Overview

GamemasterAnthony's Birthday refers to a forum game which occurs on February 28th wherein users role play as characters from all forms of media including film, video games, television, books and comics, to have a "party" for an internet user who goes by the handle GamemasterAnthony.

Background

On February 28th, 2008, forum poster GamemasterAnthony wrote that it was his 33rd birthday, which meant that "every character from every game, comic, cartoon, TV show, movie, and book reality come in with everything for a HUGE party" (shown below). The post likely appeared on the Badgame forums. GamemasterAnthony's real name may be Anthony Bault, as his account on forum-hosting site ZetaBoards^[2] links to a Fanfiction.net^[1] account listed under the name.

Developments

The same day, he wrote a similar post on a different forum, which may have been ZetaBoards forum Fort Ticonderoga (shown below).

The following year, a different ZetaBoards user, psycho warrior, "hosted" the bash for GamemasterAnthony (shown below, left). While no known posts were made celebrating GamemasterAnthony's 35th birthday, in 2011, ZetaBoards^[3] forum user Fatman posted a thread wishing him a happy birthday, with a reference to Anthony's apparent diabetes diagnosis.

Similar posts were made the following two years, and the tradition began to spread outside of Anthony and his friends. The tradition began seeing wider attention when Twitter user @jimpjorps began documenting the story on February 28th, 2014.^[5] In 2015, Anthony turned 40 and received further attention from Something Awful^[4] and @JimpJorps. A screenshot of the "celebration" circulated on the forum and Twitter. (shown below).

Ready Player One Comparison

As news about the film adaptation of Ready Player One spread online, some Twitter users pointed out the similarity between the film and Anthony's birthday concept. As Anthony invited many characters from pop culture to his birthday bash, Ready Player One includes myriad pop culture references to a similar time period. On December 10th, 2017, Dorkly editor @bridgmandrew called Ready Player One "GamemasterAnthony: The Book."^[6] After the release of much-derided posters for the film in early March of 2018, Twitter users again revived the comparison. User @KThorJensen posted a photoshop of the film's initial poster with the title changed to GamemasterAnthony's Birthday (shown below, left), gaining over 640 retweets and 2,300 likes. Twitter user @WarrenIsDead argued that the comparison was unfair because the GamemasterAnthony tradition was sweet whereas the film seemed more cynical (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References