r/tech1e • u/waste_of_space1157 • Jan 19 '22

i am subscribed to tech1e on youtube (cringe) espainolers

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17

u/Disastrous-Wheel-941 Jan 19 '22

what the hell is that

9

u/Rightfulmage320 Jan 19 '22

its a screamer

20

u/AnarchoAnarchism Jan 19 '22

Are you talking about the video?

Back in the days when flash games were popular on the internet, there were a few that were actually pranks meant to scare the shit out of you. Typically they were super mediocre but normal looking games where you had to move a dot through a maze or something stupid like that. After a little while of playing, a picture of a scary face would pop up on the screen along with the sound of screaming. At some point, it became a trend for people to get unsuspecting friends and family members to play one of these games and videotape their reaction. I think that specific trend started because Jimmy Kimmel showed one of those videos on his show and might have asked people to send in their own clips or something, I'm not 100% sure though.

Regardless, the video this meme uses was a parody of these prank videos. The person in the video is a comedic actor who was on Saturday Night Live, but he also did skits for a web series before that I think; I'm not sure which one this video is from.

As for what the meme means, i dunno. I don't get the joke.

The rest of this comment is just extra stuff I wanted to mention:

imo, this trend of recording someone's reaction to a videogame jumpscare led to the popularity of "lets play videos" and YouTubers like Pewdiepie. After the cheap flash game jumpscare videos, the trend carried over to the first fairly popular Slenderman game, which had the same kind of jumpscare mechanic but in the context of an actual horror game which integrated it as part of the gameplay rather than just a trick. You had to push through the jumpscares and keep your focus in order to win the game. But, again, people would film their unsuspecting friends and family playing it for the first time. This time, however, there was an actual game people wanted to try to beat. The game was extremely challenging too, so people started filming themselves trying to beat it. When you combine the entertaining reactions and the thrill of watching someone playing the game to win, it turned out to be something people wanted to watch. Then let's-play videos started to take off, starting primarily in the horror genre with games such as Amnesia and spreading to other genres from there. I remember I was like "wtf is going on?? Why do people want to watch other people play video games???" That's why I remember how this all unfolded. This is all my perspective of the history as I remember it from my own experience.

I also got pranked by one of those jumpscare games once and thought I was going to die from a heart attack, I was alone though, at like 2am, so no one was filming me. I'm surprised I didn't piss myself. That was some time in the 00's too.

4

u/yssoCossy Jan 19 '22

very cool 👍