The FaceBook RPG

When I first joined facebook, I thought of it as an RPG, or a networking tool. Well, it is a networking tool, that I looked at as an RPG, and it was fun to play! Or I shouldn’t say RPG, more like, a quest/mission based system. As with most games, it feels like an accomplishment when you beat a level or finish a quest, so that’s what made it fun.

At first, I thought you had to successfully add a friend in order to view their friends list, but it is not so. But back then, it felt like a great mission system, where when you finish 1 mission (add a friend), you can view their friends list and that’s like looking at a whole new list of missions, and it was fun to attempt the right missions. Heehee.

Anyway, enough about that for now… So I was talking to Wen the other day about Facebook, and eventually I asked him if he was going to join and he said “nah”. Then I proceeded to say “that’s okay – your joining of facebook will probably not ‘benefit’ me, so it’s okay.” What that meant was, that… I didn’t know any of Wen’s friends. See, the primary reason for joining facebook is to expand your social network, and also, to seek out old friends whom you have lost contact with from before.

For example, in elementary/middle school, I knew a girl named LISA and a guy named AMISH. When I went to highschool, I went to Graydon and LISA and AMISH went to Fraser, but I still kept in touch with AMISH, and he kept in touch with LISA, but I did not personally keep in touch with LISA. So, when Amish joins facebook, it’s advantageous to me because he is friends with LISA, and thus I can reunite with LISA quite easily through AMISH and FACEBOOK.

So in Wen’s case, he’ll add jimmy and Johnson and imhotep from middle school, but I didn’t know those people so his joining facebook will not really benefit me. More recently, Lachlan joined facebook after I did, and then he seeked out (from his addressbook) some guys that visited us from Germany (and stayed at my house), whom I never would’ve been able to get in contact with, so that was awesome.

Anyway, that’s why facebook is cool. So first of all, facebook is about networking. If you don’t care about expanding your network, or catching up with some old friends, then don’t bother joining facebook.

Nowadays, after the initial rush of adding friends to your network, Facebook is more of an information tool. It’s like an RSS feed into everybody’s life, so you can keep in touch with them and see what they’re up to. Every now and then (like LISA) you can still expand on your network as more network connections are made, and you win more at the Facebook RPG.

Also, it’s weird… I just added an old friend named Stephen Seguin. I couldn’t see his info, so I checked his friend’s list – sure enough, Amish was there, so I was pretty sure this was the right guy… but… Alan was his friend too! So I totally don’t remember the connection, but I find it oddly weird! Small world, maybe?

So anyway, that’s the facebook thing. So I converted from VHS to DVD, TV to HDTV, I got g-mail which is truly awesome, I got started with regular blogging, and now I got converted to Facebook (but I skipped the MySpace era). What should I try out next? Any suggestions?

*poke*