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The last few drops of cheap tequilla make their way down your throat, briefly dulling your misery. Instinctively you reach for a new bottle. But you're not drunk enough to not realize that this was the last one in your house. Cheap and nasty as the swill is, it still costs money. Which is something you currently don't have a lot of, and is better spent on things like rent and tuition. In fact, the two letters you found in your mail box this morning make a kind suggestion that you probably should go and do those things if you desire to have a roof over your head and finish college with a degree. But you drat well know you can't. Because you got fired. Where did it all go wrong? Even in this altered state it is not that hard to recall the series of events that led up to this point. Restocking shelves at Star*Mart isn't exactly the most exciting job in the world, so you and your colleague Carlos would often dare each other with ridiculous challenges to pass the time. The assistant manager wouldn't have cared in the least when Carlos made you lick a rotisserie chicken, had a customer not spotted you putting the bird back in its place. Finding any sort of service job is hard enough when there are thousands of other students in your city looking for employment, but drat near impossible if the reason for termination of your previous job is a class 3 health and safety violation. A sigh escapes your lips as you read the two letters. Adding up the numbers and comparing it to what you have left in your bank account, you find that the former number is larger than the latter. A sombre feeling begins to well up, and so do some tears, which makes it that much harder to keep looking at your laptop screen. No. You cannot physically deal with this situation right now. With a resolute button click the current tab is closed. The subconscious mind realizes the conscious mind is in need of a distraction, and opens up uTube in search of free entertainment. As always when you log-in, you are greeted with a list of recommended videos. Which you click. One video is of a Scandinavian man playing a scary video game in the dark. He's got a camera pointed at his face, and screams with great exaggeration whenever a really telegraphed jump scare happens in the game. In another video, three men try to bake a cake with their own vomit as an ingredient. You click away when the abomination is taken out of the oven, not being all that interested in watching them eat their creation. The last clip on your list doesn't so much disgust as infuriate you. A man takes a brand new UBox 4 from its packaging and crushes it to bits with a hydraulic press. How much does one of those cost? Is the video uploader so rich that he can afford to destroy expensive electronics for fun? You look at the view counter next to the description box. Though it was uploaded less than a day ago, the counter is already above half a million. In fact, the same goes for the other two videos. The channels that uploaded them have more than a million subscribers, each, too. You look at an old camera you have lying in a corner of the room. It was once a birthday gift, almost a decade ago. While it wouldn't make that much money in a pawn shop, what with it filming at a maximum resolution of 480p, it still works. Could... could the answer really be that simple? --- Hi! In this CYOA, you play the role of an idiot who, through circumstance, is forced into the world of online entertainment. It's your goal to try and make enough money to pay the rent, your college tuition, and some other unimportant things like food, gas, and text books. At the end of every update I will provide you with a list of choices on how our character will proceed. Anyone reading this thread is free to vote, but you don't need to stick to the lettered options. You're not just free to suggest a path of your own, you're encouraged to! --- Before we move on to the first actual update of the game, we need to settle two things. First of all... 1. What is our idiot's name? He kind of needs one. No multiple choice options here, just write something in. If there's no clear consensus/there's only three votes total, I'll select an entry at random. 2. Other than being a tremendous gently caress-up, our idiot is a perfectly average guy. Well, not entirely. There's one thing that sets him apart from the rest of the world. Something that might just help him out in his newly chosen career. (But will not automatically lock him into the kind of videos he will end up making!) Our idiot... A. Is kinda not-so-terrible at video games. The world's top-class speedrunners can consistently finish the notoriously difficult game Black Spirits in under two hours. You can do it in three, provided that you don't get hung up on the Feinstein and Mauve boss fight. B. Has a unique physical feature that makes him stand out in a crowd. Maybe he weighs 400 pounds. Maybe he has a mole the size of a coin on his face. Choose something funny here. C. Owns a very cute pet, like a cat or a dog. Or perhaps something more exotic? D. E. Isn't actually an idiot. Well, not in his chosen academic field. What are you majoring in anyway? Physics? Film? Romanian literature ca. 1800? F. Has a close circle of (equally broke and unemployed) friends, who wouldn't mind becoming e-famous. Let's say, three friends. Assign a name to each of them and describe them using a single word. G. Something else. There's lots of potential qualities our idiot could have that aren't listed here. Go hog-wild with your suggestions, anything goes. (As long as it fits the setting-- a fascimili to modern-day earth. So no, you can't be a secret wizard, or three goblins wearing a large overcoat pretending to be a human).
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Sep 24, 2016 23:33
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1. Louis Frengle 2D. He collects rare and unusual Pringles tubes - from Chicken Korma to Montreal Poutine. Some of them even have a few chips left for posterity!
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Sep 24, 2016 23:41
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dog kisser posted:1. Louis Frengle Yes.
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Sep 24, 2016 23:47
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1. Disney (no relation to Walt) 2. G. Is actually a young clone of Walt Disney that went bad in the lab incubator and was tossed out. Somehow was found by a passing hobo woman and lived. He has no idea about any of this. Whoops I didn't read instructions properly, fixed.
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Sep 24, 2016 23:49
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dog kisser posted:1. Louis Frengle yes.
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Sep 24, 2016 23:54
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I was going to suggest becoming the next goatse man but Pringle guy sounds good too
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Sep 25, 2016 00:24
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1. Juniper Finkelstein 2C Sgt. Cuddles, her capybara. Due to a mental illness, she believes he speaks to her.
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Sep 25, 2016 00:31
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1. Bob Jillin E Folkore, mostly of the spooky persuasion.
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Sep 25, 2016 00:43
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Richard Stevenson G. You also have a peculiar form of Schizophrenia. A psychologist would clinically say that you have internalized a number of intense life experiences as secondary personalities that come and go with an apparent will of their own apart from yours. They kind of just manifest as people you know aren't real but won't stop crashing at your apartment all the time when you are on your meds. When they aren't ... well a psychiatrist would joke that at least all of your sympyoms are positive! Essentially your psychiatrist looks forward to seeing your newest stories from various D&D campaigns that are running themselves in your skull all the time. Your hallucinations are exclusively dead key characters from your weekly game habit. One time the BBEG was eating a bowl of Wheaties at the kitchen table and sniggered when you stumbled in without pants on after a bender. OFF your meds, scenes from your campaigns would keep you up at night playing themselves out even on weekends at your parents' house when you used their washer and dryer since yours was coin operated. Also free food. They also sometimes accompany you to work. Your fellow employee didn't dare you to lick that chicken before it hit temperature...it was Koenig Krieger of Argentheim, your pet NPC when you take a turn running the game! You get the idea to get off your meds and film the result as an episodic show. You have no clue about video software, so you whore out XP rewards to your players for helping with the editing. Normally they bring a 48pack of Dirkland light for the privilege but this is an emergency! A 375ml bottle of Bacardi 151 and an hour of time in the digital cutting room will have to do. E: poo poo. bolding. Blasphemaster fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 02:43
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Blasphemaster posted:Richard Stevenson
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Sep 25, 2016 05:15
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Voting Plan Blasphemaster. Best of luck to you and this venture.
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Sep 25, 2016 07:51
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Plan Blasphemaster.
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Sep 25, 2016 08:57
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Interesting, it seems we have a tie at the moment. 4 votes for the Pringles tube hoarder, 4 for the schizophrenic. I'd really like to close voting and start on an update right now, but this first vote is kind of important. I will leave it open for a bit longer, and if the tie doesn't resolve itself I will, uh, flip a coin or something?
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Sep 25, 2016 10:23
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZZUMjoxfZA Oh he so Pringles, where your curly mustache at?
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Sep 25, 2016 11:59
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Thanks, Poison Mushroom. That settles it. Your name is Louis Frengle; collector of rare and unusual crisp tubes! Expect an update later today.
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Sep 25, 2016 12:18
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 Once you pop... Days until the rent is due: 20 Amount of money needed: $200 It is the day of the next morning. Last night's buzz has worn off, but you are still determined to carry on your (frankly, desperate) plan to earn money by making videos for the internet. It's not like there's a choice left -- moving in with mom and Frank isn't going to work. They live on the other coast, which makes for a rather long commute. And it's not like Frank would let you live in his house again; at least not without giving up your hobby of collecting Dingles-brand potato crisps. He doesn't understand it in the least; even going so far as to call it trash. When you were still in high school, you one day came home to find a large number of garbage bags gathered in the yard. Greatly suspicious, you opened up one bag to find most of your collection, ready to be thrown away. Lugging everything back upstairs and reassembling them into their logically ordered heaps took weeks, but what hurt the most was how a rare '04 Japanese Peppermin-Wasabi tube got bent out shape. Frank was never quite forgiven for that tresspass. Dwelling on painful memories is not healthy, so you turn your mind to the now-and-here. All auxillary requirements to starting your uTube career are met. Channel registration -- check, camera -- check, cracked version of Xony Vegas -- check, USB cable to upload your clips to your laptop -- after a lot of digging under a pile of 10 year old crips tubes, check. You film a short minute-long test clip and upload it to your laptop to confirm that it works, and find no further problems. It comforts you to know that nothing stands in your way to become popular on the internet! Well, nothing technological, at least. Not that is occurs frequently, but most people placed in your situation would have a very difficult time making internet entertainment with no previous experience. At heart, the issue here is one of passion. Typical people have a passing interest in assortment of subjects: a single person may enjoy cooking, video games, long walks on the beach and collecting stamps. But they have to spread out their passion over all four things, so when they're put on the spot to choose one thing to make videos about, they're left with an impossible decision. Normal people fill up their camera's entire SD card with test footage, spend hours editing their footage, only to conclude days later that even their best efforts won't impress people who are much more knowledgeable about their hobby. Choice is a poison. Thankfully a poison you are immune to, because you're pretty sure you know more about hobby than 99% of world's population. You're an expert. When people view your videos, they will marvel at the encyclopedic knowledge you posses. There's no question about it, you're going to make videos about your Dingles tubes, your one passion. While pretty specific as a subject, that still leaves a large number of aspects you could focus on. Your first video is going to be... 1. About what? Note that choosing something now won't lock you into making that type of videos forever. Lots of channels change what sort of content they make regularly! A. A quick channel introduction. That way, anyone who visits my channel will immediately understand what it's all about! I'll start by giving a quick tour of my house showing off my collection in its entirety, without focusing on any specific tube. B. A five minute talk about one specific tube in my collection. I've got an interesting tale on where I found it, how long that particular flavour remained in circulation, and in which regions it was for sale. C. A story about the best vacation I ever had, which was a trip to the Dingles headquarters in Idaho! I can talk longer about the experience than my camera can hold a charge. D. A video of how I collect Dingles tubes these days. I used to just buy them at the store, but not having a lot of money right now I get my tubes by means of dumpster diving. E. Me, eating the contents of a 20 year old tube. I like to keep the freshness seal on my tubes in tact, only removing them and the crisps inside if the seal has already been compromized. I don't particularly like opening tubes if I can avoid it, but it is something I can live with. F. Something else, related to your hobby. Write in. Some part in the back of your mind protests for a second. What if nobody is interested in your videos? The idea is almost ridiculous, but you can't ignore it. Instead of making a video, you... G. Browse uTube for a bit and see if you've got competition. Maybe you can learn from them on what (not) to do. H. Consult with your former coworker and friend Carlos. He, like you, got fired over the chicken-licking incident and could use the money too. Of the two of you, he is definitely the funnier one. I. You do something else, not related to your hobby. Write in. 2. What did you name your uTube channel? No multiple-choice here, write something in!
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Sep 25, 2016 15:21
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1. B, then E. 2.Frengle's Dingle Mingle - and we need to come up with a catchy Dingle Mingle Jingle, too.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:28
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dog kisser posted:1. B, then E. This l'ail et l'oignon french limited run from 1992 should certainly draw some well deserved attention.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:01
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dog kisser posted:1. B, then E. I however, object to making the Jingle ourselves. That's talent and brain space that could be better spent on Dingles! We can just wait until we're popular enough and make it a "contest", get people falling over themselves for a signed Dingles tube that we have doubles of, and in exchange? Our choice of all kinds of free music!
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Sep 25, 2016 16:35
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BE There is one extremely limited run of Ecto Cooler that was pulled because the rights weren't properly secured before production. Also NOBODY remembers what it tastes like. Is it like a citrus potato salad, or closer to epicac? Let's find out!
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Sep 25, 2016 17:31
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dog kisser posted:1. B, then E. This, with the Ecto Cooler run
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Sep 25, 2016 19:54
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Blasphemaster posted:BE This
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Sep 26, 2016 00:53
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Blasphemaster posted:BE This. How long until we decide to turn a Bringles tube into a fleshlight?
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Sep 26, 2016 19:35
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Lacking a tripod or friend willing to help a (literal) hand, you place the camera on a low hanging bookshelf and start to rehearse. Once it finishes uploading onto the laptop, there's a bit of a nasty surprise. The top of your head is halfway off the screen, leaving just a nose and a mouth. Also, your voice is a lot more... nasally and whiny, than you imagined. Christ. Do you really sound like that? It's not quite the voice of a boy who's just hit puberty, but certainly NOT the voice of a 20 year old man! A brief feeling of self-consciousness brushes over your skin, followed by shame. It almost makes you want to never speak again. But you have to. 50,000 channel views, that's milestone number one to pass. On the internet it is an open secret that once you reach that many views, you are invited to join their content creators platform. Milestone number two is less clear, but nevertheless important. The uTube administration staff doesn't permaban a lot of channels, but anyone who spills the beans on the view-to-ad-revenue ratio can expect swift retribution. Those few sources you did find on the internet estimate that in order to pay your bills, you need around 200,000 views. A tall order... You grab your most prized can of Dingles, remind yourself to squat a bit so that the camera captures all of your face, take a deep breath, and hit the big, red, candy-like button to start recording. "Hello, dear viewers. My name is Louis Frengle, and this is Frengle's Dingle Mingle. In the next ten minutes I'll be taking you on a magical trip through my fantastic collection of rare and unusual Dingles tubes from all over the world. For instance" --you raise your tube to the camera lense "This rare 1992 can of l'ail et l'oignon crisps. Or 'potato biscuits', as they're called in France, because their laws forbid Dingles from marketing their product as crisps there". (Fact roll! 1d20+1=8) Episode #1, roll the camera!  Alright everyone, you've decided to make a video. Which is pretty much the central gimmick of this CYOA. Rather than me writing what happens in the video, you get to decide the Highlights. I just fill in the rest to make it a coherent whole. So, you might be wondering why I capitalized the word Highlights and marked it in bold. Well, it's because there's mechanics tied to it. Submit a short sentence or two about what you want Louis to say or do, then roll a 1d20 on orokos.com or some other website. If your roll is 16 or higher, congrats! You just made Louis do or say something interesting. Rolling a 5 or lower means the opposite, it means Louis just screwed up. Maybe that interesting fact he just shared with the world is demonstrably wrong, or that joke he tried to tell fell flat. Anyway, things go wrong. (Don't forget to share with the thread what!) Because Louis is pretty knowledgeable about Dingles, you get to add +1 to your roll results whenever you make him talk about it. On the other hand, Louis isn't all that good at acting. Just eating a can of crisps isn't all that interesting, unless you can somehow really sell the experience. Whenever Louis pretends to do something, i.e. acting, subtract a point from your d20 roll. Or you could forget the whole dice-rolling thing; and I'll do it for you. The important thing is to have fun. Mechanics should never stand in the way of fun! One more thing: a Highlight has to be within the Scope of your video. You've decided to give a presentation about one of your prized possessions, then eat a few really old crisps. Highlights have to be related to those things. Pretending to throw up is something that falls within the Scope, stealing a car and driving it off a bridge is not! (Although doing so would solve about 99% of Louis' problems right now, I'll admit) Zybourne Clock fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 19:54
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At some point we're going ot have to Snort some Bringles Dust. On mobile so can't sort Orkos atm.
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Sep 26, 2016 19:59
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Really make the point that Bringles are just a cheap Dingles knock off and are actually made of cheap corn. Dingle vs. Bringle: 1d20+1 14
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Sep 26, 2016 20:27
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Wow these uneducated savages with some DINGLES STATS: 1d20+1 = 16
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Sep 26, 2016 20:36
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What if we're getting too complicated too fast? Surely we need to slow down and give people the low-down on the fascinating history of Dingles and Dingles manufacturing. It's historically-delicious! 1d20+1 = 16
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Sep 26, 2016 20:41
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"Every man dies. Not every man really lives." Place can between seat and buttocks, bounce around some and then chug the dust
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Sep 26, 2016 20:58
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Blasphemaster posted:"Every man dies. Not every man really lives." Place can between seat and buttocks, bounce around some and then chug the dust If this doesn't get 50,000+ views, I don't know what will.
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Sep 27, 2016 00:12
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You need a signature move if you're going to get the big viewer numbers Louis. Something that really gets the people going. I know Frengle! Once you're finished eating the tube pour the remaining Dingles dust in your eyes and rub like crazy! Rub the dust in your eyes: 1d20 19
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Sep 27, 2016 01:03
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Apocron posted:You need a signature move if you're going to get the big viewer numbers Louis. Something that really gets the people going.  Ow!
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Sep 27, 2016 02:50
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Shows the viewers the proper way/side to eat the Bringles for your tongue to receive maximum flavor
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Sep 27, 2016 12:59
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Episode 1 - "MAN EATS 24 YEAR OLD DINGLES" "Hello, dear viewers. My name is Louis Frengle, and this is Frengle's Dingle Mingle. In the next ten minutes I'll be taking you on a magical trip through my fantastic collection of rare and unusual Dingles tubes from all over the world. For instance, this rare 1992 can of l'ail et l'oignon crisps. Or 'potato biscuits', as they're called in France, because their laws forbid Dingles from marketing their product as crisps there". You bring your other hand up to the camera, holding a vaguely similar looking tube. "Not to be confused with THIS pale imitation, the cheap corn-based knockoff product called Bringles". "'But Louis', you might interject. 'They're both in orange tins, the brand names are pretty much the same, they purport to be the same flavour, and both were on the French market back in 1992. How could I possibly tell these two apart?' Well, let me pop open a fresh can of FACTS for you". With a practiced turn of the wrist both cans are turned in such a way that their labels face the camera. "Look at the list of additives and preservatives on the Dingles can. See anything familiar? Why yes, that's brominated vegetable oil. Back in '92 the Dingles company had to do a massive recall of this particular flavour, because brominated vegetable oil was a banned substance at the time. Only a few cans weren't seized and destroyed, this tube being one of them". You hold the pale imitation up to your face, and put on a scowl. "Bringles? Pfah! They wish they had a product half this storied!" "Never mind the fact that the Bringles company LOVES to scam you". Slowly, you open both containers. Of course you're a lot more careful with the rare French Dingles can -- you'd kick yourself forever if you were to accidentally tear off some of the external cardboard. The contents of each can is spread out over a plate, and you start counting. "See that? One can contains exactly 108 crisps. The other? 96. That Bringles can might be bigger, but it's mostly air". "You'd be right to say that this transgression against consumers could be forgiven, if they taste better. Well, let's put that to the test, shall we?" You push your face up to the camera and raise a Bringle and Pringle to your face with each hand, taking care not to break eye contact with your viewers. "First, we taste with our eyes. Compare the two. One has a perfect saddlepoint, the other... Well, I don't know what that shape is, but it's warped. Can you guess which is which? Now, let's taste with our tongue!" You briefly lick both. Honestly, you can't tell the difference. Both taste exactly the way you'd expect old crisps to taste like: a mouth full of mold. But you have a narrative to sell. "Oh yeah, even though they're older than I am, I can tell you the Dingles have aged much more gracefully. I can still get a hint of garlic. The off-brand, however, is pretty much cardboard. Completely bland. These worthless things aren't worthy of a proper trip through my digestive tract. Hey, that gives me an idea!" --Jumpcut-- The camera is now focused on your desk chair. You walk in from off-screen, and throw the Bringles can on the seat. "My mother once said: 'every man dies, not every man really lives'. Those are some wise words to live by", you say, as you violently crush the contents of the tube with your butt, causing the lid to fly off and orange dust to fly everywhere. Even though this is not your prized can of '92 l'ail et l'onion, you cannot help but feel a little bit queezy about destroying something that looks so similar. "Bringles? More like BUTTringles!", you quip. With a dustpan you scoop up some of the orange crap. "I can't help but wonder, is this stuff any more potent in its powdered form?" With a credit card you cut some of the dust into lines, press your nose against it, and inhale vigorously. A coughing fit follows instantaneously. No matter how smoothly you try to play it, your body protests this action heavily. Still, you don't try to break your act. "Nope. Not a buzz in the slightest. But you know what famous musicians do when regular coke just doesn't cut it for them anymore", you say, as you rub some of the dust onto one finger, and use another to pry open an eye lid. "They go for a speedball", and you rub the crud into your eye. --------------------- END --------------------- Two seconds after rubbing the Bringles dust into your eyes you begin to curse like a sailer, as you are in considerable pain. The colourful language is of such a harsh nature that when you edit the footage later on that day, you have to edit that bit out. And, quite frankly, that seems an appropriate moment to end the video at. With a free midi-editor you create a jingle that you added to the start of your video. It almost sounds like an actual tune, with a bit of imagination. Some minimal editing later, your first ever video is complete and ready to share with the internet. Moments after clickin the upload button, you go to bed. You're so giddy to see your viewcount go up that you can hardly sleep that night. Days until the rent is due: 19 Amount of money needed: $200 The next morning you rush to your laptop the moment you wake up. After it finishes booting you log into your uTube account, curious to see whether the internet likes or pans your creation. You hit enter, and-- "MAN EATS 24 YEAR OLD DINGLES" Views: 128 Likes: 2 Dislikes: 2 That odd feeling in your chest is your heart skipping a beat. The internet watched your video, and it rated it with a resounding 'meh', a reply ten times worse than 'you suck'. This... hurts. 1. Despite your best efforts, it seems you didn't really attract all that much views. What do you do? A. It's not that my video was bad or anything, I just failed to advertise it properly! But it's not too late. I send out a Tweet to the Dingles company, and hope they reply. B. A, but instead of Tweeting, I post on their official forums. C. A, but instead I share the video with all of my online acquaintances, and ask them to spread it for me. It's not a big circle, but if I ask nicely? D. Go big or go home, and combine A, B and C! Tell everyone! This does pose a bit of an issue. See, I'm still a student with classes to attend, and I happen to have a class that I must attend today. If I choose D, I will acknowledge that I have to skip class today. E. Actually, the fact that I have class today might be of use. I'll go to class, and show my video to my fellow students. Start small, build a local fan base! F. I have a different idea on how to proceed, and will post my idea in the thread.
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Sep 27, 2016 20:27
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A
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Sep 27, 2016 20:39
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D, who needs school when you're obviously the next viral internet-video producing, Dingle dust snorting, self demeaning psychopath that millennials crave on their computer screens.
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Sep 27, 2016 21:05
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E Let's complete our social
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Sep 27, 2016 21:56
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D. School is for losers!
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Sep 28, 2016 00:21
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A This is really amusing so far!
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Sep 28, 2016 00:24
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B
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Sep 28, 2016 03:11
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