I've never used crack.
I never thought that would bother me, but now I have strong feelings about a thing called Trivia Crack and I wish I knew just how closely the two are related.
My guess is that, aside from the superficial, market-y, tongue-in-cheek type comparisons (so addictive! fun to share with friends, but then you get mad at each other for weird reasons!) the two actually have very little in common. Trivia Crack may waste some of your time and strain your eyeballs, but it has not been decimating impoverished communities for the last three decades.
This is where my strong feelings come in: Trivia Crack is dumb. The name is dumb, the questions are dumb, and if my victorious record against strangers can be believed, most of the people playing it are dumb (because seriously, y'all, I don't even know where I am most of the time). And yet, I have played maybe fifteen games since downloading it on Saturday. I've seen and heard of many other people playing it. There are t-shirts featuring "Trivia Crack characters".
I don't get it, but it's a thing in America, and so I care (see also: most politicians, the VMAs, Sex and the City reruns).
Dearest America, why are we getting all excited about something named Crack? Why do we not think it is wack? Would you play a game called Trivia Booze or Trivia Endemic Community Problems?
Actually...America has a strange, long, presumably proud history of naming things in a way that one sincerely hopes never turns out to be literal: Death by Chocolate, the surprisingly web-savvy Slap Ya Momma hot sauce, Kahlua Mudslide, Sex on the Beach (think of the sand, people -- it's not worth it!). Hell, we have a long tradition of just calling things "crack" when what we really mean is "it's really good". I've seen crack pie, crack cookies, crack brownies -- almost all sweets, although I'm sure that there's a bacon crack somewhere - the pinnacle of "add this word to anything to make it sound good" mania.
And I guess the "mania" bit is what's really tying me in knots about this game. I don't know much about crack, but I've been led to believe that it makes you feel PHENOMENAL. And then it makes your life EXCRUCIATING. It's a substance of extremes, of power - it gets hold of you, and then your life cannot be separated from it. Naming the best pie or brownies or bacon in the world pie/brownie/bacon crack is still extreme, but it makes sense. I have been transported by pie! I have felt like I might be willing to shiv someone over some really great bacon! I understand the highs and lows, the agony and the ecstasy of America's relationship with food.
Life-changing pie, however, Trivia Crack is not. I've been, at turns, mildly annoyed and slightly smirky about it, just as I've been about a lunchbox-clammy RingDing. Calling it "crack" goes way beyond normal salesman-like braggadocio. It's utter nonsense that tears at the fabric of our shared language and, thus, our culture.
We all know marketers are lying to us, but the lie is supposed to have some hope of truth in it. If we don't stop this fast-rolling boulder of misnaming now, grocery stores will start labeling day-old bread "loaf o' crack"; my terrible mailman will earn the title "bacon mail crack"; TMZ will be "the crack of television journalism"....and then, all of a sudden, crack will mean bad...and then it will all make sense...
Disregard all of the above, Trivia Crack, and godspeed!
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