Last Man 2014

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

Here is my annual live-tweeting window for #LastMan. (I’m not playing, but others are.)

What the heck is #LastMan, you ask? Read on, underneath the live-tweeting window, to find out.

WARNING: This post contains #TheKnowledge.

 

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Last Man, a.k.a. #lastman, is a game of deliberate media / knowledge avoidance, invented by Mid-Majority founder Kyle Whelliston. Its full name is “Last Man in America to Know Who Won the Super Bowl.”

Last Man’s five canonical rules are as follows:

Rule 1. The object of this game is to avoid, for as long as possible, learning a) the winner and b) the final score of the Super Bowl. This data is called The Knowledge.

Rule 2. Don’t flee the country. Leaving America means immediate disqualification.

Rule 3. Always play honestly.

Rule 4. If you receive information that might constitute The Knowledge, but you aren’t certain (e.g., if someone might be “messing with you” by telling you a false winner or score), you can opt not to believe the uncertain information and keep playing. However, if it turns out that the uncertain information was correct, the game’s end point is retroactive to when The Knowledge was, in fact, known.

Rule 5. Nobody ever wins. It’s a game you play against yourself, so it always ends in a loss, eventually.

Who is eligible to play Last Man? That’s a subject of some disagreement. Kyle says:

One of the more common questions I get about Last Man is this: why isn’t there such a thing as Last Woman? Aren’t there Title IX considerations to take into account? Is this some sort of institutional sexism? I say hogwash on all counts. This is one game where women have unfair and unmistakable advantages over men. Most females in the United States can’t name more than a few NFL teams, much less bother to keep track of the pro playoffs. There is no possible way an American man can compete on a level playing field.

I respectfully disagree with Kyle, and would argue that “anyone who is a sports fan and regular consumer of sports-related media and information,” male or female, should be eligible (and anyone who is not a sports fan/consumer, male or female, should not be eligible, since the game isn’t nearly as much of a challenge for such people). But I’m just some guy who played the game once, and who has followed it a few times; my opinions carry no official weight. Kyle’s stance is the canonical one.

Here are some helpful, historical links about Last Man:

2007:

  • Sort of an oblique discussion of the Last Man concept: http://www.midmajority.com/p/540

2008:

  • I think this is the first post where Kyle publicly discussed Last Man as a game: http://www.midmajority.com/p/769
  • Kyle’s post about his Last Man run being hilariously ended on Tuesday by the student section at a Valparaiso game: http://www.midmajority.com/p/777

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2009:

  • Kyle’s post on Last Man XXI, when he only lasted ~16 hours: http://www.midmajority.com/p/1271

2010:

  • Kyle’s running liveblog of Last Man XXII, when he made it to Thursday night, his personal record: http://www.midmajority.com/p/1595

2011:

  • Kyle’s backgrounder ahead of Last Man XXIII: http://www.midmajority.com/p/1898  
      
  • Kyle’s running liveblog of Last Man XXIII: http://www.midmajority.com/p/1899  
    (This is probably Kyle’s best & most thorough #lastman post ever.)

  • My Cover It Live & screenshot-based live-tweet archive of Last Man (and Find The Last Man): http://www.brendanloy.com/lrt/2011/02/findthelastman/

2012:

  • My Cover It Live tweet archive of Kyle and other Mid-Majority community members playing #lastman: http://www.brendanloy.com/lrt/2012/02/last-man-live-and-go-giants/

2013:

  • My blog post, with photos, videos, etc., and Cover It Live live-tweet archive of myself & others playing #lastman: http://www.brendanloy.com/lrt/2013/02/last-man-live/

2014:

Who’s playing this year? Here’s the Twitter List. We had, to my knowledge, 15 players at the beginning:

  • @abigaildrozek
  • @appflyer
  • @billthay
  • @carney
  • @dgmcdowell
  • @hradzka
  • @jmsmllr
  • @jscottfitzwater
  • @kateyiannis
  • @laurenlyster
  • @notsalome
  • @oddblots
  • @stlvufan
  • @timmybarry
  • @travelingraytmm

As per usual, however, they started dropping like flies shortly after the Super Bowl ended – releasing #TheKnowledge into the wild – at 9:55 PM Eastern Time Sunday.

On Sunday night, we lost @kateyiannis to Death by Roommate (i.e., an in-person spoiler by @flowrmeadow), @AppFlyer to Death by College Friend, @billthay to Death by CBS Sports App push alert (immediately after surviving two flights), and @timmybarry to Death by a Friend at an Ohio Rest Stop.

On Monday morning, we lost @hradzka (who had begun playing #lastman by accident) to Death by Twitter, @StlVUFan to Death by Cleveland Leader, and @LaurenLyster to Death by E-mail Subject Line and CNN Chryon. Monday afternoon saw another casualty: @jmsmllr, who suffered Death by Sabotage in AP Biology class.

That’s eight #lastman casualties in the first 24 hours, which leaves seven still alive (among known, declared players) as of Monday night: @abigaildrozek, @carney, @dgmcdowell, @jscottfitzwater, @notsalome, @oddblots and @travelingraytmm.

Here are some notable Monday-evening tweets from our still-alive players:

That’s a tweet from J. Scott Fitzwater’s wife, Abigail, confirming that both Fitzwaters are still in the game. (Scott is a #LastMan Hall of Famer, or would be if that existed. He was burned Monday morning last year, but he still doesn’t know who won the 2012 Super Bowl.)

Ray is this season’s Mid-Majority Traveler – essentially, “this year’s Kyle Whelliston” – but he also has a day job as a high-school teacher in Connecticut, so he assumed he’d be out early. Instead, he was saved by the snow day!

Kyle, incidentally, either isn’t playing #lastman this year, or isn’t talking about it. Disillusioned by the media coverage (see also here and here), he has declared that #lastman “belongs to the people now.”

Anyway, back to the notable tweets from this year’s runners:

Carney is a Wall Street Journal writer (as of today; he just moved over from CNBC), and this year’s most prominent #lastman player. Last year, he made it to early Wednesday morning.

And finally…

Carney, with his CNBC and WSJ gigs and his 42K followers, may be the most prominent #KnowledgeRunner, but McDowell has emerged as this year’s social-media “face of Last Man” (a.k.a. this year’s Brendan Loy), posting frequent updates on his #lastman status via a carefully filtered and curated Twitter presence. He was also featured in this morning’s ABC News article by Alyssa Newcomb – link here; #TheKnowledge-free redacted version here – which was tweeted out by @Nightline (1.4 million followers) and @Ron_Fournier (25,000 followers), among others.

As for the other two still-standing #KnowledgeRunners…

So, there you have it: your seven contenders, still running from The Knowledge.

Finally, here are some notable milestones that certain players might be aiming for, keeping in mind that the game ended at 9:55 PM Eastern Time (vs. 10:44 PM last year):

Wednesday, ~8:40 AM Eastern: John Carney’s personal record (2 days, 10 hours, ~45 minutes)

Wednesday, 11:49 AM Eastern: My personal record (2 days, 13 hours, 54 minutes)

Friday, 12:44 AM Eastern: Kyle Whelliston’s personal record (4 days, 2 hours, 49 minutes*)

Sometime in February 2016 (or later): J. Scott Fitzwater’s personal record (1 year, 363 days and counting)

*This was Kyle’s time in 2010. I should note, however, that he has given conflicting accounts about an early game of #lastman, way back in 1989, when the Bengals played the 49ers. He wrote six years ago that he made it “until Wednesday afternoon” that year, but then stated three years ago, “I don’t remember how long I went. It was weeks and weeks, almost to March. But I do remember how I found out. There was a stack of old Sporting News copies in the local public library. On the cover of one, a color picture and a headline: ‘49ers Strike Gold.’” I don’t know which account is more accurate, but for purposes of this milestone, I’m treating his best time of the Mid-Majority Era, from 2010, as the “record.”

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE: Man down! Man down! The Mid-Majority’s “Traveler,” Ray Curren, is out of the game, having acquired #TheKnowledge after 1 day, 9 hours and 40 minutes.

Here’s a follow-up tweet by Curren, explaining how he would have lost anyway, a short while thereafter, at the high school in Connecticut where he teaches, if NPR hadn’t caught him first:

So anyway, we’re down to six. And it’s a struggle out there:

Keep running, guys!!

TUESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: We are down to the #lastman Final Four, folks. @notsalome and @oddblots are out:

TUESDAY EVENING UPDATE: And just like that, BOOM, only two remain.

First, this, at 8:30 PM Eastern Time:

They didn’t stay a “final three” for long, though. Barely an hour later:

And so, only two remain in contention:

More from Carney:

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: There are no new eliminations to report. Both of the remaining #runners still lack #TheKnowledge at last report. They’ve now lasted longer than I did last year:

The day’s biggest drama thus far was created accidentally by me, as explained in this Storify. Oops. I hope nobody suffers Death By Brendan Loy!

Then there was this exchange with @dgmcdowell (well, really with his “conduit” to the social media world, @jsalario):

Here’s what Kyle had to say about “quitting” back in 2011. (I had forgotten that I got the marathon analogy directly from him.)

Let us, just for a second, contemplate what it means to quit. It’s one of the words we have that means multiple things, a small failure of our language. Sports is a world where there are many quitters: the DNF’s, the abandoners, those who give up in the middle. In Our Game, quitting is to retire from competition even as the competition continues on. Players walk away suddenly; teams give up hope in the middle of seasons or games. It’s the Q word, the worst thing.

In real life, quitting means to stop doing something. To quit a job is to leave and do something else, to quit a relationship is to snap a string connecting you to another person. I don’t think this is the same thing as in organized sports; in one of the two, it’s the wrong word to use, and I don’t know which should stop using it. In sports, the primary narrative is the team, the season, the game itself. To remove individual will from a grander collective effort and struggle is only a small piece of the story; quitting will not disrupt things that much, if at all. In the human arc, quitting anything represents a major plot twist.

This is why Last Man is more like life than sport. There is no set time goal, and it’s wide open, featuring a beginning but no middle or end. The game can theoretically last until actual death, and nobody among us knows if there’s television in the afterlife. I do, however, have a strong inclination that hell gets each and every one of the ESPN channels.

Beginning marathon runners often report a powerful urge to abandon, which kicks in after 20 miles or so. It gets very psychological: Why am I running? What would finishing this race really prove? My legs hurt. There, over there, that grass patch… doesn’t that look comfortable? Let’s sit down. Those who give in and stop are quitters in context: they know they still had six miles to go, and there’s no ambiguity about that.

In Last Man, there is no finish line. But I will not quit. I will not stop. I am a Knowledge Runner.

David is still running, but here is his latest update, a few minutes ago:

Keep running!!

WEDNESDAY EVENING UPDATE: Turns out, Fitzwater has been out since yesterday. McDowell is the #lastman standing!

Congrats, David! But remember: Rule 5. It always ends in a loss. Until #TheKnowledge wins, the game goes on.

THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE: Of course, “the record” we’re discussing just refers to Kyle’s personal best. The all-time record is nigh unassailable, and it reached a new milestone last night:

Meanwhile, on the morning of Day 4, McDowell is getting all philosophical:

I hope nobody takes that as a challenge. Keep running, David!

THURSDAY MIDDAY UPDATE: The game is over! David McDowell has been eliminated, in stunning fashion, by an anonymous #lastassassin – who, it turns out, also eliminated Abigail Drozek!

But how was David knocked out?

Attention quickly turned to investigating the @Sea43_Den8 account… which led to a shocking surprise.

But who is it?

But:

Finally, the #lastassassin spoke – but refused to reveal his (or her) true identity:

Meanwhile, McDowell said he’s not angry. The Fitzwaters? Well…

A few final wrap-up tweets:

And with that…

Here’s the final scorecard for #lastman 2014.

Eliminated Sunday night:

  • @kateyiannis — Death by Roommate (?) (in-person spoiler by @flowrmeadow)
  • @AppFlyer — Death by College Friend
  • @billthay — Death by CBS Sports App push alert (immediately after surviving two flights)
  • @timmybarry — Death by a Friend at an Ohio Rest Stop

Eliminated Monday morning:

  • @hradzka — Death by Twitter (having played #lastman by accident)
  • @StlVUFan — Death by Cleveland Leader
  • @LaurenLyster — Death by E-mail Subject Line and CNN Chryon

Eliminated Monday afternoon:

  • @jmsmllr — Death by Sabotage in AP Biology class

Eliminated Tuesday morning:

  • @travelingraytmm — Death by NPR (shortly before would-be Death by High School Girls)

Eliminated Tuesday afternoon:

  • @notsalome — Death by New York Times E-mail News Alert (from Sunday night; belatedly viewed Tuesday)
  • @oddblots — Death by NYT Dealbook blog (this story, linked from Dealbook e-mail)

Eliminated Tuesday evening:

  • @jscottfitzwater —  Death by Black History Month conversation
  • @carney — Death by WSJ front page at newsstand near his apartment
  • @abigaildrozek — Death by Sabotage, courtesy of @Sea43_Den8

Eliminated Thursday midday:

  • @dgmcdowell — Death by Sabotage, courtesy of @Sea43_Den8

See you next year, everyone!!!