HQ Trivia – From in our hands to out of hand

Was is it the smartest idea to download HQ Trivia during the first week of school? Probably not.

For those of you who do not know what HQ Trivia is, according to its description in the iOS App store, it is a live trivia game show app that gives its participants chances to cash in up to $10,000 every night and weekdays at 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. EST. It was developed by the creators of Vine, hosted by Scott Rogowsky and is no. 1 in the trivia section of the App Store.

During college, it is important to practice balancing classes and work. As a result, I never really had time or felt the desire to participate in apps like these. I, myself, was a Cube Runner, Cut the Rope and Temple Run fiend back in the day, but life’s time constraints and the need for more storage on my phone kept me from getting back into gaming on my phone.

But after researching HQ Trivia, I gave into the hype and downloaded the app a day I knew I did not have class —
smart, right?

As the clock struck 3 p.m., I was introduced to the HQ Trivia host, Scott Ragowsky. It was his charm, clever puns and one-liners that caught my attention, along with the hundreds of thousands of participants’ unrelated trivial comments such as “TRUMP” repeated 100+ times and emojis covering half of the screen. The first three questions were easy, testing my knowledge in nursery rhymes and random cultural things I learned in elementary school.

And right when I felt like I could guess my way to a cash prize, I got eliminated on a question about dog-centric activities involving mushing.

But what makes apps like these so enticing? Aside from winning actual money, from my experience, I tasted the slight bit of “what if?” What if I got to win some of the $2,500 from this game? The game’s hook was the rush, the frustration after my loss, the ability to interact with the host, the eye-catching aesthetic and technological originality.

According to Psychology Today, competition is what psychologists call an extrinsic incentive. In other words, a motivation towards a reward. People are always looking to receive things that could benefit themselves.

Almost everyone has somewhat of a competitive nature — some healthier than others — and there is this sense of rush, motivation, or hype that comes from the possibility of winning or receiving an opportunity to better one’s life, making it easier for one to continue moving forward to his or her destination.

HQ Trivia is a game show app and should not be taken more seriously than it is made to be. Apps like these can either make or break students like myself if they do not know how to correctly balance work and play.

This app definitely has its benefits in achieving a quick, fun past time, and its cutting-edge technological development has now made it possible to turn useless knowledge into a little extra money. I definitely have to say, students, fellow alumni, please, learn how to invest your time in what you know is most
important.

We cannot blame the development of technology for any of our mistakes. We must use it wisely and realize our ability to decipher when the things in our hands get out of hand.

 

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