Kelly Clancy

And this has been true for a really long time.

I was talking about Renaissance Venice.

They had this...

six month long carnival season, which is when people could like gamble and dance and drink and go crazy.

And they were all wearing masks.

So it was kind of like the original anonymous internet users in a way.

So everyone was wearing a mask.

So like the poor could socialize with the rich and everyone could just be who they wanted to be.

Yeah, that's something really fascinating too.

Like the fact that we're still playing chess, like we could go back a thousand years and the rules might be slightly different, but we could still play with somebody from a thousand years ago or go, you know, you could play with somebody many thousands of years ago.

And it really goes to show how

instinctual what how deep in the brain these these games are kind of hitting us the fact that we are still playing chess is really a testament to how complex and brilliant that game is so for example like tic-tac-toe kids play it but no adult plays it because by the time you're like i don't know eight or nine you've played through enough times that you know as long as you get the center uh square

It's going to be a draw.

There's pretty much no way of winning tic-tac-toe.

If you're playing right and you're playing with somebody who also plays right, it's always a draw.

So it stops being interesting because it stops having uncertainty.

It stops being something unknown.

In chess, you could kind of explore.

Even checkers, you could explore for years and years and still learn new things about it.

And yeah, I think that's something that's maybe often mischaracterized is we often have this characterization of gamers as lonely in their rooms, not talking to people.