Poor Losers Ruin Facebook Giraffe Game

It's always the bad apples that spoil whatever the heck you can find good in life. You'd think something as simple, harmless, and fun as a riddle circulating Facebook might get an exemption. But sadly, no.

The giraffe riddle has been a big hit on Facebook. It's a riddle that, if you answer wrong, you replace your current profile picture with a picture of a giraffe for three days. It's a good riddle and a lot of giraffes were showing up on profiles. Oh what fun. Kind-a cool. Interesting at least.

But some of the losers couldn't stop themselves from losing twice, the second time by being poor losers. The first hint of a break from what millions of people were doing, apparently without experiencing great mental anguish, I found at snopes.com. Snopes reported, as it so often does, on a hoax related to the giraffe riddle, finding that there is no virus related to posting an image of a giraffe on your page. But then, at the bottom of their response they, for no apparent reason at all, reported that there were two possible answers to the riddle.

It was a bit suspicious. The snopes article was posted at almost the same time, if not before, as the first hoax postings about potential viruses in giraffe pictures; which is so utterly stupid and unbelievable to begin with that … well, you get the point. It looked like someone wanted to give credibility to something other than the right answer. Just in case you don't know the riddle, here it is. And I won't bother to warn you there's a spoiler here, because the losers have already spoiled it.

It's 3 a.m. The doorbell rings and you awaken. You have unexpected visitors, your parents. They have come to eat breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread, and cheese. What do you open first?

Obviously it's not strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread or cheese. There's no choosing between them without some long and uninteresting metaphysical analysis that would probably turn out to be wrong, and this is just a riddle. So, you do the smart thing. You back up a little to see what's left. The doorbell rings? Oh, there ya go … “open” the door.

BZZZZT! Wrong answer. You were smart, but this is why so many giraffe pictures were showing up on Facebook. It's not what you open “first.” First, unless you're going to stumble around running into things for a while, using your hands to find the door, you open your eyes. See there. That's what makes it a good riddle. The riddler knew that you were smart enough to move beyond the condiments and drinks and planted the answer further back. Clever.

Snopes contends there are two possible correct answers, making the editor who wrote it a double loser.

But then, I found the same information in an article in the Huffington Post. “Answers:”, it contends are "The door" and "your eyes." “After all, it's 3 a.m. in the riddle.” Suck it up Alexis Kleinman, and just post a damn giraffe as your profile picture. After all, it's only for three days.

Since then, double losers have been posting objections and protests because they got the answer wrong and these other double losers have already fooled them into thinking they might not be, or at least given them an excuse not to make good.

In any case, the bad apples have spoiled the fun again.