In a nutshell, the wacky sport involves flinging a brightly coloured beachball at your opponent's face.
It started when two employees at the San Francisco offices of online photo-sharing website Flickr started messing around with inflatable balls used at the company's 3rd year anniversary party.
After a period of random flinging, office buddies John Allspaw and Dunstan Orchard decided that some basic rules were needed to decide who would win the battles.
They came up with some simple guidelines: Two people sit ten feet apart. They take turns throwing a beachball aimed at their opponent's face. Each hit to the face earns a point and the right to shoot again. The player with the most points after 5 rounds is the winner. Tied games are decided by a shoot out.
As photos of the sport spread around the web, John and Dunstan decided to set up a site for devotees. Since www.faceball.org was launched this summer more than 130,000 people have logged on.
The info-packed website features an instructional video, diagrams showing correct technique and even printable score sheets.
And people from around the world are now posting images of their workmate's apprehensive faces as balls fly at them and the aftermath of stinging direct hits.
Faceball has even broken out of the office with matches having already been played at London's Tate Britain and Alexandra Palace.
``Because the balls are light, they are tricky to aim when using any kind of force,'' explains Mr Orchard. ``The ability to hit people from a distance thus became a much sought after skill.''
Expect an outbreak of face-to-ball contact at a cubicle near you soon.
MUST CREDIT PHOTOS BY
Dan Catt / REX FEATURES
