It's fun until it's not
🪽 PTERODACTYL: Signaling when collective energy crossed from playful momentum into the zone where things go south
It's fun until it's not.
Even the most enjoyable, casual, risk free activity can suddenly go south.
One minute you're cracking up, the next minute something dangerous or painful happens. You hit a turning point where everyone's like, okay guys, game over.
As our parents used to warn us, it's all fun and games until someone cracks their head open.
My cousins and I would do this all the time when we were kids. We'd play the stupidest games that seemed like a good idea at the time.
Once we had the brilliant thought to do a trust fall off the basement stairs. Five kids under the age of ten. Terrible idea.
Colin, my younger cousin, fell smack on his head. The rest of us just ran away. We abandoned him like a wounded soldier in a field.
Our parents rushed over to help him up, and we felt terrible. I don't remember what happened after that. Maybe he suffered a mild concussion. But hey, this was the eighties. Safety wasn't exactly high on people's priorities.
Colin still gives us shit about that night forty years later. As he should. Boy was that dumb. Perfect example of, it's all fun until it's not.
This phenomenon is universal. Behavioral psychologists call this the threshold model of harm. Many systems tolerate stress up to a point, and then fail suddenly. Ain't no warning curve. No slow escalation. One more unit of force, speed, height, or stupidity, and the system breaks.
And the problem is, the boundary is only visible after someone crosses it. Like with my cousin. It's just, snap! Oh crap. Joy and fear switch almost instantly. Nothing feels wrong until everything is.
Guess that's just what humans do. We push until the snap, instead of pausing earlier.
I think about this a lot with my toddler in public. Whether it's the playground, the bookstore, the library, or some other adventure, I try to preempt the “it's fun until it's not” moment.
Usually when we've been there for a while and things are going well, but I have an instinct that they might go south any minute. I'll whisper to my wife, let's quit while we're ahead.
Doesn't always work. Sometimes my kid's meltdown beats me to the punch. He gets tired or hungry or scared and starts making those pterodactyl noises.
Skreeeeee-awk! Kraaaah kraaaah!
Crap. We should have left ten minutes ago. I end up carrying a flailing dinosaur upside down out of the park.
Although we do get lucky from time to time. We sneak through the door right before it closes. Get the boy in the stroller, get him a cracker and some milk, and pray to god he passes out by the time we get home.
It's fun until it's not.
Anchorman's gang fight scene is the perfect manifestation of this. The news team gets them lost in a shady part of town. Confronted by their main competitor, they're challenged them to a fight. When several other news teams converge onsite, a full on melee battle ensues, only broken up by police sirens that cause them to flee.
Afterwards Burgundy comments:
Well that escalated quickly. I mean that really got out of hand fast. It jumped up a notch, didn't it? Yeah I stabbed a man in the heart. Brick killed a guy. Did you throw a trident? Yeah there were horses and a man on fire and I killed a guy. I've been meaning to talk to you about that. You should find yourself a safe house or a relative close by lay low for a while because you're probably wanted for murder.
It's fun until it's not.
There's also a larger manifestation of this threshold principle. Polarization, corruption and inequality, none of this shit comes out of nowhere. Feels that way, but only because stress was being quietly tolerated for long periods. As the great rap song goes:
It was all good just a second ago. I was pop, lock dropping it, now I'm popping tylenol.
Welp, I guess this is where we are now.
I'm not even taking a side here politically, merely describing the mechanism. Now I look back and connect the dots and think, yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense now. I don't like it and I don't agree with it, but I am willing to deal with reality on reality's terms.
Hey, this gives me an idea for a new invention.
A sound reactive digital display that lights up based on shrieking frequency.
Perfect for kid friendly events. Here's how it works.
The machine analyzes acoustic characteristics that strongly correlate with kid meltdown energy. Specifically sound pressure level, volume over time, frequency bands associated with high pitched shrieks, density of shrieks per minute, and sudden spikes versus sustained noise.
Pterodactyl has three to five directional microphones mounted on poles around the crowd perimeter. Each mic feeds into a local edge processor. No audio is recorded or stored, only live frequency and amplitude data.
And there are three state thresholds.
Green: Human children.
Yellow: Borderline dinosaur.
Red: Full jurassic park.
At red, the sign does not alarm. It simply displays.
You should have left ten minutes ago.
Remember kids, it's fun until it's not.