Wipeout is a metephor for life
The thing that I really love about Wipeout is that I can see myself being on the show. There is something about the story of the show that makes me want to insert myself into the narrative. I don’t know about you, but when I watch the show I’m constantly thinking about how I would react to a situation or how I would have done it differently.
Watching other people fall, fail, and probably get hurt is attractive to me.
There is something so train wreck about Wipeout that makes it interesting and intruiging.
I want it. But what is “it?”
Why can’t I stop watching?!?
3rd person perspective
I like it because I am not in it. The reason it is so funny on television is because the people on the ground are in the first person and they are forced to think linear about Wipeout while at home we are in the third person and can see everything.
They only get to see what is in front of them. They don’t know how other players have completed the obstacle. They don’t have the view we have at home. We are above the action while they are in it.
They are trying to problem solve the maze of each apparatus in real time first person.
We are the humans watching the mouse work its way through a complicated maze. When you have a third person perspective, the game is easy and the mouse looks stupid.
Person after person makes the same mistake and you are left to just scream at the television… “Don’t do it that way! You’re going to fa… Oh, did you see him fall? Ouch!”
The Wipeout mousetrap forces the participant into A vs. B thinking while the third person perspective clearly shows the answer is either A or B.
Sometimes the answer is C
My life is sometimes an episode of Wipeout. Life often feels squished into a maze of A & B choices.
But I’m learning more and more that the answer in A & B circumstances is actually C.
- C: None of the above
- C: All of the above
- C: Another idea
This is why life isn’t Wipeout.
Life feels like a series of A or B choices. And if you get them right, you’ll succeed in life.
But that’s incorrect. Life is full of choices that look like A vs. B. But C is often the only right answer.
Stuck?
I know a lot of people who feel stuck right now.
They don’t feel like life affords them a lot of options.
“Do I continue down this path or do I start something new?”
“I hate my job but the economy sucks and I don’t want to be unemployed right now.”
The trick is not settling for A or B when the answer might be C.
The answer is– adjust your perspective.
