Punch-Drunk Footnoting


I’m revising my paper on virtual worlds. In order to make the point that the rules of any game are in part constructed by the players, I decided to point out that most people play common household games with rules that deviate from the “official” rules. So I started to drop a footnote on Monopoly, and wound up with the following monster:

Most people play with money under Free Parking, dumping yet more money into an already highly inflationary game. One is led to wonder whether the use of the phrase �Monopoly money� as a term of derision stems in part from the powerlessness of the game�s central banker to tighten the money supply.