They All Scream at Ice Cream

It's rare when you come across a perfect storm of any sort. Recently, I came across one mixing equal and large amounts of stupidity, masochism, gluttony, and bravado. A member of the Something Awful forums, medibot, had a vision. I'm not sure what prompted this vision, though I'm certain he'd be better off without it. He sought a challenge to conquer, and perhaps a sugar rush. The challenge that was decided upon was to ingest a concoction which would later become known as Thompson's Gambit, after his real last name. This substance involves taking a trip to a Coldstone Creamery and asking for a Love It size sweet cream mixin, with everything mixed in. That's right, every last one of their mixins must be, ahem, mixed in. For those who wish to live long enough to get married I should probably warn you of something. The most sugar in any Ben & Jerry's ice cream is their Chunky Monkey at 28 grams per half cup. This includes the stuff blended in. Coldstone's sweet cream has about 23 grams of sugar per half cup, just the ice cream. The Love It is about a full cup. You're ingesting 46 grams of sugar without a single mixin, and almost every one of the mixins is full of extra sugar. Also, this will cost you over $20, though the price varies by location and whether the cashier takes pity on you. Medibot's attempt at his own gambit was recorded, and can be viewed here.

This isn't really the end of the story though. Frankly, it was an amusing thought on the part of medibot when he attempted it, and to the best of our knowledge nobody had ever tried it before. It sounded like a bad idea, but it could have worked out, and at the very least would have provided some entertainment for the internet. If it ended there I wouldn't be typing this. Two more men rallied to the call of medibot though, and both filmed their attempts. The first is by forum member Syrg, and can be seen here. Note that this occurred after viewing medibot's video, not just after hearing about the challenge but not seeing the results. This is important in assessing the stupidity quotient. Note also that neither of these men are even moderately overweight.

Neither is the third man to try. Yes, yet another man with an average build attempted Thompson's Gambit, once again having seen both previous attempts, both times showing exactly how much money and pain are involved in the attempt, as well as giving a good view of the exact amount of blob that causes said pain for judgement of possibility. This man, SA forum member Oyster, is different from the others. Oyster practically seems to live to torture himself for the amusement of the forums. It began with an embarrassing admission that I won't repeat here, but let's just suffice it to say that anyone he co-commentated with on any of the Let's Play videos for months would rub it into his face. It'd be easy to feel bad for him for the level of crap he got in response, but then you have to remember he admitted this without any provocation, and he went far beyond a mere admission afterward. Oyster has a severe love for Megaman, and as such has started to run through the entire series for the aforementioned Let's Play forum, but not just showing gameplay. That would be much too simple, as he is very good at all of these games after playing them repeatedly over the years. No, he has the other forum members give him conditions to make things more difficult. That's not so strange on its own, but there's one particular condition that ended poorly, but no more so than you'd expect just from hearing it. He was told to spin in his chair for thirty seconds every time he took a hit, and well... I won't spoil it but you already probably know where this is going. Also, a minor source of severe masochism was his series of Civilzation 1 videos played on Emperor difficulty. This is really just an exercise in pain in and of itself, but that's horribly tame and not worth mentioning. I don't even want to possibly spoil this, so I'll just suggest you either watch the whole thing or skip to 20:00 in this video to find out what the real thing here is. It's not even just that this event happened, but that he admitted it to the forums. Well, I did call him the third man to attempt Thompson's Gambit, so here it is.

I can't claim to understand what drives a series of reasonable people to do this. I find it harder to understand what drives a series of reasonable people who have seen the results of doing this with their own eyes into attempting it themselves. I do know that there are actually less sane challenges in this vein that people undertake willingly and in greater numbers than this; the Vermonster comes to mind as one such that is even sanctioned by the parent company. All I can say with certainty is this: it's funny as hell to watch you all do it, so keep up the good work. I suppose that's the point really, except that I don't understand how anyone can put up with these consequences just for the amusement of others. You're all better, less sane men than I. Carry on sweet goons, carry on.