Gamer Girls

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA-8Ggv44CY

Mike and Ryan are talking (seemingly endlessly) about how to tap buttons on your controller as fast as possible.   

29:45 – 

Mike: They say that practice makes perfect.  If you’re playing video games every day; hours, upon hours, upon hours; every day, you probably will get those muscle reflexes and they probably will get faster.  

Ryan: Yeah.

Mike: You’ll also probably give yourself carpal tunnel syndrome.  

Ryan: Oh.

Mike: Which I have carpal tunnel syndrome.

Ryan gives zero fucks.  He doesn’t believe it.  Nor do I.

Then Mike, realising that Ryan isn’t going to engage with his ridiculous claim, just starts talking about how you get a callus on your thumb from playing games with a d-pad too long.

But wow.  What a bombshell.  Maybe Mike caught carpal tunnel syndrome from Erin.  I didn’t even think it worked that way.  It’s contagious?  This must be a new variant of carpal tunnel syndrome.  The Bullshit Variant.  Everybody please, only play video games online.  If you absolutely must play couch-coop, maintain a six foot distance between you and the second player at all times.

I’m just reminded of the time when Erin was playing some arcade style game, it said, “Player 2 press start” and she had no idea what this meant.  What a gamer!

Ha!  I found a reference to this in the archives.  It was from over a year ago and I used almost the exact same paragraph as I’ve used just now.  Kind of weird.

https://gamergrrlsofficial.blogspot.com/2021/02/prehistoric-isle-from-snk-40th.html

And after checking my personal archive of my old sub-reddit, I’ve discovered that it’s apparently this video where Erin expresses confusion about what “Player 2 press start” means.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3IOcueFNsg

I reviewed the video but it’s gone.  This was from my Erin Plays sub-reddit.

Maybe I should review it again.  It’s something of a classic.  Harmful Park.  For a long time, Erin compared every game that she played to Harmful Park because her knowledge about video games is extremely limited and it was all based on this one time that she played the game, on stream, for money.

So Mike and carpal tunnel syndrome.  When did he find out?  Has he known for a long time and he just kept quiet about it?  How come we’ve never seen Mike doing hand stretches like Erin always does?  Why doesn’t Mike end every stream with, “Well, my hands are hurting so I have to end it here”?  Why is Mike able to play for several hours a day on a regular basis whereas Erin can barely manage to play for one hour, once a week?

Do you suppose that Mike and Erin share that carpal tunnel wrist brace/ice pack thing?  Do they go to the same carpal tunnel syndrome doctor?  Because it took Erin a long time to find a doctor that would accept the possibility that she has carpal tunnel syndrome.  Every doctor before that, you know, the competent doctors, told her that it was nothing and to stop wasting their time.  But she finally found a quack doctor who was willing to play along with this charade.  I guess.  I mean, we haven’t heard about these doctor visits for several months now.

Maybe Mike and Erin can get a discount on the surgery if they both have it done on the same day, by the same surgeon.  Buy one carpal tunnel syndrome surgery, get the second one for half price.  

Perhaps this is where Erin got her idea for carpal tunnel syndrome in the first place.  She’ll often pretend to be interested in something shortly after hearing about it.  For instance, there was that week when she was a long-time fan of The Match Game, having recently watched an episode with Mike.  Then she demonstrated a complete and total ignorance about every facet of the show.  

So maybe Mike was talking about his alleged carpal tunnel syndrome one day and Erin decided, “Oh, that’s a good idea.  I have carpal tunnel syndrome too” and she just ran with it.  

I suppose that I shouldn’t make light of the situation.  These people are suffering.  They’re suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome.  Mike says that he got it from playing those button tapping Mario Party games and Erin says that she got it from swiping on her phone.  That’s terrible.  They can’t play video games any more.  They’re in constant agony.  It’s no laughing matter.

At times like this, I can only reflect on my own good fortune.  I’ve also played Mario Party AND swiped things on my phone and…I don’t know.  I just dodged a bullet, I guess.  But it can happen.  It can happen to anyone.  Let Mike and Erin’s misfortune be a lesson to all of us to avoid risky behaviours like playing Mario Party and swiping things on our phone.

Maybe a turbo controller could have helped prevent this.  Maybe having a non-smart phone would have helped.  Why not?  Erin is all retro and *nostalgia*.  Get a Nokia 3330.  No swiping on that thing.  And you can still play Snake to keep you entertained on those long monthly trips to California.

So Mike and Erin, we’re all rooting for you.  Get well soon.  We want many more years and decades of quality video game content from you two crazy lovebirds.