Why I'm Glad I Refused to Play That Game!

Some memories stay with us for decades.

Not because they were traumatic.

But because something about them never sits right.

I was around 20, sitting in a lecture hall, when a friend casually turned to me and said,

"Look around the class and pretend everyone here is crazy. Just imagine they're all insane people doing insane things. You'll laugh at everything they do."

My immediate reaction was simple.

Why would I want to do that?

It didn't sound funny.

It sounded cruel.

So I never did it.

Knowing her otherwise composed nature, I brushed it off as a bad joke.

Over the next few days, I realised she wasn't joking.

She actually did it.

Regularly.

She would scan the classroom, watching people who were simply sitting, writing, answering questions, talking to teachers, or just existing peacefully and she would laugh.

Sometimes with others.

Sometimes all by herself.

The people she mocked hadn't insulted her.

They hadn't harmed her.

They hadn't even spoken to her.

Their only crime was existing within her line of sight.

That disturbed me then.

It disgusts me now.

At 20, I couldn't explain why.

I only knew something about that "game" felt deeply wrong.

Twenty years later, I finally understood why.

It wasn't just unkind.

It quietly trained the mind.

The first thing it trained was selective attention.

Our brains cannot pay attention to everything at once. They constantly decide what deserves notice.

If you deliberately tell your brain, "Everyone here is crazy," it immediately begins searching for evidence to support that instruction.

A student stumbling over an answer.

Someone staring out of the window.

Someone laughing loudly.

Someone fidgeting.

None of these things are unusual.

But once you've instructed your brain to look for "crazy," ordinary behaviour suddenly starts looking ridiculous.

Psychologists call this cognitive priming.

The label you choose becomes the lens through which you begin to see people.

Then something else quietly takes over.

Confirmation bias.

Your brain starts remembering only the moments that support the story you've already decided is true.

The hundreds of ordinary, kind, intelligent, completely normal moments disappear into the background.

The awkward moments become your evidence.

Slowly, without even realising it, you're no longer seeing people.

You're seeing caricatures.

That's why that game disturbed me so much.

It wasn't humour.

It was training the brain to turn human beings into entertainment.

It wasn't wit.

It was contempt disguised as fun.

It wasn't observation.

It was practising dehumanization.

And here's the part that concerns me the most.

Our brains are remarkably adaptable.

This ability is called neuroplasticity.

The pathways we use repeatedly become stronger and easier to access.

Practice gratitude, and your brain becomes quicker at noticing reasons to be grateful.

Practice kindness, and it becomes easier to notice people's struggles, strengths, and humanity.

Practice mockery...

...and your brain becomes frighteningly efficient at finding reasons to mock people.

That's no longer just a joke.

That's a habit.

And habits shape character.

As time went on, another question quietly settled in my mind.

If someone can deliberately train themselves to see strangers this way...

What stops them from seeing their friends the same way?

That question never left me.

Because once someone finds pleasure in reducing people to punchlines, psychological safety begins to disappear.

You can never completely relax around someone who habitually looks for reasons to laugh at others.

I'm 40 now.

Today, I finally have the vocabulary for what my 20-year-old self could only feel.

The quickest way to weaken empathy is to make mockery a habit.

The fastest way to erode your own character is to repeatedly find entertainment in people who have done absolutely nothing to you.

And the saddest part?

The people being laughed at usually have no idea they're serving as someone else's daily source of amusement.

Looking back, I'm grateful I refused to play.

Not because I was morally superior.

But because I refused to teach my brain that another human being's dignity was a fair price to pay for my entertainment.

Character isn't built only by the things we do.

It's also built by the things we repeatedly find funny.