Menu

TR Contest: Your Nerdiest Pyrrhic Victory


fields_of_pyrrhic_victory.jpg

?Does everyone know what a Pyrrhic victory is? Since you’re all nerds I assume most of you do, but for the lil’ ones: a Pyrrhic victory is when you win, but at such a high cost you might as well have lost. Normally this means actual battles where you lose so many troops in winning that the effects are the same as losing, but for this contest it means something different.

For this contest, tell me about your nerdiest triumphs… that were effectively meaningless because they were nerdy. Two examples: 1) As most of you know, I wrote a 150-page college thesis on Final Fantasy VII. Well, when I’d finished, I was obviously proud of myself… until I realized it was not going to benefit me in any way. It wasn’t going to get me girls. Sure, it got me an A, but the thing was so damn long I don’t think any of my profossers even read the damn thing. In the end, I spent an entire year giving myself a way to out-nerd anyone in any given conversation, which is as annoying as it sounds.

Example #2: Back in 1999, I was living with a guy who was far better at videogames than I was — and for more obsessed. The Dreamcast had recently come out, and we were both playing anything we could get for it. Somehow I got hold of the Sega Bass Fishing arcade port and the fishing reel controller, and my friend got hooked (no pun). I came home to the apartment one day to see him playing Sega Bass Fishing, a wild look in his eye. Apparently he’d turned on the Endless mode — a mode that just allows you to catch as many fish as you want, with no score or time limit or anything — and I happened to glance at the screen and saw he’d caught over 6,000 pounds of virtual fish for no reason whatsoever. That is what I mean by a nerdy Pyrric victory.

So give me yours. One entry per person, and please keep ’em trim (200 words or so max). The contest ends at 12:01 am EST on Monday, January 23rd, 2012. Meanwhile, have a great weekend, and please, try not to force any children to read inappropriate comics if you can help it.