I played Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube.

I played it for a few hours over the course of its six-month lifespan. I feel a small amount of shame in confessing this, shame that I don't feel about anything else I've ever played - not Hooters Road Trip, not Dragon Power, nor any of the other terrible things I've subjected myself to. At least those things were games. Curiosity is a repetitive chore with a thin layer of "game" over it. It's gamification, applied to nothing.

But despite making fun of it relentlessly - and, on a couple of occasions, even simultaneously while making fun of it - I tapped cubes. My ironic detachment failed, and I couldn't help but buy into the hype on some level, at least enough to participate.

I admit that even though I knew it was a dumb game predicated on a promise from someone notorious for hyperbolic and unfulfilled promises, the novelty of the "life-changing prize" intrigued me. And so I joined thousands of strangers in helping some guy scratch off the world's most annoying lottery ticket.