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Browser game sensation Blaseball is mostly played on Twitter and it’s amazingI’m the crab guy

I’m the crab guy

Recently Alice0 has been telling us all aboutBlaseball, which is a free browser game simulation of a baseball league. Except it is calledBlaseballand everything is weird. I started playing this week with the start of the 4th season on Monday (a new season starts every Monday and concludes on Fridays) and have found two things to be true.

  1. I have no idea what is happening, but it seems to be mostly happening on Twitter. I have no idea what anything is. This is a game and unique cultural phenomenon that is beyond my understanding on almost every level. And 2) the Baltimore Crabs are the best team. Crabs all the way! Claws up! SNIPPLE SNAPPLE SNIPPLE SNAPPLE!

The roster of the Baltimore Crabs in Blaseball, including star players Valentine Games and Nagomi Mcdaniel, as well as Sutton Dreamy, Kennedy Loser and Oliver Notarobot

Luckily, though, it hardly matters how good you are at the actualBlaseball.combit of Blaseball, because actually Blaseball is mostly played on Twitter. I do not understand this part of it either, but I really fucking like it.

Blaseball itself cultivates a weird vibe from the off, which you easily slip into. The website has a ticker at the top which scrolls messages like “NO THOUGHTS ONLY BLASEBALL” and “THE DISCIPLINE ERA CONTINUES”. The players themselves have names like Valentine Games and Nagomi Mcdaniel, and blood types like grass or basic. With prompts like this, who among us could resist the lure of the community created Blaseball extended universe?

Alice0 already talked about how strange and fabulous the fan art is (although, shout out to this art of star hitter Mcdaniel, who transferred to us from the Breckenridge Jazz Hands and as part of that processtransformed into a majestic and beautiful crab beast), but it would be a mistake to assume that’s all there is. I should note, too, that Blaseball is funded onPatreonand that there is a Blaseball discord as part of this, which I am 100% sure is the secret wellspring for a lot of this.

All you need to do is sit on the#blaseballtag and watch it scroll. It’s beautiful. Even though Blaseball has only been a thing for about a month at this point, but there is aBlaseball News Network. There are Blaseballsonas. People ship players from rival teams.Owen Picklesteinfrom the Boston Flowers is apparently datingPedro Davidsof my beloved Crabs.

Almost all the teams have a Twitter account, and star players often have one as well, includingJessica Telephone, an extremely cute but unstoppable and eldritch talent currently playing for the Tigers. The Hellmouth Sunbeams feed often live tweets games, and has what I would term big weird energy.

As Randall Marijuana scores a solo homerun to seal a 10th inning Hell Series victory against the Tigers, the clouds above Hellmouth Stadium twist. For a moment, if you squint, you’d swear that you see the face of Rhys Trombone, smiling.#blaseball— Hellmouth Sunbeams (@hmouthsunbeams)August 25, 2020

As Randall Marijuana scores a solo homerun to seal a 10th inning Hell Series victory against the Tigers, the clouds above Hellmouth Stadium twist. For a moment, if you squint, you’d swear that you see the face of Rhys Trombone, smiling.#blaseball

— Hellmouth Sunbeams (@hmouthsunbeams)August 25, 2020

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Blaseball-specific memes have already arisen. Players can switch teams randomly in the middle of a season due to ‘feedback’ occurring during a game. Whenever a new player joins the Crabs, the call is “I’m the crab guy”. I am not sure when or how many of these things started. It’s sort of like deciding to start watching Eastendersnowwithout any context, or joyfully leaping into a broiling mess of salmon swimming up stream, except the salmon are all crabs and now I am a crab and we’re all yelling “Claws up for trans rights!”

It also means that a bunch of seemingly incompatible visions for what the players and teams are like can all exist at once, with the deciding factor usually being which do you, personally find hotter as you are looking at them. Are the Baltimore Crabs a team of half-human, half-crab hybrids? Are they just all literal crabs? Is our player Oliver Notarobot a robot or not a robot? All can be true, and yet none. I’m considering going back on Twitter just so I can join in with it all. Because one thing is always true. It is immutable.

Baltimore Crabs rule.