The facebook games must have introduced many netizens like me to networked games where you have to depend on the help of your dearest friends to progress further and play well. These games have discovered such a simple way of increasing their memberships. Any player will play better if she has more team members and thus will encourage all possible friends to join the games.
I am such a player and thus first I start urging my known netizens to show some interest in joining facebook which will offer them a chance of playing quizzes, games etc. After that the next suggestion is, please join mafia wars or yoville or if possible farmville. Dont play if you dont like, but do join.
Now I have started getting bored and all the games are seeming like chores. I am tired of harvesting crops, killing people online, and buying stuff for my virtual home. I am now desperately waiting for the day when I will be free from the shackles of this facebook gaming addiction of mine and will be able to move onto something new ! Perhaps brand new facebook games :).
I think that atleast for me the primary reason for playing any online game is to simply win ! To reassure myself that I am a perfect human specimen, intelligent & knowledgable who can go jump levels in all the games real fast, gather trophies & gifts, decorate an online home showing off my asthetic sensibilites, or create a beautiful virtual farm by deciding on better earning crops and buying tractors.
Online quizzes on facebook have a similar "will win" fascination too for so many of us fb people. Yes, I want to know that I know all the movie trivia and can recognize all movie characters, songs, even actors from their childhood or without makeup pics. And these quizzes often generally tell me that I have beaten 100% of my friends who have taken this quiz. The beaten friends might be 1 or 2 in number, but I have beaten both, so I have played better than 100% of quiz takers who belong to my friend set.
Then there are personality quizzes which will show us our real self, which we are not able to see from our literal eyes or as said in hindi "mann ki aankhein" i.e. the inner eye. We answer approximately ten random questions like our favorite color to whether I hate losing family members more than death? Then the quiz application throws up any random quiz result from the answer set, like the one which told me that I am like Luke Skywalker and I have happily published it along with so many other almost accurate quiz results to the world.
But still all facebook activities offer more oppurtunities to comment on other people's activites. We post, publish, comment and discuss. We pick up and do some activity which has just been done by any of our friends posted to our wall or try to generate some new activity through our favorite applications.
If you are unable to think of anything else, goto youtube, find any intersting video and post it on facebook. The link to add it on facebook is conveniently available through share option. This should be counted as a facebook "how to be active" or "what to do" tip rendered by me on my blog which might help any blog reader who is a fbian too :).
We may not interact with so many of our friends directly but we can see how they are going on with their lives by observing them online. One day I tried to track all old college seniors on facebook and see who's doing what. I am indebted to those facebook friends who have given me online gifts required for playing well on my favorite games and will always try to replay the favor in that facebook game. See how all this online gifting of virtual game objects has strengthened our bonds of friendship.
Another prominent feature is twittering, i.e. latest status updates chatter shared by friends. These are really interesting ones and do generate normal, friendly, leg pulling or even controversial discussions. I have shared a quote or too at times, but am unable to twit or chatter much. I think it's helping us Indian prudes to lose our inhibitions to declare to around 200 persons about what we ate in breakfast, what I am currently watching on tv etc. I wonder I might not start declaring too much to people in real life too about everything I do.
Ohh, I think it's enough blogging about facebook. I have to compulsively check my facebook wall for any new posts.
