Ouch! I hope it recovered ok!

Ah right, I missed that.

Thanks for sharing! Yeah, it was hearing an American/British historian explain this version of red rover that got me wondering about it, since that’s different from what I knew.

I haven’t thought about this game in over 40 years!

Yeah same (ok, not quite 40 years, but 20 for sure), until a YouTube video about folklore (of all things!) had the presenter talk about what “red rover” was for them, and it was very different from what I knew.

Did it involve one person trying to run and avoid the catching team, who tries to tackle them, or the runner trying to forcefully break through a line?

Also, love the name Vic Kick. I assume that’s a precursor to the Auskick I did for a bit as a kid?

Hey, wondering why you deleted your reply. If it’s cos you realised this was the Australian community and you’re not Aussie, don’t worry! You wouldn’t be the first non-aussie to answer, and I actually really value the international perspective on this question (since seeing an international answer to the question on another site was the reason I came here to ask it).

Not being able to provide feedback is pretty shit.

But I just haven’t noticed any of the problems I’ve seen anyone reporting about the redesign. I’m honestly finding it so much better than the old design. The worst thing is the more niche parts of the site which are still awkwardly on the old design, like river/creek levels.

You want to bookmark a particular weather map? It’s…trivial. And the map experience is so much nicer now, since it feels like a real modern map with satellite overlays, instead of the awkward static pages that it felt like before. No more need to deal with arcane things like “64 km” vs “128 km” radars (wtf even is that measuring?) and move north or south in predefined increments, you can move around exactly how you would in any mapping app.

The capital city centres are linked from the home page, and you can find your own suburb with a simple search. Any of those can be bookmarked on their own. Here’s Brisbane. And here’s St Lucia, a suburb of Brisbane.

Roughly what time period was this?

Being banned for tackling is interesting. I suspect that fact is the reason it was tag by the time I got to school.

And what, in your version of the game, would I do next?

I went to school in suburban Brisbane late '90s early '00s. Everyone would line up, except one person, who would stand in the middle as red rover. Red rover would call over someone else, whose goal is to make it to the other side untagged. If tagged, they join the red rover team, making two people the next runner has to avoid. Repeat until nobody is left to run.

But I ask the question because I’m aware of another fairly distinct version of the game.

Visitors with UK IP addresses*

FTFY

Shops and media which profit from increased sales and viewership. Same as the recent “black Friday sales” nonsense despite the fact that we don’t have Thanksgiving.

Incidentally, I wouldn’t mind Thanksgiving. It’d need adapting to the Australian context, but it feels a hell of a lot less commercial than Hallowe’en…which is probably why there hasn’t been any attempt to bring it here.

So he values mercantilism and personal profit more than his own country? I can’t think of anything more American!

Yeah, all the people trying to defend it by saying it’s Celtic/from the British Isles are just clowns. At least the argument of “it’s just kids having fun” is possible to take seriously, because it’s engaging with the discussion in an honest manner.

I’m not. I’m blaming capitalism and cultural imperialism, for the forced import of a piece of American culture.

Christmas and Valentine’s Day both have sincere secular associations to them, and Christmas and Easter both have a pretty hefty religious component for a sizeable minority of the population. Hallowe’en is literally nothing but commercialism. Buy a plastic shitty costume. Buy lots of lollies (sorry: “candy”, for the Americans lecturing the rest of the world about how it’s totally not American cultural imperialism) at marked-up prices, and decorate your house with yet more plastic crap. But without themes of family and connectiveness to act as a redeeming factor.

Dude literally made the choice to give up his Australian citizenship. He’s negative Australian, less Aussie than some random American who’s never been here and doesn’t know anyone here.

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Oh please. Nobody of sound mind actually believes that the Hallowe’en celebrated in America, that some corporations are trying to make a thing here too, has anything more than a passing resemblance to the traditional Celtic practices it’s based upon.

Australia’s own Rupert Murdoch

lol no. Murdoch’s an American.