In memory of Game Show Follies

I was a daily reader of a quirky game show blog called Game Show Follies. 

In the early years of the internet, I was a regular reader of a game show blog run by a guy named Steve Beverly. Steve has a diverse resume in broadcasting, and he is a big fan of game shows. As I recall, he launched his website to gather and disseminate all sorts of game show news in the late 1990s. I visited it frequently. 

Steve discontinued that website after several years, and despite my unwavering love of game shows, I didn't replace Steve's website with another. There were alternatives to get my game show fix online, but nothing seemed to capture my attention in the same way that Steve's website did. 

Until years later, when I stumbled onto Game Show Follies. 

I discovered it by chance one day during a Google search for some game show topic. A link to an entry at Game Show Follies was amongst the search results, so I took a look at the blog and soon became a regular reader. 

The blog had been around for years at that point, and yet I hadn't stumbled upon it until that day six or seven years ago. Whenever I found it, it took a while before it became habitual reading. But it became a daily destination within a few weeks or months. 

Game Show Follies featured one man's daily musings about the world of game shows, allegedly. The listed author's name was Casey Abell, and almost every day the author would post an article. Once in a great while s/he would miss a day. And once in a while s/he would post twice in one day. 

I never took notes, as I never considered I would reflect upon my years of reading, and commenting, on the author's daily postings. But I certainly wish I had saved screen shots of some of the most memorable, and ridiculous, posts in the long, glorious history of Game Show Follies. They were both brilliant and brutal. 

I wish I had screen shots because the blog's author dumped years of writing. After announcing, quickly and unceremoniously, that the author was retiring from the blog immediately, the author zapped thousands of blog posts spanning more than a decade, about a week after retirement. Erased from existence with a click of a button. Sure, I can probably find random memories from the blog at archive.org if I search for them, but that would require effort. No thanks.

I'm going to guess that most readers who perused the author's ramblings have wacky memories akin to mine. At times Game Show Follies was like a car accident. You couldn't look away. 

Early on I had a sense that the author of the blog had a penchant for talking down to her/his audience. It wasn't every week, but it occurred often enough.

I don't remember the comment, but the author's tone in making the comment certainly suggested the author was smarter than the readership, and that you were foolish for holding your opinion. 

So I came up with a stock response that I started using. I would comment on a blog post with some sort of response about how I don't know what to think about the subject, but perhaps I would be told what I should think... or something close to that. It didn't take long for the author to take offense to a redundant comment that suggested the author was arrogant in her/his thinking. I was quickly warned that my malfeasance would not be tolerated. 

What fun is it to be king or queen of your kingdom if you don't berate the peasants once in a while? 

The author liked to make assumptions and generalizations about readers, as well. (Don't we all?) If you didn't like Steve Harvey's shtick, if you didn't think sexual innuendo was hilarious, you had to be an "older is better" viewer. If you didn't like today's overproduced, overly dramatic games with hosts who think they're as important to the show as the game, you were a dinosaur who only lived for the past. 

It was an idiotic conclusion, but I was labeled as one of the "older is better" crowd in response to some comment I made, probably about Family Feud. The game is relatively dull, and has been for decades. With or without sexual innuendo, it's just not very entertaining until you get to the bonus game. 

There's no debating that a show I've found to be dull through multiple hosts is doing well more than four decades later with Harvey at the helm. I watched it plenty in my youth, but as an adult, it fails to entertain me. But I can't find a show to be slow and boring for decades unless I'm an "older is better" guy. 

Yeah, that's the kind of flawed logic that permeated throughout the blog for years. 

Conversely, I agreed with the author about its GSN knockoff, America Says. It took years for me to watch America Says, as I haven't had a cable television package for about 15 years now. But America Says is a lot of fun. It's a fast-paced version of Feud, the host isn't trying to do improv comedy during the show and the questions aren't filled with lame sexual innuendo. If I was 17, I'd find Harvey's Feud to be hilarious. I'm not. Irony, newer is better when it comes to the Feud format.

So how else was his blog both memorable and ridiculous? 

Comment moderation

I have accused the author of kayfabe, a wrestling term that means to present a staged performance as authentic. Pro wrestlers usually don't hate each other outside of the arena. They're working together and are often friends. But they want you to believe they really hate the other guy when they don't. That's kayfabe. 

The author had weird polices and procedures over the years when it came to moderating her/his comments. S/he contradicted her/his fluid policies periodically, which were published on her/his blog and treated at times as if they were federal law. I eventually accused her/him of hypocrisy. S/he was outright fraudulent at times in what s/he said and did when it came to her/his blog comments. Sometimes the only explanation was kayfabe.

When I started, there was no comment moderation, as I recall. If you submitted a comment, it showed up on the blog post. 

This allowed for a lot of idiocy, and readers long before me were already jerking the author's chain. I don't recall if s/he was deleting comments or not, but s/he did have a policy regarding profanity on her/his blog. I appreciated that, as it's really unnecessary in the world we live in, and it adds nothing to a game show discussion. It just doesn't. 

At some point, the author was getting hit with a lot of nonsense. I don't recall if it was insulting, offensive, profane or simply pointless. The author issued some sort of warning, which only stirred the hornet's nest. As more ridiculousness spewed forth, the author would respond with some silly comment like, "I'm really getting upset!" Seriously, that was the tone of the response. And I'm supposed to believe that the author's actions weren't kayfabe?

Well, that soon ushered in an era of moderated comments. No instant gratification any more, and the author was now the ultimate gatekeeper. 

Yet the absurdity continued. 

The author liked to cite her/his adhering to those terms and conditions of the blog, golden rules s/he proclaimed s/he would live by when it came to comments on the blog. These were nothing more than rules posted on the blog that could be applied arbitrarily when the author was in a cranky mood, and proved that the author was really just a hypocrite.

One of the rules was "no spam," or something akin to that. That's great, except there's no definition of what is or isn't a spam comment. I would submit silly comments sometimes just to see what kind of mood the author was in. Some of which I knew would be rejected. I'd type all sorts of nonsense, including claims about drinking and intoxication. 

I'd also pass along feedback, a news tip or send other info that wasn't important to have displayed in a blog comment. When I'd submit such info or feedback, I'd start the comment with profanity, and sometimes note the comment wasn't for posting. The author didn't edit comments before publishing them, so they wouldn't be posted. Worked out well for both of us. 

There were comments that weren't published, however, that were sans profanity. They'd be simple, vague comments. For a while I was submitting comments simply praising the great work. Nothing about the daily blog post, just a compliment. Eventually those stopped being posted, because the author deemed them to be spam. What a clown. Generic praise on a daily basis was spam? Kayfabe or hypocrisy. Take your pick.

When I deemed the author mentally unstable at one point, I stopped commenting for a while. Eventually I returned to making occasional comments. I posted some of the same ridiculousness that had been deemed spam months earlier, in part because the author had started approving ridiculousness from others that should have been rejected under her/his fluid, goofy terms and conditions.  

And to my surprise, my silly comments started to get approved. Why? Who knows, other than the fact the author was a hypocrite whose terms and conditions were fluid. I even commented that it was good to see hypocrisy was back in play, and the author approved such a comment. It had no relation to the blog post I was commenting on, but s/he approved it. Maybe dementia was starting to set in and s/he forgot the edict s/he had made long ago. 

I included a reference to hypocrisy in my daily comments for a short period months or years prior, as the hypocrisy in the author's actions showed up occasionally on her/his blog, and I had seen it multiple times at that point. One day I got the stern warning that if I dared to reference hypocrisy in the future, my comments wouldn't be approved. There's an old saying about the truth hurting. 

I wasn't the only person who was subjected to the author's fluid terms and conditions, for the record. 

And I get it. If you have a blog that is generating daily traffic, you're going to have to hassle with a bunch of crap, just as anyone with email has to sift through and delete spam on a recurring basis. It's hard to police every blog comment and apply your general rules and regulations exactly the same. That's human nature. But the author was bad at it. It was as if kayfabe was in play.

It was as if the author was trying to be a puppet master, using hypocrisy to evoke a response when s/he needed entertainment, logic or past precedent be damned.

As for why I stopped commenting for a while: As I said, the author seemed mentally unstable. And at one point s/he was outright fraudulent in her/his representation of me in the blog comments. So I decided it was time to stop commenting for a while. When somebody exhibits signs of mental instability, you give them space. (I'm sure s/he would say the same thing about me.)

I don't remember what irritated me about her/his actions, but I had been responding to the blogs on a recurring basis for a while, with no ulterior motives. Nothing about my responses was intended to get the author going. Whatever set her/him off, s/he reverted to her/his ridiculous ways. I didn't ignore that in my comments. 

S/he must have been rather angry, depressed or bored, because in response s/he printed portions of my previous comments that hadn't been approved for the blog, stuff I wrote just to see what level the hypocrisy meter was at on a certain day. It was definitely nonsense, which s/he would classify as spam. It would be out-on-context stream of consciousness based upon something unrelated I had just looked at or read, perhaps with alcohol and intoxication references peppered in.

Printing unpublished comments and trying to use them to mock me was her/his way of trying to make me look bad, ridiculous or otherwise. This wasn't the first time the author tried to misrepresent me in a blog comment. And I'm convinced that's what s/he was trying to do again. Hypocrisy and kayfabe aside, s/he wasn't an idiot. S/he may have acted like one occasionally, but s/he knew what I was doing when I submitted nonsense that was certain to remain unpublished. 

Instead of an intelligent counter argument to my criticism, the author opted for fraudulence. At that point I decided I wasn't going to comment for a while. 

If you see a person on the sidewalk as you're walking down your street, and that person is acting mentally ill, do you engage with the person, or do you try to give that person space and avoid contact if at all possible? I'm not a social worker, so I chose the latter. 

I kept reading the blog, I just didn't bother to comment. After several weeks, I disagreed strongly with a position s/he took on something. So I finally commented, ending my sabbatical. And how did the author respond? S/he tried to portray my comment as my typical response. Noting I had been absent, s/he bemoaned my contrasting opinion as if that's what I always did, as if I always disagreed with her/him.

I didn't resume commenting regularly at that point, but for fun one afternoon not long after her/his misrepresentation of me, I looked back at about a month's worth of her/his blog posts before I took my sabbatical. I commented on almost every blog post leading up to the sabbatical. My comments shared my memories of a topic or my opinion on the news topic of the day, but comments suggesting the author's opinion was flawed, wrong or pure idiocy were nowhere to be found. But yeah, I was always taking up a contradictory opinion to her/his opinions. 

Lying to the readers or lying to herself/himself: Only the author knows for sure.

I guess it wasn't kayfabe, as I'd have to have been in on it for it to be kayfabe. The author was simply a fraud on a recurring basis. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Funny stuff

Let's not forget that the author liked to act all high and mighty on a periodic basis. 

People would take cheap shots at her/him from generic Google accounts. Some readers had names attached to their account, but plenty did not. The author liked to ridicule those who didn't declare their full name on their Google account. If your name is Donald John Trump, you had better not set up your account to display your name as Dictator Donny, not if you wanted to contradict or criticize the author in any way. If you didn't spell out your name, you were chastised for criticizing the author. 

The irony in this is twofold. One, I had emailed the author a couple of years prior, passing along legitimate news fodder for the blog. My display name on the blog was generic, but I included my full name and made it relatively clear who I was in my email.

Despite the love/hate back-and-forth we had going, I never had contempt for the author. But I never got an acknowledgment of my email. The author would eventually claim s/he had never received it. 

But yeah, I was among the anonymous. 

The greater irony is that the author used a pen name, and admitted to it, if you can believe her/him. 

 "Casey Abell," we would be told, was a pen name for Ralph Abell. The author also provided links to a rather generic Linked In page under Ralph's name, and a link to a Twitter account that had no meaningful info, and had sat unused for some time. Ralph, as the author would frequently be called, may have still been lying about her/his identity, using somebody else's accounts and claiming that as her/his identity. That's far-fetched, of course, but not out of the realm of possibility. 

And Ralph had a couple of photos on the blog over the years, allegedly portraying Casey. A head shot and then a family photo. Again, doesn't prove anything legit, but it could have very well been the author. Once or twice I Googled Casey's name along with the Texas town s/he claimed to live in to see if there was evidence s/he was being honest about who s/he was, but little turned up when I did. 

At the end of the day I would have bet my $5 that the author was being honest in portraying herself/himself, but s/he was overly upset about anonymity on a blog, and for much of the time had portrayed Ralph as somebody named Casey. That's what you call a hypocrite, and that's why I refuse to rule out the idea that Ralph isn't a pen name, as well. 

There were a few other funny things when it came to the author. S/he was ripped by another blogger for her/his "laugh it off" response to women who are subjected to internet harassment. I never knew this at the time, but it was pointed out on her/his blog at some point by another reader. I don't need to weigh in with an opinion, but the fact that the author would get upset about stupid comments made toward her/him on her/his blog, yet once told women to laugh off such comments, is hilarious. And sad. 

Perhaps the funniest moment was when s/he referenced a celebrity from a long-ago appearance on The Dating Game. I think it was Farrah Fawcett. And somehow the author made it clear that s/he didn't realize Farrah had died years ago. That can happen, of course, but the way it read in her/his blog, and the flack s/he got for the comment months later was damn funny. 

Big fans

There were plenty of people who didn't think the author was particularly brilliant, or worth the time of day. 

Here's a comment I found from 2018 on a forum called Golden Road: 

"I've read some of his posts and his tone is mocking of pretty much the entire fandom. And not in a funny way- it's mean and rather stupid. He seems to actually despise game shows with terms like "moldy oldies" (any old game show), makes fun of buzzr on a regular basis for not being a "real network" and looking for the first sign of failure, takes constant shots at buzzerblog, the game show forum, golden road and game show garbage.

It could be he is jealous, because those forums he trashes actually have views and comments. Abell only has about two or three people actually reading his blog. Going back, the only entries with many comments are trolls and those insulting him.

Oh, and Casey, since you're apparently reading this, telling the whole world that you Googled me because I had a reaction to you that you didn't like is more than a little creepy."

The author did like to pick apart discussions on other forums and explain why those discussions were flawed and predictably biased. It was a strange obsession. 

I think the author had plenty of blog traffic. Was that 100 visitors per day or 500? Don't know. But it was far more than 2-3.

Whatever the readership was, I'd wager $10 that the majority of the readers wouldn't call themselves fans of the blog. 

The end

As ridiculous as so many of the author's posts and responses were over the years, I'm sorry to see her/him go. It was a daily commitment by presumably one author for many years. That's amazing. It's game shows, it's not important. But the author found something to write about and presented simple nuggets of info and opinion consistently. That's impressive. Sure, some of those nuggets were picking nits over opinions in another forum. But s/he did other, more creative stuff to fill the void, as well. If there was nothing current to write about, s/he would pull up a wiki entry about an old and/or forgotten game show and share a tidbit or two about what was written. 

Whoever the author was, whatever her/his motivation, I'll never know. S/he shared writing on a consistent basis, and I admire that. S/he was either a puppet master or mentally unstable. I certainly know which one I'd wager my $20 on. Despite that, I'll applaud the effort to put her/his writing out there, no matter how foolish or idiotic some game show experts will claim it was. 

I didn't expect the end to be so sudden, unless the author died. And maybe s/he has in the months since the blog ended. We'll never know. But it's a shame that years worth of effort were pulled from the blog a week after her/his retirement. Not every piece of prose needs to be preserved in perpetuity, but after all those years of writing and making it available, why pull it down now? (I can think of one possible, reasonable answer.) 

Whatever the reason, I had to spend a couple of hours memorializing the wacky, weird world of Game Show Follies. I started this weeks ago, put in a couple of hours of writing and still wasn't done. It took me months to finally sit down and finish it off. It is done. You might think that the author's blog wasn't worth five minutes of memorialization, and you might be right. But I'll never forget the weird, wacky world of Game Show Follies, and I will not be the only one. Now we can all look back and laugh, together, assuming anyone ever finds this blog post. 

Rest in peace, Casey Abell.