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So you want to pass the time, huh. Well, getting together a whole load of friends to have fun on a bunch of mattresses doesn't have to be as dodgy as it sounds. That's thanks to 'mattress dominos'. Over the last two months the game of lining up some mattresses and people, and then tipping them over in satisfying domino sequences of whimsy has become (for no apparent reason) pretty big.
The latest mainstream coverage came thanks to British children's TV show Blue Peter smashing the previous world record for mattress dominos - all in the concrete yet iconic surroundings of BBC Television Centre in London. Where did it all begin, then? And why is it so ridiculously popular?
The mainstream preoccupation with mattress dominoes started back in 'silly season' this year when a group of bored workers at the Bensons for Beds warehouse in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, played the game with 41 mattresses and beat the previous world record there and then. Videos of their capers soon spread around the interweb in true viral fashion and the craze, like economies, went global overnight. Two weeks later, a group of enthused TV station employees in Australia broke the Bensons record and mattress madness has been spiralling ever since.
There's only one sort of source for this kind of frivolity: students, right? Right. The earliest YouTube videos (like this one) of mattress dominoes date back one or two years and are predominantly student-dorm based. Sadly, history isn't very good at recording the arrival of fads like this, so it's anyone's guess when bored adolescents began having (un-erotic) mattress-oriented fun.
Thing is, though, once you've seen one mattress domino game, you've pretty much seen them all. The fun probably comes in taking part either drunk or in the hope of breaking a world record (or both, even). Maybe extreme mattress dominoes or king-size mattress dominoes on ice or something would be more visually impressive. If you can do this with normal dominoes, why not scale it up?
For now, mattress dominos meet-ups don't seem to be happening as often as flashmobs or urban games. This is probably due to the unwieldy nature of the key components. As such, mattress dominos will probably remain an elitist sport. The preserve of bed salesmen and fun-loving undergraduates.
