Cards Against Humanity

About

Cards Against Humanity is a game featuring Mad Libs style cards players have to match with word cards in amusing ways. It is often compared to the more family friendly card game Apples to Apples. Its tagline is “a party game for horrible people.”

Origins

The game was created by a group of friends for a New Year’s Eve party. It was then uploaded to their website CardsAgainstHumanty.com^[5] where people could download a printable version of the cards for free. Users can still download the free version even though as of 2012 a printed version became available for purchase.

Rules

To play cards against humanity, each player begins with ten white cards each. Then one player designated as the "card czar draws a black card, which poses a question or has a statement with one or more blank. Each player then plays one card they think will fit with the black card in the funniest way. The card czar selects their favorite, and that player receives the black card. This process then repeats with a new car czar.

There are several alternative ways to play including “God is Dead,” when players work without a card czar, and “Never Have I Ever,” when players may discard cards they don’t understand as long as they admit their lack of knowledge to the group.^[5]

Kickstarter Campaign

On December 10th, 2010 Max Temkin created a Kickstarter Campaign^[1] to create a printed box set. Pledging $15 dollars would get backers the box set, while $30 would get them the set as well as 16 custom printed cards. The project received well over their $4,000 goal, when it ended on January 30th they had raised over $15,000.

Online History

Cards Against Humanity players will sometimes photograph their funniest card pairing and upload them to Tumblr, Reddit, or Instagram. Some of these pairing were collected in a Buzzfeed^[4] post titled “21 Hilarious, Awkward, And Painful Rounds Of Cards Against Humanity” published on Sepetember 30th, 2013.

Ladies Against Humanity

Ladies Against Humanity^[2] is a Tumblr blog created by Kate Stayman-London^[3] on January 8th, 2014. The blog features images of Cards Against Humanity style cards with female-centric jokes created by Stayman-London or submitted by other Tumblr users.

Headlines Against Humanity

Headlines Against Humanity^[6] is a website created in January 2014 devoted to examining “click bait” headlines. On the homepage two cards stylized like Cards Against Humanity cards each contain a headline; one real, and one fake. Visitors to the site click on the card they believe to be the real headline and the card flips revealing if their guess was correct.

Search Interest

External References