The Truth About Facebook

“Your appearance now is what we call residual self-image. It is the mental projection of your digital self.”

-Morpheus, The Matrix

Facebook is one of the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). With nearly unlimited amounts of quests, the fun just never ends. It even has more players than one of the most famous MMORPGs known as World of Warcraft, which has roughly over 10 million players, while Facebook has about 901 million players. Probably because it’s free to play Facebook (and the minimum requirement is a low attention span), while most MMORPGs have a monthly subscription fee.

The character creation in Facebook is quite thorough. You can choose every detail of how your character looks, such as hair, eyes, skin color, and even clothing (Photoshop skills may be required for some). You can then navigate your character through the open world of Facebook to find a job, and even a school, if you choose to. Each character is automatically assigned a hometown, some choose to display this and some choose not to.

You can then decide on a set of skills for your character. These may come in the form of activities, interests, and sports. Most of your character’s skills are developed during the actual game play. However, skills are of little use while actually playing Facebook. Another great thing you can do with Facebook is set your character’s political party, religious affiliations, and some characters that inspire him or her. This way, other players may have the chance to instantly know everything about your character.

A wonderful feature of Facebook is the ability to set your character into a relationship with another character. This way, players can mirror their relationships from real life. Sometimes, one of the relationship members insists that they make it “official” on Facebook. I think it’s rather funny that someone can take a video game so seriously.

One of the objectives of the main quest is to gather more friends than all the other players. Not all players follow this path (since it is optional), and they may concern themselves with other quests. Once players reach the level cap at 5,000 friends, they are considered to be among the best of Facebook, even though having lots of Facebook friends may make up for a poor self-esteem. In such a prestigious state of being, the player can then upgrade to a premium account, to further promote their character and set of skills they have to offer. In this mode, instead of gathering friends, the goal is to get as many “likes” as possible.

Many players will check their friend count after viewing this photo.

Another goal of the main quest is to create as many successful status updates as you can. These require an enormous amount of creativity and time for almost every player, and most players are careful to not create anything controversial. This means almost all status updates are the same boring chatter, yet simple minded players continue to indulge in them, contributing with more pointless drivel. You get rewarded for creating status updates by acquiring “likes” and sometimes, even comments from other players. Often times, the comments would end with an awkward silence. To combat this, the game creators added the ability for your character to like a comment as well; this symbolizes an agreement, a chuckle, or a nodding of the head. It’s too bad that these rewards transform into nothing useful in real life. Some other games have their indirect rewards, such as learning to master something for the first time, but Facebook really lacks this aspect, unfortunately.

Status updates aren’t the only methods to gain “likes” and comments. This can also be done through photos. You can add unlimited amounts of screenshots of your character. The most important screenshot is the profile picture of your character, and perhaps the cover photo as well, if you wish to play in timeline mode. If you aren’t familiar with timeline mode, it’s the mode of play where your character can cling to the past. Some players accidentally changed their character into this mode, and found out it’s an irreversible process. The only solution to get out of this mode is euthanasia for your character.

Aside from the main quest, there are numerous side quests as well. The Farmville society is a great example of this. Within this side quest, you can grow virtual food and earn virtual money. Much like other MMORPGs, however these types of side quests are typically signs of extreme lack of motivation and/or imagination.

Playing Facebook, like many MMORPGs, can become extremely addictive. It can be so addictive to the point that players can’t help but play while away from their computer, on their cell phones. This can become a serious disorder, and rehab centers are being created for treatment. Going cold turkey on Facebook is not recommended if you suffer from this disorder. The optimal method to detox from Facebook is to slowly remove friends until you are down to less than ten. Then there are little to no withdrawal symptoms.

It is possible to join guilds, formally known as “groups.” Within these guilds you can secretly discuss whatever you might feel like discussing. Some guilds are more productive than others, and actually create relevant status updates. Some players even utilize guilds to plan events that occur outside of the game. Often times players gain an over-inflated ego as a result of participating in certain events, or being part of a group. This is the case with almost every player of Facebook.

One of my favorite parts of Facebook’s game play is the ability to stalk other players, at any time. Even if they are not currently logged in, you can navigate to their living quarters in the open world of Facebook, and view all of their information, including every screenshot in their library. Seriously, whoever thought of this idea at the game development company, bravo. You can even stalk people while they sleep. Have you ever thought about this? Your privacy is being invaded even while you sleep, although many people probably enjoy this. Many players never choose to appear online while playing, so they are unable to be in live chat. Some of these players often have large numbers of friends they have collected, and wish to hide from people who might chat them, due to a severe case of vanity.

I think that one of the primary reasons that players log on to Facebook is because they believe they have nothing better to do. What a pity. Others do it to relieve some kind of social desire, which more than likely just leaves them feeling more lonely than before. Some try to share useful information through status updates, but most of the attempts are unsuccessful, as not many players are interested in useful information. So the primary function of playing Facebook is to make you feel more inadequate than you did before playing Facebook.

Facebook is a great game for accomplishing absolutely nothing. The best thing about it is that players are made happy by this, even though they are doing nothing. So it would seem, that Facebook is a perfect breeding ground for existential nihilism.

I wouldn’t be surprised (or hurt) if some of my fellow Facebook players removed me from their buddy list in the game, after reading this. After all, they can just be stalked again in their sleep from a different account. Indeed, the truth can be rather painful.

So what’s my advice on playing Facebook? Facebook is an immense failure of the human imagination. That being said, I’d recommend you close your account and learn something about yourself and the world around you. At the very least, change your information to interfere with the data mining. Or, if you’re feeling excellent, remove all your friends except the ones in which you have no other means to communicate with, or perhaps live too far away from you. It’s probably the smartest thing to do if you want to prevent further damage to your creativity. If you even care at all.

For your viewing pleasure:

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3 thoughts on “The Truth About Facebook

  1. Found your site on Google. This is a cool post. I’d like to see you take the main idea from this article and craete another second article, and maybe you could embed a vid, also?

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