kartma: Kartma is like Karma, except, no matter what you do, bad stuff happens.
I coined the term kartma a few months ago while playing Mario Kart with some friends. It’s actually very easy to see examples of kartma in practice. You nail the person in first with three red shells, fly past them and immediately get hit with a blue shell. After racing two and a half laps in first place you get hit with two red shells, a blue shell, a lightning bolt and a banana all within a ten second time span and you watch helplessly as three other karts fly past you and finish the race.
Kartma is the chaotic item usage that will inevitably pound you into dust at the most inconvenient moment. It may be payback for something you did to another player, it may be because of something you didn’t do to another player or it may be because of something you should have done to another player. At any rate you’ll know the moment has come when you look up at the ceiling and ask “what have I done to deserve this?” The answer, of course, is simple: you played Mario Kart.
In general, at 150cc or mirror, the game hates you and the Kartma you refer to is a black hole of getting knocked off the track, getting hit by bullet bills (and falling off the track) and every other thing that makes you do the race a gross (144) more times.
You make a good point, Paul, from a view I hadn’t considered before. Mario Kart is a video game, meant to be challenging (as well as fun). In the higher levels of racing, the game is all about ranking. In reality, you probably do have something along the lines of a “kartma meter” although it’s invisible to you. The better you do, the more stuff you get hit with, since the game is trying to stop you from beating it. You don’t just play the game, you play against the game.
Thanks for the insight!