Tissue Culture: The Original Tamagotchi

Behold! The perfect parallel universe where biologists are secretly game designers! Tissue culture—those little cell colonies we obsessively feed, check on, and panic about when they look slightly off-color—is basically us playing digital pet parent before it was cool. Just like those '90s Tamagotchis that would DIE if you forgot them for 5 minutes, your precious cell lines will dramatically perish if you miss ONE media change. Both require constant attention, both make you cancel weekend plans, and both make you feel irrationally attached to something that's essentially just following programmed biological instructions. The difference? Your Tamagotchi never cost $500 in growth factors or contaminated your entire incubator with mycoplasma!