The Game

The Midnight Article, "Pay It Forward!" was written by u/leological and posted to r/MidnightPaper.

The text of the Article was as follows:

PAY IT FORWARD! This article is for all of those readers that use one or more social media platforms. Across the globe, there have been reports of mysterious deaths surrounding an online trend. Although we cannot ensure its validity, some sources have reported at least 1,000 lives have been lost playing a game of posts. Sources tell us this trend has been dubbed “The Game”. The rules may be familiar to you. You are now playing “The Game”. Don’t think about “The Game." If you think about “The Game," you lose it. However, you can escape your doomed fate by introducing someone else to “The Game."

You must include the rules for your unaware participants. The Midnight Paper is not encouraging our audience to participate and there have been no reports “The Game” can be played on anything besides social media that we can find. Following the string and circumstances around some of the deaths, it appears a new participant must lose “The Game” within a week of the prior loser or the most recent poster will perish. We will continue to monitor the progress of this story and share any updates we have in upcoming publications. However, if you find yourself reading about “The Game” you should introduce it to others to ensure your own safety. Until next time, keep breathing and keep living.

Description:

"The Game" is a Trend-Type Oddity that involves a modern kind of chain letter, spread through posts on social media. It is able to claim to lives of those who fail to follow its direction. It holds the high body count of 1,000 claimed victims.

Anyone who reads about it, and thus thinks about it, becomes an unwilling participant, and will die in seven days if they do not post about The Game and pass it on to someone else. Thus, The Game ensures its own survival.

It could be deduced that, since this is a online forum of sorts, anyone who reads this article will become an unwilling participant of The Game.