An excerpt from The Fantastic, Fabulous, Funny and Factual Follies of a Facebook Friend...
So here I sit. It’s 11:13 PM on September 3, 2010. Hurricane Earl has been downgraded to a tropical storm, and it’s raining buckets outside. The hype of an actual hurricane forced me and my group of friends to back out on a Labor Day Party/fundraiser (incidentally, we were invited on Facebook), and I’m bored to death. John Henry Lee, my main squeeze who is my cat, snores peacefully beside me on the couch. I’ll play Bejeweled Blitz before long. It’s what I do.
So here I go. After about twenty-seven sessions of the one minute game (that’s about a half hour of my time), I have squandered tens of thousands of free coins. I switch over to Vegas Nights, where I am one of 36,737 monthly players. Let’s see how much I can win in free coins…wait a minute; I haven’t played Zynga Poker at all…oh, $4,000 coins! Yes! That means I won’t switch to Poker. I can play in the Vegas Nights tournament and try to double or triple my coins playing against other gamers like me.
I never get to the Zynga Poker tonight because I was stunned by a revelation – here I sit, hours have gone by and what have I accomplished? I still rank behind Doris in Bejeweled Blitz, coming in fourth on the friends leader board (at least I am ahead of Donna and Virginia!), and I lost all my coins in Vegas Nights. Sometimes you just have to give up.
More importantly, where was my brain during this time? I was caught up in a buzzing, blinging, exploding light show on my laptop, much to the chagrin of John Henry. My cat does not like all the technical excitement of Bejeweled. It disturbs his kitty cat dreams.
Granted, I enjoyed myself, and given that I am a naturally competitive person, I secretly relished my high scores on the Bejeweled leader board, but know enough not to post them on my page. After all, it’s a Friday night, and despite the onset of Earl, I was sitting at home behind my laptop on a Friday night. A single girl like me at home on a Friday night spells one word – L-O-S-E-R! I did not want that out on Facebook!
What I have a turned into? Didn’t I used to read? And even when on Facebook, I used to converse with friends. Now I hardly pay attention to posts, and go right to my bookmarked games. I have garbage overflowing in my kitchen and a pile of laundry to do, mail in mountains so high that they are toppling over, and dishes that sit piled up in the sink even though I have a dishwasher. What has happened to me?
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