Clandestine intellectual games: gaming practices during the pandemic

Abstract

The research subject is the intellectual movement subculture “What? Where? When?” and “daughter” games – QUIZ, “60 seconds”, “Brain Slaughterhouse”, etc. during the coronavirus pandemic. Using the participant observation method, new players’ rituals, jokes, comic passwords and names of teams were collected, in which, as in the acts of verbal creativity of experts, it is possible to note the representation of the community’s attitude to the pandemic in three aspects: 1) features, symptoms and consequences of a new disease; 2) administrative measures aimed at limiting spread of the infection: self-isolation, QR-codes, event bans; 3) vaccinations against coronavirus, society attitude to them. A review of the collected material allows us to draw the following conclusions. Making fun of the public life phenomena associated with the pandemic is an effort to make them less scary and dangerous. The attitude to measures of limiting the spread of the infection (underground intellectual games held under conditions of mass event bans, readiness for other violations of restrictive measures) shows not only an attitude to the disease itself, but also distrust of the preventing coronavirus official policy.