Social Dynamics at Arm's Length

This "game" sounds horrible. It seems designed to maximize anxiety and conflict, and extract kompromat. What is the upside supposed to be?

This reads like either a plot device for a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode or a report of what happened at some private party before one of the participants decided to kill all the others.

Authentic relating, every time I see that it comes up, continues to be a red flag warning to expect antisocial behavior by bad actors. This article does not break that trend.

I'm sure some people get utility out of it and improve their lives, but there seem to be quite a few people who seem to enjoy it for other reasons.

The kind of people who find it exciting to publicly label/judge others, are exactly the kind of people I am not interesting in making myself vulnerable to.

I'm surprised at the reaction you had about this game! This is a pretty popular game among my generation in Sweden (though we point, it's the "pointing game"). It's typically done when drinking, and the person who "gets" the prompt is the next one to come up with one. It's more meant as fun when we do it. A lot of websites have prompts if you don't wanna come up with them yourself (BOO! You're boring!), like this one: https://dricklekar.se/Pekleken/pek.html

As soon as the bored games come out, I'm looking for the kitchen to hang out with the 1 or 2 other people completely uninterested.

EDIT: I recall a party where I was forced to play some game where you try to find the spy or something. I kept begging people to choose me as the spy so I could quit. I ended up winning the game after 2 hours. It was miserable.

Party games for sociopaths.

I've been to a couple AR scenes. It's mostly cultlike leaders breaking down others' boundaries through humiliation rituals like these. If you're enough of a psychopath, you can make your way to the top of the fleecing pyramid, eventually.