HQ addresses the challenge by shortening the response time to a quick 10 seconds. That’s barely enough time to process the list of answers, let alone to consult friends or search the web (not that people don’t try). HQ is visceral trivia.

Because of this, HQ feels like it tests the unconscious rather than the conscious mind. In the app, trivia breaks its bond to reason, memory, and community. Instead, it tests instinct. Which answer does the shell of flesh, organs, and plasma that forms the player’s flawed human body feel to be true? The brain’s faculties attempt to weigh in, but there’s little time for the human intellect to work with the question before time elapses.

Worse, the questions start out easy but get difficult fast. Even the early questions aren’t always easy, especially when the gut has to answer instead of the brain. In a recent game, an incredibly easy first question about which Greek god is associated with lightning came with two preposterous answers (one was “Steve Jobs”) and the obviously correct one, Zeus. “What am I missing?” I wondered while waiting for the result, assuming some subterfuge—all questions seem like trick questions, these days.

The hardest questions resist instinctive response, but the game has so prepped users’ minds to respond from intuition that it becomes difficult to switch gears to logic again. As one considers the matter, an endless stream of comments scroll fast at the bottom of the screen, where players can post to its chat feed. These range from banal assertions of presence to political proclamations. The result is crippling. Who can even think while one’s fellow citizens cry out something like JEWS JEWS JEWS JEWS in the scrolling billow at screen’s bottom?

It would be a far leap to say that HQ allegorizes the present moment of media, politics, and civic life. But not too far. Sensation is more important than thought, intuition wins out over reason, and on online platforms anyone can subject anyone else to whatever idea they prefer, in any context. This is trivia as a measure of intrinsic merit, not of lived experience, let alone reasoned choice.

Then there are the payouts. $1,500 is a good prize, but when split dozens of ways it becomes paltry again. A recent game ended with around 75 winners, each of whom would take home a little over $20. “Winner winner, chicken marsala dinner,” Scott Rogowsky, the game’s host, improvised awkwardly. “Twenty bucks ought to be enough to buy an entrée almost anywhere these days.” The game show’s promise of small-scale wealth for the very few is replaced by HQ’s promise of a pittance for the few. Today, everyone claws for table scraps. HQ turns that desperation into the basis of entertainment.

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There’s something off in HQ Trivia. The form of the game only amplifies its ideology of foreboding. When players log on, pulsating, bright-colored blobs animate over a deep house-music track. The effect is hypnotic, mesmerizing players so as to prepare them to play trivia by hunch rather than by judgement. The pub quiz relies on the intoxicating effect of alcohol, a depressant in large quantities but a stimulant in small ones. Booze gives the quiz player a sensation of mental acuity. But HQ’s set up is hallucinogenic. The animation and music never climax but only linger, creating a feeling of dissonance from the very start.