Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board. First, let me thank you for joining up just to bump my amazing thread from TWELVE YEARS AGO! Good times, good times!
Next up, all these years later, this game still fascinates me, and I’d love to hear more about these dudes Tommy and Chris. Do you have story about its origins? Perhaps a cite? And I’m still really curious how a game with no original source or marketing plan or viral media could become so wide-spread.
In my youth in Zimbabwe, the game was known as “fongu” and required players to “mark fongu” by hooking together the pinkie fingers of their right hands. Thereafter they are in it for life.
I have no idea of the etymology of “fongu”: it is not a Shona or other local language term; and the game itself seems to be mostly played by white people.
I now live in South Africa where, again, the game is played by whites mostly. It has no name and no “make fongu” ritual, but the basic concept is no different, including the “disarming” by the would-be victim inserting their index finger into the circle made by the aggressor.
I am of the opinion the game evolved to enable school yard bullies to be better school yard bullies.
I had never heard of this game until I read this thread… I grew up in North Texas in the 70s. My experience aside, this is such a strange sounding game, did it originate from one person do you think? Or did it erupt spontaneously somehow in multiple locations?
I lean toward the one-person theory, but oh what an impact that anonymous, forgotten person would have had on culture!
We used to call it “The Asshole Game” because, apparently, you’re flashing sign language for asshole. There’s wasn’t any real set of rules or consequences, it was just an irritating thing to do to your buddy to get him to look at it. If he did you went all, “aha, got you!” and he went all, “aw fuck man,” and then you both went all, “hahhaaahhhahaaa,” until your relatives yell at you to stop being so fucking retarded.
Seriously, my uncle, my cousin and I (we’ve been accused by family as “sharing the same brain”) got on such an asshole game jag one Christmas, the three of us almost got exiled from my grandparent’s house.
Incidentally, the game is on display toward the end of Mr. Holland’s Opus. When the main character’s deaf son shows up for the aforementioned Opus, they have a little playful back and forth that includes the ol’ … oh just rubbing my arm – ASSHOLE! … schtick. Witness (the very beginning of this clip).
And it’s been making the rounds on Facebook lately more as a meme since it’s hard to actually punch someone online.
I had no idea what it was about when I started seeing pictures of people making a variant of the OK sign and their friends replying with comments like “You dick!”
I was and still am a victim of this game. I never actually knew it was a game until this post. I thought it was my brother teasing me as he has done most of my life. However, he has never whaled on me. Just a nice little smack on the shoulder. I’m very fond of him, but not so much of the game. :rolleyes:
One more rule I can add: in our game, looking at the circle with your hand between your eyes (like the Three Stooges eye-poke defense) was safe and the circle-maker couldn’t punch you. This resulted in the majority of our time together spent with our hands in front of our faces.
Sorry, a little slow on the draw here. Just wanted to mention that we played the Circle Game in rural Indiana in the late 1960s. Ours included the part where you get hit if the other person breaks your circle or if you didn’t wipe it off after you hit them. So Vice is definitely wrong when they claim that it was invented by a guy in Ohio in the 1980s.
