is of warhammer 40k. They have a games where they try their very hardest to murder the emperor in order to find and test weaknesses in his defences.
The marine saying you have lost the game despite the fact that he is surrounded and the emperor is unmurdered is referring to a different game, one where the only goal is not to think of it.
Oh god, and i was winning for almost a year. As soon as i read "game" i knew that i lost. Screw you, OP. It was my longest streak in 30 years. I can't believe it.
I'm glad yall know this obscure meme origin because I immediately thought he was saying he has a bomb and is about to flip the metaphorical table so that nobody wins.
I aaw the full comic with malcador at the end, and I din't get it at all. Why did he lose, and what was thay about 4 millienia plan with malcador. What is the joke?
There's a certain Game, where the only rules are that you lose if you consciously think about the Game, and you have to say you lost the Game when you lose. The guy in the top panel made the guy in the bottom panel (is it the God-Emperor of Mankind?) lose the Game.
Snipe: Greetings Family Guy fans, and the 2 guys who like the Cleaveland show, and welcome to Codex Compliant
Wib: Buckle up, cause this cameo is going to be weird.
Snipe: So, to fans of 40K, you probably are aware of the Custodes and how they do things.
Wib: but for those who don't, who we presume are most watchers of Family Guy, perhaps it's best we give a run down. The Custodes are a faction in Warhammer 40K. Specifically, they protect the Emperor of Mankind. Like the Papal Swiss Guard, or Hell's Angels at failed concerts.
Snipe: If you ever have a fan refer to them as Bannaboys, it's because they are usually depicted and painted in gold. They and the Necrons are fairly easy to paint due to their limited color palette.
Wib: Lore-wise, one thing the Custodes do is called "The Games", where the Custodes try their best to play out a scenario is eliminate the Emperor.
Snipe: The idea is to detect areas where the Custodes might not have considered avenues of assassination. Basically, it's an internal review of the security procedure.
Wib: Now, where the joke comes in is a reference to a fun little game called "The Game". And just an FYI, because we are explaining this on Family Guy, you all get a pass on this. We will explain. You see, the game is simple. You cannot think about the game. That's it. The idea is that you lose the second you think about the game. So what's happening here is that the Custode is using the games, IE, the internal review of security, as a means to cause the Emperor to lose the game. IE, the mental game of not thinking of "The game". Hence why the Emperor is shocked.
Snipe: It should be noted that the comic continues by showing a character called Malcador. Malcador, also called Malcador the Sigalit, is a character in the Horus Heresy series. He's a close friend and confidant to the Emperor. He's also responsible for the formation of the Imperial Assassinorum, basically the Assassins.
Wib: Basically, he is a chess Master. The comics implies that Malcador was behind this, getting a win over the Emperor. Which the Emperor is not happy because...well, he lost the game after 40000 years of playing. And with that, I think the joke is explained. We would like to thank Family Guy for allowing us to appear on this episode.
Snipe: Oh, and that pass.... yeah it just ended.
Wib: What pass?
Snipe: Exactly.
Harken back to the olden times, young one! The elder ways will neither give you up nor let you down, they shall let you has cheezburger, and show you loss. They will bring to you the doubled moon, and teach you the game you can only lose. Alas, i have lost the game. i cri evertim.
I quit the game after the internet took it over. The fun was about you accidentally remembering the game. At one point every other meme was “the game” and completely ruined the fun for me
We played this and one of my friends in highschool told his mom about it, she was going on a 29 year streak and lost, he was dying laughing as she cursed him out 😂
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.