Trending Bob Barker: The #EyedentityGame

“Are you the reason Bob Barker is trending?”

I had people asking me some form of that question on 9 October, and while there’s no way to know for sure, that certainly seems to have been the case.

While it was undeniably cool to get a topic trending on Twitter, I know that a lot of people saw that and were worried that something untoward had happened to the 98 year old host of Truth or Consequences, The Price Is Right, and advocate for reducing the unwanted puppy and kitten population. I definitely think that’s part of what happened: most likely, my game started Bob Barker trending, then people who had nothing to do with the game saw he was trending, tweeted to see what was happening with him (and to admonish Twitter not to scare them if they found out he was okay…Twitter added “trending with” at one point a while back to try to mitigate that), which kept him trending, and so on…a “virtuous cycle”. He trended for hours that morning, and I saw it get close to 5,000 tweets.

So, what happened?

Since 28 April 2020, I’ve been doing a daily game on my Twitter account:

I post a picture of a celebrity’s eyes (I extract them from public domain, not under copyright protection, images), and people guess who it is. I reveal the answer the next day. That’s really all it is: no prizes, no fees, no memberships, I just do it for fun. I don’t do politicians (but, say, an actor who got into politics later might be used) or someone known just for criminal activity. The #EyedentityGame community tends to be positive and supportive of each other. I see it as a group effort between me and the players, not an adversarial one. The more people who get it, the happier I am!

Thanks to the trending, I think, I had many new players. Bob Barker had 163 correct guesses, making him second (out of 892 games at that point) to John Denver’s 171 and ahead of Gene Wilder’s 127. Almost everybody gets guessed by at least one player: literally 99%.

Anyway, I just wanted to let people know why Bob Barker had trended that morning. Thanks to all the players and interested non-players who made it happen, and best to Bob Barker!

Join thousands of readers and try the free The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard our The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project (AKA Enwoven)! Join the TMCGTT Timeblazers!

Bufo’s Alexa Skills

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the The Measured Circle blog. To support this or other organizations, begin your Amazon shopping from a link on their sites: Amazon.com (Smile.Amazon.com)