The Worst Board Game

Originally intended to serve as a lesson on the evil nature of landlording and tenancy, Monopoly instead gave us the world’s worst board game, where hours-long sessions drag on, with one player taking the lead early and the rest slowly being drained of their money. Lessons like this don’t work, because all anyone ever got out of the game is that they usually hate it, and quit playing, and resent their family members. If you tell someone something explicitly, they won’t believe you, or they’ll theoretically believe you but fail to apply it to their decision-making. If you teach the same idea through simulation or metaphor, they won’t understand what you’re trying to get at. This is one of our many human problems.

Anyway, Metallica Monopoly would serve as a lesson to what happens when you kick ass for a few albums and then disintegrate into a weird parody of yourself, except that it’s just Monopoly with the squares named differently, and it’s a collector’s edition so it costs an insane amount despite being a paper box full of paper. It would also serve as a lesson on the worthlessness of “collector’s editions” and the economic punishment of people whose only crime is liking Ride The Lightning too much when they first heard it, except that, again, people don’t learn lessons, and we will all be bilked sooner or later for our emotional attachment to art, music, or a sports team.