YAR!
The 48 hours are over, the plague is ending ...
For the past two days, the @king-of-disease has been infecting users all over the Steem blockchain, helped by those already infected who proceeded to !sneeze at unsuspecting victims.
But what was it all about?
The idea came from me, @suesa. I wanted to do (another) April Fools' joke, one that would go even more viral than the one in 2018. And what's more viral than a virus?
At this point, I want to thank the following people:
@reggaemuffin, for not just writing the bot, but also running it and fixing smaller bugs along the way to keep things smooth. Without you, this would have never worked out!
@gutenmorganism, who designed the profile picture and banner/footer for the @king-of-disease
@arcange, who agreed to a cooperation between @king-of-disease and Steemitboard
But Suesa, what did we win?
Everyone in the top 200 will receive a Steemitboard badge! Well, that was the plan at least. We did not get 200 people who infected someone, but all the 83 that did will get their badge. Our rating will stay the same.
It will take a few hours until the badges will be assigned, so don't worry if you haven't received yours yet.
How do we know who is in the top 200 83?
To avoid making the game mechanics too predictable, the top 200 83 aren't the people who sneezed the most.
A virus can only thrive, if it's passed on from one host to another. A host that doesn't get sick and spread the virus is effectively useless.
As a result, a point was only given out if the person you infected infected somebody else.
When @apsu sneezed at @reggaemuffin, and @reggaemuffin sneezed at @suesa, @apsu received a point. In turn, for every person @suesa sneezed at, @reggaemuffin gained another point.
Sadly, there were less than 200 people who successfully infected someone who proceeded to carry the plague to someone else ... which is why people who sneezed a lot were added to the ranking too. We got 30 people with points and 53 more people, who sneezed but got no points.
Some pictures of the game statistics will be at the bottom of the post!
How dare you, spam so much as a joke!
The overwhelming majority of reactions to @king-of-disease were positive, and those that didn't participate just didn't sneeze at anybody. Even flags were very rare (4 minor ones on the first day, of which one was withdrawn), and I count that as a sign that most people had a lot of fun.
I intentionally designed the bot in a way that tried to keep the spam low. Only the "new infection" comment was supposed to be a direct reply to the person being infected, the "is already infected" comment was always a reply to the person sneezing. That was supposed to keep notifications to a minimum.
(Yes, @reggaemuffin coded the bot, but the design is still mine.)
At least one person reported the bot to steemcleaners, which was sorted out quickly.
I know of only one person, who I won't call by name, whose reaction to someone sneezing on comments on their post was more than an overreaction ... but I guess there is always someone who has to be the buzz kill.
You know who you are :)
But all in all, people had fun, and that was the main goal. Because my view is that the biggest difference between Steem and other blockchains, is the community.
Steem is fun. Try to have fun with bitcoin, it's more likely that you'll end up less happy than before, especially if the price drops again.
But Steem? With all the games, all the challenges, all the people interacting, Steem is fun. And that's what @king-of-disease was supposed to be: A lot of fun!
Statistics! Statistics!
Now that everything else is out of the way, check out the game statistics @reggaemuffin compiled for you (make the scroll wheel burn!):
First we have a list of the 30 people who really got points. They are sorted by how many points they got. The top 15 of these will get a 5 Star badge. The rest a 4 Star one :)
Then we have a list of all the 83 people who played this game. If we take away the people with a badge already, the top 15 people without points get a 3 Star badge, then next 15 get a 2 Star badge and the remaining 18 a 1 Star badge.
And if you want to know how the plague spread through the network, here are all our winners sorted by their total points, which is the amount of people infected through a chain starting with them. Our king of disease sporting the total 445 infected people in the 48 hours this game ran.
And so put this into a graphical perspective, here is a (really huge, better open in a new tab) graph of the infected and their infections:
And here is a table with the aggregated end result data:
