TURN OFF PIP-BOY LIGHT TO REMAIN HIDDEN / LEAVE THE RADIO PLAYING
A Fallout 3 post.
At the conference you pick up every free pen, three tote bags, a stress ball and 14 mints. You need none of it. Your bag is now so heavy you can only walk very slowly. At the office you take one biscuit from the board meeting tray. Suddenly the whole floor is hostile. Someone has made a sign. Looking for the spare key, you search every drawer in your gran's house. You find 8 coins, a hairpin, a 1997 calendar and a single battery. You keep the hairpin. You might need it. You pull a hamstring, twist an ankle and bruise a shoulder at five-a-side. Next morning your boss asks how you are. You give him a thumbs up and a big smile, quietly falling apart inside. **Why it caught on:** Vault Boy is the thumbs-up mascot of Bethesda's Fallout series, here named after Fallout 3 (2008), set in a post-nuclear Washington. Every player picked up the same strange wasteland habits, and most of them have since turned up in real life.