I once had an idea for a video game.  In one of the game’s early boss encounters, you would fight just long enough to trigger an event where you become incapacitated.  As it approachd you to finish you off, an unseen helper would suddenly take a carefully aimed head shot from off screen, saving you.

The twist being that later on in the game a time travelling side story begins and you discover that you were the one who had saved yourself.

I suppose this idea was obvious enough that plenty of people had thought of it already, but it didn’t stop me from feeling extremely disappointed when I saw the exact same plot device used in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  In fact, I’m almost certain that the book was written before I had come up with my version of the idea.

I bring this up because I have experienced far too many cases of this phenomenon in my life.  I’d have to go back to remember them all because I’ve generally tried to forget most of them.  One question that remains for me, though, is this:  Does this happen to me so often because my ideas are mundane enough that anyone else could come up with them, or is it because my ideas are so great that they are bound to become famous when another more dedicated person has the same one?

What was my point, again?

Ah yes…Beard Watch.  For several Novembers now, I have been bringing Beard Watch to you, the viewer.  I started doing this way back in 2005.  A few days ago, however, someone alerted me to the existence of something called “No Shave November.”

Supposedly, “No Shave November” is some kind of popular American unofficial holiday modeled after some Australian moustache-growing-month-kind-of-thing.  Whatever it is, I can’t seem to find any record of this event prior to 2006 (after a thourough search* of Wikipedia revisions of the entry for ”November,” I finally found the date upon which the phrase “No Shave November” was first added, as well as a page for the “holiday” itself that was eventually deleted for the reason, “Obviously a hoax article…“).

The worst part?  Blogger, Brian Cromer, recently made a post about his past experiences with “No Shave November.”  He even took daily pictures à la Beard Watch, but waited until the end of the month to mash them into a video citing that daily updates ”would have been super boring for you, thus guaranteeing the loss of all my consistent readers.”

Well, all I have to say to that is:  Fuck you Brian Cromer!

Mainly, though, I simply no longer have an interest in continuing the tradition of Beard Watch.  I don’t want to sound like an anti-trendist here (i.e. “My favorite band became popular so I must stop liking them.”), but this whole business has just left a sour taste in my mouth.

And let’s face it…none of this helps with my eternal question.  Beard watch wasn’t a mundane idea or a great one.  It was just plain stupid.  So what the hell is going on?

It’s a conspiracy, I tell you.

*In my search of Wikipedia revisions, I also discovered that the most common edits were made by people adding their own birthdays to the page, changing words to “gay” and/or talking about how one thing or another sucks a badly mispelled version of a dick.