I really adore it. Too many humans all shouting out different directions for what they think is best all at the same time with incomplete knowledge and lag really is a metaphor for the human race.
In terms of what it teaches us about the internet, whats surprised me about TPP is just how connected and self-organised we can be nowadays. I'm more used to looking at it from the side of 'People who watch Checkpoint don't even realise Loading Ready Run exists' and TPP is a incredibly powerful counter to that. If you could learn why the TPP crowd is so engaged and informed whereas the youtube-video-watching crowd isn't, that would be some serious power you've got your hands on there.
And I say that because the vast majority of TPP knows exactly what they're doing, where they're going and what the goal is to the step. This isn't brownian motion, this is almost an iron guided force, but working with inefficient tools and incomplete organisation. People not only knew that the goal was to get to Lavender Tower, but they knew how to get there and what buttons they needed to press. The crowd-sourced information and news distribution is incredibly powerful. Instead of monkey bashing at keys to write shakespeare, it's like 60,000 people with gloves over their hands working at one giant typewriter to instantly copy out a dictionary
You can see this most clearly when the hivemind is split between objectives, grind in lavender tower or in the rock cave? And suddenly the motion breaks down altogether and Red develops schizophrenia. It's the exception that proves the rule, because it only happens on very rare occasions.
And the strategies being adopted are amazing too. The hivemind is learning. What seemed impossible two days ago is old hat now. Getting to the 4th floor on the Team Rocket hideout lift was a hopeless task and given over to democracy, but within a day anarchy could manage it within minutes. I actually believe they might be able to get through the Safari Zone, as long as they don't run out of money.
Whenever it switches to democracy you can visibly watch people adapt to the lag, and the whole democracy/anarchy meta is fascinating in how much anarchy has learned and gained ground from it. The b-spam to counterattack start spam is powerful too.
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In terms of physically watching and following the thing, I've got some advice for people.
Firstly, the Live Update [http://www.reddit.com/live/sw7bubeycai6hey4ciytwamw3a] thread is a must. (click on 'twitch plays pokemon' will refresh it). As is turning the chat spam into something readable [http://www.reddit.com/r/twitchplayspokemon/comments/1y8ukl/chat_filter_script_updated_for_democracy/0]. The google doc [https://sites.google.com/site/twitchplayspokemonstatus/] is helpful but not so necessary.
Secondly, don't stay glued to the stream. By the nature of the thing, it takes ages to achieve anything. Keep it up in a seperate tab or another monitor and dip in throughout the day, if they look like they're in a funny place focus on it for a bit. The Live Update is huge for this.
Thirdly, understand exactly what is happening and how much influence we can have. The game is choosing commands randomly from thousands available with twenty-six seconds lag. If you want to teach someone a TM there is no way of making that happen directly, instead all we can do is spam the sequence of commands that could lead to that happening and wait for random chance to put them in the right order. So you can spam starts, ups and a in roughly the right sort of frequency needed and wait for them to come together correctly.
Once you really get this, the experience becomes much less frustrating and you can contribute in a way that best achieves the goals with an understanding of how sometimes it's impossible to prevent the game from being screwed up. Sit back and laugh as they go to withdraw a lvl 30 Hitmonchan and end up releasing it and a Zubat instead
