I have been inspired by the genius of Edward Nudelman's endless comment receiving progressive haiku. Call me a shameless copycat, but I thought I'd try a silly progressive story.
The rules are simple: I'll start the story, then you pick up the gripping, profound plot line and extend it in your comments. You can extend it by a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter. I'm sure it will rival War and Peace in all its deepness and profundity, not to mention length. Not that length matters, fellas.
Three fierce bad bunnies go point whoring
Once upon a time, there were three bad little bunnies called Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail. One day, they hopped over the garden wall into Mr. McGregor's garden, intent on some carrot poaching. Expecting to be chased, they peered carefully around a shrub.
Mr. McGregor was ignoring them! Instead, his fingers pounded on something in his lap, his eyes intent on a glowing screen.
"What is this new thing?" asked Flopsy. "It has words on it. I think it says Gather."
After minutes of spying, they saw that Mr. McGregor had earned points and was ordering a Barnes & Noble gift card!
"I have an idea," said Mopsy. "If we could somehow get on this thing and earn enough Barnes & Noble gift cards, we could buy up all those books by that very unladylike Miss Potter. Then no one else would be subjected to the shock of seeing us with our clothes on."
So...
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"I have no idea," said Cottontail, "but it seems serious articles get few comments, so why not write something controversial or merely silly?"
"Good idea!" said Mopsy, "but...
"You do NOT understand," said Cottontail. "The whole point is to get a lot of people to comment so we can gain points! Nothing else matters."
Just then Flopsy looked away with a contemplative countenance, wondering...
"But surely point whoring is evil," said the guilty Flopsy, "and we will be punished."
"I don't care!" raged Cottontail with a sudden vehemence. She lunged at Mr. McGregor's throat with the razor teeth she had previously reserved only for certain Southern presidents. From a sling on her back, she took the machete she used to hide daintily under her pinafore back in the day when Miss Potter used to make her do unnatural things for rabbits. She brandished it.
I note that you are new to gather, and also from Nigeria. As to your question; (and I think it ironic that you should choose a phrase from the language of diplomacy when seeking to discover the meaning of such a gutter term,) gather awards redeemable points in a convoluted sytem based on posting articles, and getting responses to those articles. As our society, here in the USA, has drifted more and more towards crass and confrontation interaction, it has been only natural that the tendency of some to gain as many points as they can, by whatever means, has been deemed 'point whoring' by the aforementioned crass society we now live in. Hope that helps to explain the term!
"Whoa! That was wierd," said everyone in unison. Then they all fell down on their knees, except the rabbits, who don't have the same kind of knees, and worshipped the VOICE. They hugged each other, happy to have made contact with either a God or an alien being at last. Then they decided to rename their commonly shared activity "point gathering," and went about it with renewed fervor while they probably lived happily ever after, if this is, in fact,
THE END?
Then Mopsy saith "It will fall to me to start the story, then up picketh thou the gripping, profound plot line and extendeth it in your comments as ye will. Thou canst extendeth it by a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or a chaptereth. Full sure am I that it will rival the Mabingnogion in all its deepness and profundity, not to mention length. Though to be sure, length mattereth not, fellas."
Yessssssssss, precioussssssss, the earsssssssss.
Meanwhile, in Antarctica...
As this seemed an attack on Christmas, the bunnies were amazed at the hundreds of comments evoked. Their points piled up as Bill O'Reilly discovered the group and became incensed, claiming they had turned down Salvation Army bellringers on their site and had attacked Christianity by use of the phrase "now we don our gay apparel" in talking about their clothing. This caused a further uproar and was picked up by Keith Olberman who called O'Reilly the "Worst person in the world" for making what rabbits wear a gay, anti-Christmas issue.
This, of course, led to even more comments, which gave the bunnies over 31000 points which they used to buy a diamond, which, of course, weighed more than....you guessed it, 20 carrots.
(Anyone caught throwing tomatoes at my columns will be severely pun-ished!)
Said Chuck Weekly, the local news anchor.
Dack Veldeerniss had stopped ignoring his TV and stood amazed. Penguins getting down and funky with their bad selves! Bunnies wearing gay apparel and going point gathering! Cats and stick people commenting on stupid stories on the Internet! Had the whole animal kingdom gone insane?
Dack thought for a moment. What should he do? Here he was, a simple Antarctican tundratic goat farmer, just trying to make a living farming tundratic goats as all his family before him had done, except for Susie who went off to Hollywood to become a movie star and co-starred in a Paulie Shore movie.
These animals were driving him crazy. Worse, they were driving the tundratic goats crazy. Something had to be done. "I know!" he said aloud because there weren't many people to talk to in Antarctica. "I'll call Al Gore! Surely he'll know what's making the animals act this way."
In any case, Dack found himself screaming "PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE! I do not enjoy your soap opera and I don't like it when people interrupt me when I am pondering the wise but puzzling words that I think Al Gore just told me in his terrible Antarctican accent. Your soap opera's content is inappropriate and irrelevant here."
With that, he forgot all about the highest mountain in the Sahara Desert and called the nearest exorcist.
It rolled over in the sand, trying for the umpteenth time to shift that dratted nugget of something, about the size of a pumpkin seed, that lodged in the one part of its back that none of its legs could reach. Gods, but it itched. That darned thing had kept it awake for the past 9,000 years.
//FCR
"Begone boastful behemoth of Beelzebub! Git gory ghost of ghoulishness! Hie thee hence, hellacious henchman of hell! Seek, seek the squid of Saharan squalor! Go away and when you can go no further, go further still and go away yet more."
The excorcist was an alliterative fellow and had been made redundant at his last real job for obvious reasons.