My Application Frustration

I Facebook. (Should he really be using a proper noun as a verb?) I have Facebooked for several years now (now he's even using it in the past tense). I am not against Facebooking (present perfect, tsk, tsk!), but Facebook, I have somewhat against thee(now it's a noun again-I'm so confused).

Oh sure, Facebook has brought endless hours of entertainment into my life. It's helped me reunite with long-lost friends (Although, if they weren't important enough for me to maintain contact in a physical sense, then how close of a friend were they in the first place?), it's helped me keep in better contact with friends not so long-lost, and it's spawned an entire new group of friends we refer to as FB-friends (these are people we would never associate with outside the virtual boundaries of FB, causing us to deny their very existence much like a popular jock would do if it were discovered by his fellow classmates that he used to sleep in the geeky, fat kid's tree house and play soldiers every other weekend as children).

There are some problems with Facebook and I am not referring to the new layouts they roll out every 6 months or so. I don't really see those as a problem. I don't necessarily like them but after about a day or two I adjust and move on. What bugs me are the countless number of addle-pates who get their underpants in a knot every time it happens. It's a vicious cycle. Facebook engineers a new layout, they unveil it and your in-box is flooded with a copious amount of requests to join groups to protest the new look or a "cut and paste" status update with directions to return your homepage to its former version, which I imagine has become not unlike Linus' blanket for most of these dunderheads. What I would like to point out is every time they roll out these new looks two things are true: 1. No amount of protestation has ever succeeded in convincing the movers and shakers of FB to repent of their actions and return your homepage to its original look. 2. Each time you protest, you are actually advocating the very layout that you once so vehemently protested the last time they changed everything.

But that is not the source of my frustration. My chief annoyance is applications. Forgive me, I generalize. I am not against all applications. There are many that I use. I like applications such as: photos, friend finder, video, notes, events, etc.
I even play a few games: Scrabble, WordTwist, and on occasion Farkle. These games are fun to me (whether they are to you is of little consequence to me), and they still manage to stimulate my brain. What I am trying to say is applications should be useful, helpful and not make your friends rue the day they accepted your friend request! There are many applications that are a complete and utter waste of gray matter.

One that comes to mind is Farmville. In a recent survey conducted by the creators of Farmville and that ilk of games, it was established that the average user of Farmville is a 43 year old woman. That's right, I didn't make that up, it's official (I don't bother to cite my sources here because I believe I am safe in assuming this blog isn't mainstream enough to have someone call me on it and if you don't believe me-although I don't really care- you can Google it just like I did). It was also estimated that of the over 200 million people who use Facebook, 80 million are involved with Farmville and 69% of those play it everyday. It is said that one in four (that's 20,000,000 for those of you who play Farmville and obviously never made it past 4th grade math) actually spend money on Farmville. After the recent Haiti disaster Farmville players raised one million dollars for the relief effort by purchasing imaginary farm equipment (there was no indication whether the money went to the actually country of Haiti or some virtual Haiti, I assume it was the former). This is becoming cultish. There was also an unprecedented number of livestock exchanged on Valentine's Day, which in some countries is the equivalent to a marriage proposal.

But I am not here to sit in judgment of you (although I have become pretty good at it). If you wish to waste your time and (gulp) money on this silly game, then go right ahead. I'll not stop you. You may be wondering why I have such a problem with this. I play other games that are just as big a waste of time (not money, I refuse to spend any money on applications)and you don't care. That's right, but outside of those whom I may have challenged to a game of wits over a scrabble board, none of you are largely aware that I play them. And do you know why? Anyone...Anyone...Bueller? BECAUSE I DON'T POST A STINKING ANNOUNCEMENT OF MY LATEST ACTIONS IN SCRABBLE!!!!!! (deep cleansing breath) That is to say, I don't notify you every time I throw down a 7 letter word in Scrabble or win a game of WordTwist. No, I leave you out of it! I don't call for help every time I need to figure out what words the letters "ppitex" can be rearranged to spell. In other words, I don't bother you!

Now some of you may be on the defensive already. I can hear you now: "You don't have to get every notice!"; "You can just block the application and you'll never be bothered." I know this and trust me I have blocked all of the stupid applications that are out there. Why should I have to go out of my way not to be bothered by you? I shouldn't have to click on your post and scroll to the right and click hide and then click hide Farmville. Besides, that doesn't always work anyway. Some of you have the audacity to enter your mafia requests or Farmville requests as your status updates. That is why I have just bypassed all of that hullabaloo and either blocked you altogether or deleted you as friend.

It used to be that the people who spent all day on their computers were usually male, roughly 30 years of age and resided in their parents' basement. Well, those men (if you can really call them that) have put their wasted life to some use. The more "talented" ones have become programmers. Guess what they make- games like Farmville and Restaurant-land and Fish-town and Zoo-opolis. They have taken their time wasting to a professional level and spread their disease to their moms, apparently.

I have entertained the thought of creating some game that would allow me to hack into other people's games and cause trouble. I call it Riot-ville. In Riot-ville you can lay waste to some one's farm, demolish their mafia, poison their fish or let all the animals out of their zoo. Best of all it would generate exactly zero posts. That's right it would be covert. No one would know about it. Then I think some more and realize: a)I am not a computer programmer, and b)I have a wife, a family and a life.

Like I said before, I don't really care what you do. If you choose to relax with Farmville, I say more power to you. But please have the common decency to only afflict those who share your predilections with all of your (insert second life type game here) spam. If I have some how offended you, please don't take it personally. I can easily separate the game from the gamer. We'll always be FB friends.