HQ Trivia Is a Harbinger of Dystopia
Twice a day, HQ Trivia players tune in to a smartphone game-show app, where an emcee poses 12 wholesome questions, each with three possible answers. Players who answer all of them correctly split a cash prize. The winnings started at a few hundred bucks when the app launched in the summer, and now average around $1,500. But they go up to $10,000 or more.
The app, created by two former founders of the defunct short-video start-up Vine, has become a sensation. Around half a million people tune in each session, and less than 100 typically win, making the prize substantial enough to motivate users beyond the usual pleasure of quiz games.
That all sounds great. So why do I feel such dread when I play? It’s not the terror of losing, or even that of being embarrassed for answering questions wrong in front of my family and friends. It’s the dread that the app represents some awful, plausible future not yet realized, but just over the horizon: one where expertise isn’t measured by knowledge, but by instinct tripped out on illusion.
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This will seem like an insane claim to anyone who has played this fun, innocuous take on a game show, but trivia has in the United Kingdom in the 1970s as a lure to draw customers on slower weekday nights. That format spread, and many bars still host a weekly trivia night run by a live emcee.
