Ben Preiss
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Faceball is the newest sport to come out of the cubicle jungle. The game involves hitting your opponents in the face with a ball. That’s right, Cubicle Connie—it’s time to show your colleagues the stuff you’re really made of! Beyond that, there only a few rules: Players that are seated 10ft (3m) apart take turns hitting each other in the face. The official website discourages using medicine or other heavy, hard balls. You can actually buy an “official” Faceball, which is really just a plastic beach ball. What a fantastic way for the normally passive cubicle geek to release some pent-up aggression! After a painful childhood, he retreated to a safe zone in the world of cubicles, but now he’s ready to release his rage, once and for all. Growing up, he was no match for the athletic kids that bullied him, but today, he seeks his revenge.
 Faceball is the brainchild of John Allspaw and Dunstan Orchard, in the San Francisco offices of Flickr, an online picture sharing website. According to the Faceball website, the game emerged after "Hundreds of pink and blue beach balls were purchased for use on Flickr's 3rd year anniversary party, and these soon joined the plethora of other toys (finger darts, frisbees, helicopters, rubber chickens, etc.) in the Flickr office."
The game began naturally as Allspaw and Orchard were located 10 feet from each other and began to compete in feats of accuracy with the beach balls. Eventually they began competing to see who could hit the other in the face more accurately. So moved were other employees by the brilliance of the invention that by April 6 the entire Flickr office competed and Allspaw was crowned champion. The game then spread to Flickr's European offices and by last month, the game had spread so rapidly that it became necessary for a rules and regulations website.
(sportsline)References: faceball.org, sportsline Filed In: |
