Why These People Are Desperately Trying to Avoid Finding Out Who Won the Super Bowl
They are going to great lengths to do so.
— -- Try telling this group of 100 people who won the Super Bowl on Sunday and they'll likely put their fingers in their ears and start humming while running away.
The participants of The Last Man, an annual game organized on Twitter, take their quest seriously to be the last man or woman in the United States to find out the winner of the Super Bowl.
For Tom Murray, a lawyer from New York City and first-time participant, that means meticulously organizing his technology to weed out any people who may potentially tell him the winner of the Super Bowl -- or #TheKnowledge -- as the players call it.
He has set emails from a co-worker and potential saboteur to go "directly to junk items in case they also contain the knowledge," Murray said. He's also gone dark on social media and has the added bonus of working from home today after New York was hit by icy weather overnight.
"One of my co-workers said that someone in the office came in and was talking about who won as soon as she walked in, so I probably would be a goner," he said. "I am still running from the knowledge, but I guess more accurately, I’m holed up from the knowledge."
Despite the "safe" Twitter lists, the email filters and keeping their heads down during their morning commutes, the participants are already falling victim to the knowledge, one by one.
The game, first conceived by blogger Kyle Whelliston around 2007, has grown in popularity over the past few years thanks to a dedicated Twitter following. If history is any indicator, most people won't last more than a couple of days, but as a novice player, Murray likes his chances so far.
"I have a conference call coming up. It should be relatively safe, unless a co-worker decides to sabotage me," he said. "I don't want to sound too optimistic, but I might actually survive today."