The Obscure Gentlemen

This week we start talking to some of the fascinating people who’ve won OFAPZ. Have a seat and read about the first King of Obscure For A Penny Zero. The one and only Roman.

James: Roman, You competed in the first ever OFAPZ as the bottom seed underdog and won. What were your thoughts on doing the contest and defeating the top seeded account?

Roman: Oh man, that contest was wild.

I was fairly new to twitter and I had no idea what to expect. I was the bottom seed because I had the fewest followers which meant I had to face the top seed who had the most. Look, I don’t wanna exaggerate (ok I do) but I mean this was like David against Goliath. Or better yet the Battle of Thermopylae — 300 outnumbered Spartans against the ridiculously huge army of Xerxes. Except I had none of the confidence of Gerard Butler.

So I was expecting a quick exit, but I knew if I had any chance I had to go big or go home. And, for some reason, I got it in my head that the way to do that was to create a thing that I had never ever created before: my own GIF (pronounced with a soft G of course). I hand-pixellated this silly little ode to Nintendo. IN EXCEL if you can believe it! And, you know, the judges liked it enough, and the rest is OFAPZ history. I definitely benefitted from it being the first contest and people not really knowing what to do or expect. And, of course, the judges being “blind” so to speak and not having reputation or follower count creep in as biases.

During the contest I started to get new followers, I met a lot of really cool amazing people online, and found out how creative and fun twitter can actually be . It completely changed my perspective: this site went from beyond simply being a place where you typed little micro thoughts into a vast cyber void, and instead, it starting looking a lot like a community full of wonderful and eclectic minds worth getting to know. The tweets I wrote for the contest are still among my favourite tweets I’ve ever written.

James: It was the first contest and we really didn’t know if people would do it or enjoy doing it. I just wanted a fair match where there was no bias like so many contests before. I wanted all sorts of accounts rom different areas of twitter to battle. Glad that our first champion was an earnestly funny account and your GIF (pronounced with a hard G) really blew the judges away and set the bar pretty high. The top seed was pretty pissed mostly because I think they had an ego about having so many followers so it was cool to see Davy beat Goliath. All right enough about Twitter. Now let’s delve into your area of nerdom. What makes you geek out with no apologies? What do you get excited about anytime you partake in its world?

Roman: This is a tough question for me because (a) there are so many things that make me geek out and (b) I’m Canadian and so I’m always apologizing.

I’m a big math nerd, I studied math in university and still get excited any time I encounter a rogue number out in the wild. Same passion for the sciences, especially astonomy. I read a lot, mostly fiction. I love love love basketball. Grew up watching NBA and WNBA games every chance I got. Lost my voice several times cheering on Toronto’s championship run last year!

So for me all areas of my nerdom are equal. But I guess I can say two areas of nerdom are more equal than others.

The first: trivia. When I was a kid, every weeknight at 7:30pm the TV at my place was tuned to hear Johnny Gilbert’s voice boom “This Is Jeopardy!”. Alex Trebek was a huge icon of mine. I remember trying to keep up with the contestants and turning to my parents for approval every time I got a question right. I was obsessed with little tidbits of knowledge and once read an abridged encyclopedia from cover to cover for fun (I know, I know). There were school quiz teams, board games, and pub trivia leagues (my current team is called “Quiz in My Pants”). And now I’ve even gotten my 5 year old into it (e.g. we’ll take turns asking each other fun trivia questions at the dinner table).

The second: puzzles. Literally any kind of puzzle. From logic puzzles, math puzzles, wordplay, to crossword puzzles and even mechanical puzzles. I’m a puzzle geek. I have a small collection of mechanical puzzles strewn about my place and at work. I think every drawer in my house right now has a crossword puzzle book in it. I got into puzzles largely thanks to my discovery of Martin Gardner, who was an American popular science writer who had a recreational mathematics column in Scientific American. He also wrote books with fancy titles like “The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems.” And I devoured them all!

James: Trivia has always been close to me as well. I remember watching grown ups play trivial pursuit at family get together and wanting to join in. Jeopardy of course was a constant must as well. Do you feel that with the internet the novelty of trivia is dying? Now everyone can learn about obscure facts with the push of a button?

Roman: Initially I certainly thought so – that with things like Wikipedia at your fingertips it would make certain feats (like memorizing all the world capitals) useless, or at least pure novelty. Why would you need to keep stuff in your head if you could access it on the internet when you needed it? I mean I remember watching IBM’s Watson AI just absolutely crush human opponents and wondered if that meant the slow and inevitable death of trivia. But what’s weird is that I feel like trivia has just maintained its popularity through the internet age. I go out every week to pub trivia and the bar is packed and full of trivia nerds. Apps like HQ trivia, Sporcle and QuizUp have been HUGELY popular. Even Jeopardy, they recently held a GOAT tournament that brought back Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer and it was amazing TV and the highest rated Jeopardy tournament ever and generated buzz all over the media and on Twitter. I still think people inherently love trivia and as long as the AIs and computers are not directly participating, it will still be a “thing”.

James: Excellent point on how we still utilize our brains regardless of the machines taking over. They will never take our trivia!!!   Roman, I want to thank you for your time and greatly appreciate your talent and hilarity in written word. Now one last question. If you could have a Mt. Rushmore of tweeters who would be on there?

Roman: nahhhh man you can’t do that to me

i can’t define a mount rushmore that’s unfair man too many great tweeters to include

James: Ok, name someone you’d give a plaque to on a park bench

on twitter? it would be markydoodoo (so the pigeons know whose park bench they’re pooping on, lol, i kid i kid)

in real life though

it would be maybe Martin Gardner or Sophie Germain

James: Thank you first King