The madmen at Cards Against Humanity are at it again. Fans of the devious party game maker know that the company is notorious for their Black Friday hijinks. This year, they're taking it up a whole new level.
In a move seen by probably absolutely no one, the Cards Against Humanity writers are pit against artificial intelligence in a race to create a new pack of cards. And, in true Cards Against Humanity fashion, they've put a lot of things on the line.
If the humans win, they'll get a sweet $ 5000-holiday bonus. And if the heartless program spawned from the depths of the marketing and accounting office win, we'll probably see nine more souls in the job searching pool. As to who wins, it is up to us Black Friday consumers to decide. In its true anti-consumerist Black Friday theme, the company has set up two limited edition decks for sale: One with cards written by the humans and the other by the AI. Each is available at just $5 each, with the top 30 cards of the winning faction getting included in the deck. At least, that's what we think we'll happen. You never really know with Cards Against Humanity.
And if you think the AI is fake, well...it's not. It is based on the GPT-2 model created by research company OpenAI, who is famous for creating AI systems that play competitive video games and solve Rubik's cubes. The GPT-2 model was trained to read over 44,000 white cards to ensure that it's able to create cards that fit well within the literary walls of Cards against Humanity.
If you're willing to be part of this grand experiment/marketing scheme/protest/limited time edition sale, just head over to their specially made website (with matching ASCII art) here.
A History of Bull****, Free Money and Potato Chips.
Max Temkin, one of the co-founders of the game, openly states his distaste of Black Friday and flash consumerist culture:
""Black Friday probably represents the worst things about our culture. It's this really repulsive consumerist frenzy right after a day about being thankful for what you have. So it's always seemed like a really good subject for parody to us. We have no idea if people will like [the stunt], or pay attention, or get really mad at us. So it's really satisfying to see people get the joke and participate in it. And hopefully, it brings a smile or a laugh to people on kind of a [expletive] day."
Their first Black Friday event started in 2013, where, instead of lowering their prices, raised the cost by $5. Despite this, they still kept their best-selling status that year and even gained a minor sales boost. In 2014, they sold "Bullsh*t," which are literal boxes of a Bull's droppings for $6 each. Cards Against Humanity had over 30,000 orders.
In 2015, they sold absolutely nothing for $5. Buyers will literally be giving away their Lincolns to the company, who distributed their profit to their team members, who spent most of the money on charitable foundations. In 2016, they dug a whole as long as buyers gave them money. The hole was not used for any purpose and was eventually refilled.
In 2018, they held a 99% off sale on super random items, with a new item being sold every minute.
