Color Wars 2008, or the online event challenge that sprouted up out of nowhere on Twitter after a few stray posts by Ze Frank last week, strikes me as something completely random and nonsensical — and that’s probably exactly why I like it. (I tend to enjoy having at least a certain level of nonsense in my life.)

Here’s how participating in the Color Wars appears to work — and don’t hold me to this, because I’m sort of guessing at this, just like everyone else :

• Choose your team (I’m with the up-and-coming Blackwatch Team) — or start your own
• Update your Twitter avatar to somehow reflect your team of choice (I haven’t done this)
• Follow your team’s Twitter stream
• Await further instructions

I’m intrigued enough to play along, and the image above serves as my entry into the Color Wars’ first official challenge — the “Bad Ass RoShamBo” — where each player has to submit a “throw” of rock, paper, and scissors before midnight tonight. Obviously, I’m a scissors guy.

So what’s the point?

There doesn’t seem to be an actual point to the Color Wars, does there? But just for the record, here’s Ze Frank’s take:

Many of the players don’t really know what they joined or why, but for me and the wonderful coders that are working on this, it is a perfect implicit structure that can be used to start setting up the colorwar events. And beyond this, it is an idiom that can be used to create rapid affiliation and action models in the future.

Here’s what I think: It doesn’t really matter where this is going or what it’s actually about. I just consider Color Wars 2008 a quirky kind of showcase for creativity and the power of online community. Ultimately, just being part of the playful journey is good enough for me.

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