The fun you can’t have in a bathtub with a plastic bag over your cast.
January 22nd, 2003 | by Scott Jennings |And now, since I’m a game show geek (probably 30-40% of my total viewing) and have little else that I want to do right now, a lighthearted and glibly academic analysis of my favorite Game Show Network original show, Friend Or Foe.
Look: you could put a still picture of former MTV vee-jay Kennedy on my TV screen for 30 minutes a day, and I’d tune in. My bespectacled goddess hosts this show that features three two-member teams working together to answer multiple-choice questions. One team is eliminated after each round, and must decide how to divide the money they’ve already earned by a secret and simultaneous vote of “friend” or “foe.” If both players vote “friend,” then they divide the money equally. If both vote “foe,” then they both win nothing. And if one votes “friend” and the other “foe,” the one who voted “foe” takes the entire purse.
It doesn’t take a person with an undergraduate degree earned three years ago in economics and mathematics that concentrated in game theory to analyze this show, but here I am. When it comes time to vote, you must choose “friend” or “foe” without knowing how your teammate is going to vote. If your goal is to maximize your winnings, which seems reasonable considering your participation in a game show, you know that if you’re certain your teammate is voting “friend,” you should vote “foe” and take the entire purse. And if you’re certain your teammate is voting “foe,” then you know that there’s no way you’re winning any money, and you should be indifferent with respect to your vote. However, it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to say that if you’re certain that your teammate is voting “foe,” then you would also vote “foe” just to fuck him as hard as he’s fucking you. Therefore, no matter how your teammate is voting, you should always vote “foe.” And therefore, this is a game that should theoretically give out no money.
This fact is never addressed overtly, but rather through the subtext of the analysis of the contestants’ character by Kennedy, who, if you recall, is really really hot and enough reason to watch this show. Each contestant is forced to confess one positive and one negative manifestation of their character at the top of the show, and Kennedy uses this as material for banter and annoying nicknames, which I’m willing to overlook because she’s really hot.
But what makes this good television is the showdown after each round when the contestants vote. Kennedy facilitates an opportunity for each player to appeal to the other to vote “friend,” and urges them to both go home happy and do the right thing. Then comes the dramatic lighting and music and the voting. The players lock eyes during the ten seconds of voting, since averting eye contact suggests distrustfulness, while they vote using buttons hidden from sight underneath a table. And very rarely do they both vote “friend,” corroborating the mathematics of the situation.
Economist and game theory pioneer Alfredo Pareto has one of the most hilarious names I’ve ever heard. He was also the first to describe a situation which has come to be known as a Pareto optimum: a situation where it is not possible to make any one person better off without making another person worse off. This can not happen without without maximizing the net benefits, since if we haven’t maximized the net benefits, we can give the increase to someone without making anyone worse off. Therefore, the situation where one player votes “friend” and the other votes “foe” is a Pareto optimum compared to the situation where both players vote “foe;” giving the whole purse to one player makes him better off, while making the other player no worse off. Also, the situation where both players vote “friend” is Pareto optimal to the situation where both vote “foe,” for the same reason. However, we can’t make any judgment among these three internal Pareto optima, since we can’t move among them without making one of the players worse off.
So Christ, Scott, would you care to summarize this nonsense and draw it to a point?
This game has four possible outcomes, the four combinations of the players voting “friend” or “foe.” The game should equilibriate to both players voting “foe,” since that strategy maximizes their winnings no matter how their teammate votes. Yet every other outcome is preferable to the one that is chosen. People have taken the lesson from similar games that people would be better off having the control over situations like these taken out of their hands, that they would be at least as well off under one of the other outcomes, so one of these outcomes should be chosen for them. But that’s precisely wrong. The strategies that both players take guarantee that they have no regrets coming out of the game; you only have control over your own vote, you only have control over your own actions. If the other player voted “foe” and you voted “foe,” you don’t wish you voted “friend;” that makes you no better off. If the other person voted “friend” and you also vote “friend,” you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t vote “foe” and win twice as much money.
But it’s not as simple as all that, now is it, Scott? Well, of course. And watching people who don’t realize that they’re taking part of one of the greatest social science experiments ever undertaken grapple with internal struggle between equity and greed, entitlement and need, rationality and conscience — that’s good television. If you don’t know the person you’re standing across and you’ll never see them again, you’ll vote “foe” every time without thinking about it. But if you’re standing across someone you care about, someone who matters to you, you’ll be far more likely to vote “friend.” And what’s neat about this show is that the relationships come right in the middle, people who just spent a day together, getting to know each other, being razzed by Kennedy, working together to build a purse to split. What’s more important: a new friend, or a few bucks? When this scenario comes off the page and it’s you standing there with the lights and the music maintaining eye contact with someone you’ve known for a day, with Kennedy exhorting you to uphold the notions of fairness, can you fuck that person on national television?
Maybe that’s a little too much for a game show. You can also watch because it’s fun to answer trivia questions.
But speaking of television shows that are doing an effective job of reflecting the human condition back to us, I have to say I’m very very disappointed in Joe Millionaire for cutting Alison and keeping Zora. Joe, admit it: you got SCARED. Even though Zora was my pick to win it all going into last Monday’s show, I was sure she was gone after she revealed herself as dead weight during their bistro date. I was hoping Joe would have the huevos to chase after Alison, the one woman there who wasn’t giving him blowjob eyes the entire time. C’mon, Joe Millionaire, you’re as good as castrated once the act is exposed, so why not give yourself a little bit of a challenge. It would have been good television.
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