How I Got My Mafia Wars Addiction
Mafia Wars is a pretty popular game on Facebook, in case you haven’t come across it before. And I am pretty sure that Facebook doesn’t require an introduction to anybody these days. Anyway, I got hooked on Mafia Wars and have been playing a few minutes a day for a couple years. To be honest the game is pretty silly but I whenever I check my Facebook throughout the day I will go play and click around for a few minutes.
At first I ignored all the games when they originally started popping up on Facebook. I have a few video games I love for the playstation but honestly I couldn’t see how any game that could be played on Facebook would be fun or decent. I usually hate casual games and am not even the type of person who plays flash games online or anything like that. Still, every day my Facebook wall would get flooded with game updates my friends were playing, invitations to play with them, facebook likes and everything else. Eventually I gave in and tried Mafia Wars for a while.
Mafia Wars is almost stupidly simple but it takes a strange hold over you where by the time you have figured out how to play it has already become habitual. I would log in, check out whatever my friend’s likes were for the day, and then go click around Mafia Wars for a few minutes. I say “click around,” because that’s really all the game consists of. It is time based, so you earn a certain number of points every hour or so depending on what your character owns in the game as far as businesses, assets and other income goes. You can then spend those points to get gear to complete missions or buy more assets. It is reminiscent of the Sims except without any cool animations and with a Godfather theme. Then I’ll post a Mafia Wars related Facebook status in the hopes that someone will help me in the game.
My honest advice is stay away from these generally awful and uninspired casual games that are available on Facebook. They can be an even big distraction and time waster than Facebook itself and that is saying something. Every time I log in to play I think to myself at some point “This is so dumb. What am I doing?” That is the fair and honest truth. On the other hand, maybe I just picked the wrong game and I need to give Farmville a try instead!
Who Doesn’t Love a Hilarious Facebook Update?
If you’re online reading this I am sure you have heard of Facebook and chances are you have an account there, too. Facebook is one of the biggest websites online and one of the primary destinations for a large portion of internet traffic as a whole. Most of us use it at least once in a while whether we love it, hate it, or just don’t care.
It is funny how people have evolved in their usage of Facebook since it first came around. People make friends and romantic partners through Facebook by looking at local people they’ve never met and checking out there pictures, facebook status for the day and “poking” or sending messages. It can be a great way to meet people socially and professionally.
Although Facebook has grown to be more than just a social network platform (people play casual games, buy and sell items in the marketplace, and more) most users would agree that the core of Facebook is all about the status updates. That is really the main purpose once you have friends – to let them know what you’re up to and what is going on in your life. Some people put a lot of effort into being able to post a funny facebook status or some weird obscure fact that is unusual.
Facebook is also a popular place to promote things for both people and companies. Almost every major company or corporation has an official facebook page, and it is such a part of daily life that many companies even promote their facebook pages on TV commercials and through advertising on other places around the web. Their advertising system is also popular because marketers are able to target potential customers very accurately by using the vast amount of information people fill out in their profiles. It has often been called a marketers dream because consumers on facebook display their age, gender, hobbies, workplace, movies and music they like, and much more.
If you are new to facebook then you will likely get lost in it for hours as so many other people have with the games and social interaction available there. However, remember to be careful as well because it can be dangerous to make too much information public. Facebook has caught some criticism for its privacy settings, which sometimes have been made too confusing and cryptic for people to navigate.
Beware of Facebook Privacy Settings
Facebook has gotten a lot of criticism over the last couple years for sporadic and confusing updates made to its privacy settings area. They received even more attention when they updated theirs terms and conditions to include a passage claiming legal ownership of all the photos, Facebook status updates and other content user generated content. Lately the controversy has calmed somewhat because Facebook fixed some of these matters, but privacy still continues to be an issue for Facebook users.
Part of the problem with privacy on Facebook is the nature of the site itself. The whole point is social interaction which naturally means the website is designed in such a way as to be public. Social groups on Facebook overlap constantly. A diagram would look something like millions of spider webs all smashed together, where each web is one person and their friends list.
While this is a major part of the equation, the other side of the coin is the reality that in today’s world there are some weird people out there that we need to protect ourselves from, and many of them unfortunately have internet access. Obviously since we can’t just pick the weird one’s out individually, the only thing to do is only trust people that you know, or that your trusted friend’s know, and block everyone else. Therein lies the problem with privacy on facebook.
It is almost impossible to completely privatize everything to only your friends. If settings aren’t carefully configured, Facebook likes to update your friends pages when they comment on your status, usually including your own status at the top. That means all their friends can see the update too. Additionally, many people do not properly protect their pictures and you can literally browse through someone’s live via their profile. If you don’t believe it, go facebook surfing. Click a friend’s profile, surf to one of their friends who you don’t know, and keep going like that as deep as you can. You could easily cross the world and back doing this. You may have to hit the back button here and there as some people do protect their settings, but it is amazing how many don’t.
The best way to maintain your sense of privacy on Facebook, and the rest of the internet, is to simply not post anything that you don’t want the world to see. Assume that nothing on the web is truly private, and 99% of the time you will be correct. The best way to keep strangers and weirdo’s from getting your information is to just not put any of it out there in the first place.
