Fallacy Bingo!

What’s this all about? Watch the trailer below!

Play the game

“Fallacy Bingo” is not available for mass release… YET! We do workshops and events. To see a sampling of the types of events we do, scroll down. We also provide kits to educators for classroom use.

Contact us to book a game, receive a kit for your classroom, or if your interested in keeping up with how the game develops.

About the game

Fallacies create polarized perspectives

Do you have a hard time identifying when a belief system is built on fallacious constructs? We do too! In order to help us understand the impact of fallacies on our thinking, we made a game- Fallacy Bingo.

Why? Fallacies tend to shut down arguments preemptively, or distract from the core issue of an argument. Consequently, they work to build division between parties, and create fragmenting. In this age, it's a frequent occurrence. Calling fallacies out can help us move past them and address core issues. The goal of Fallacy Bingo is essentially, to provide the tools of awareness, and get past the bullshit. Spot, explain, and properly identify some of the most common fallacies used in politics, journalism, science, social media and more.

Contact us for more information, or to play the game.

Fallacies in the wild

Fallacies are very persuasive; they also make great song titles, headlines, memes, idioms, truisms,
They create in-groups... If we come across a fallacious statement that we agree with, we see it as a Truth, whereas another person would see it as a falsehood.

Fallacies are not necessarily about reasoning, but behavior - we don’t know what goes on in people’s minds and we can ALL be triggered emotionally. 

Once you can spot a fallacy, you’ll see that they tend to flock together and attract more fallacies. They build upon one another, often resulting in a mad gaggle of fallacies. They encourage polarized perspectives, creating the illusion of black and white. In reality, there are many shades of grey and the grey areas offer opportunities to bridge ideologies. The context of a fallacy is important, and oftentimes fallacies are so persuasive, the context gets overlooked, and the discussion gets derailed. 

What people are saying

"After I played the game, I felt fluent [in identifying fallacies].”
- Isha Datar, Executive Director, New Harvest

“This is the most important tool for science and democracy that I’ve seen come out of the design world in 15 years.”
- Prof. Mark Rosin, Pratt Institute & Director, Guerilla Science

“This game is a really fun way to help educate the public about how facts are being distorted to influence them. As a marketer, I know how easy it is to persuade people to believe what i want them to believe. We are at a crossroads in history where these techniques are now being applied to subvert the truth and they are working FAR too well.

The more we can expose the public to tools that can help them recognize when their perception of the truth is being manipulated, the better it will be for the world.”
- Sarah Campbell, VP of Content/Social Media Strategy at GCI Health

"At the beginning of the game when I'd read a line I felt like there was something wrong in there but couldn't place my finger on it.  After a few rounds I started recognizing what part was the fallacy and which fallacy it was. 

And then I started recognizing them more in everyday life.”
- Will Shindell, Co-Founder, BrooklynBio

"I think this game is so cool because it allows us to look at all the different fallacies present in biased news articles—all the nefarious and seemingly logical arguments we see manifesting in so-called "fake news." I come to this as a digital journalist, and fallacies in the game are also very common in our reader comments."
- Kelly Bourdet, Editor-in-Chief, Gizmodo

Fallacy Bingo events

The Premiere

Fallacy Bingo premiered with live gameplay at Caveat event space, Sunday January 28, 2018.

SXSW 2018

We used the Fallacy Bingo taxonomy to navigate the discussion for a panel on the subject of Science, Society and Ethics in a Post-Truth World. A recording of the discussion, featuring Kelly Bourdet, Stephani Page, Mark Rosin, and Karen Ingram is available on SXSW’s website.

Fake News Horror Show! NYU Tandon School of engineering

Fallacy Bingo was a demo at NYC Media Lab’s horrifically fantastic Fake News Horror Show! in June of 2018. Check out all of the demos represented in the Fake News Horror Show! NYC Media Lab is a part of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Fallacy Bingo in 3 acts, with Gizmodo at the Ace Hotel

The above clip is a video string-out from the August 17, 2018 event at the Ace Hotel, in which Gizmodo was a content partner. The event took place in 3 acts.
Act 1: Phrases and Idioms: Karen Ingram
Act 2: The Monologue: Raj Sivaraman
Intermission: A few words from Kelly Bourdet, Editor-in-Chief of Gizmodo, on logical fallacies in the comments section.
Act 3: The Debate: Gizmodo's Ryan Mandelbaum and io9’s Beth Elderkin
A portion of the fallacy-filled debate, “GMOs: Yay or Nay” can be heard at the end of the string-out

Bad ass women of STEM

We were delighted to have a game station at Caveat’s “Pregame your Brain: Bad Ass Women of STEM” event in January of 2019.

Shout Outs

Our gratitude goes out to the many folks who have helped us:

Students from the course ‘Biotechnologie in maatschappelijke dynamiek’ ('Biotechnology in societal context’) / VU University Amsterdam

Sources:

Athena Institute VU University Amsterdam, Dr. Frank Kupper, Prof. dr. Tjard de Cock Buning, DesignLab Twente, Prof. Peter Paul Verbeek, Ben Mepham

This work is based on a variety of sources that have been credited or adapted with permission. If you notice anything that seems incorrect, please notify us.
- Wieke Betten & Karen Ingram, CoLab Futures