Why Facebook Has Ruined My Social Skills

I can’t help it. I've spent large stints of my life on Facebook. First it was for “academic purposes”, then it was for “communicating with family while abroad” purposes, and then there was the “keeping in touch with friends abroad” purposes. I always have an excuse to justify the fact that I've just spent three hours of my time scrolling through pages of others and clicking through their pictures. I may harbor a small addiction or a large one. But luckily it only manifests when I am bored.

The problem is not the actual addiction.

Oh no the issue is my memory.

I remember pretty much everything I ever read see or about anyone on Facebook: even when they are just a friend of a friend. A friend of a friend whom I've merely seen a post about due to the fact that my friends commented on their post and it’s gone viral.

This is what I hate: things going viral. Even semi-viral, so that I am forced to witness them and then become curious about the person and spend a minute browsing their page, which generally has only enough privacy settings to deter a semi-blind person. So that in moments you get a quick scan of their entire lives.

It wouldn't be a problem or at least not a social problem if it wasn't for my inability to small talk.

What generally happens is I’m introduced to some person that I shouldn't know anything about. What then occurs is that I manage to be normal for about ten seconds and then we run out of the introductory “hi’s and my name is”, so more often than not and without my common senses permission I say something along the lines of:

“Oh you’re that guy that went to Korea to teach English, but then came home to start a band with your secondary school friends because you missed your dog. How is he, the dog? Was it worth it?”

At this point people start backing away; in fact at this point I start backing away from myself.

It’s come to the point where I try not to look anyone in the eye in case I recognise them from Facebook and spout their life history as told by social networking. 

The True Confessions of a Recovered Farmville Addict

When I was in America almost everyone I knew was playing some sort of Facebook game. It was hard to ignore the fact that computer labs were full of people: not studying, but pursuing a career in bad-gaming: students clicking away lives on virtual restaurants, farms and fish tanks.

It was scary, foreign. I couldn't wrap my head around it. Then someone told me they were particularly “talented” at these games. I signed up for Farmville, simply thinking that I would figure out how to win and then leave. That was the plan, to prove that there was no such thing as being “talented” at virtual reality.

For those of you who don’t know, Farmville is a virtual game on Facebook that allows you to pretend to farm. Armed with a mouse and an easy user interface you can plough, plant, harvest and buy farm goods to your hearts content.  It also tries to rip off addicts by getting them to enter credit card details to buy flashier farm houses and more land.

It started innocently enough, a bit of tilling and planting, no real addiction. But then I started watching my leader board. I was thousands of points down.

I was going to have to up the ante. I started trading in hay bales for extra points, designing my farm for maximum productivity, and calculating the most profitable crops per hour.

I’m sure I don’t need to point out that it was becoming tragic.

But it didn’t stop there, it escalated. I feverishly monitored the farms of others. Harassed friends to join and visit my farm. At one point I had the log in details for several members of my family and I farmed their plots too.  I spent hours making symmetrical borders, purchasing pretty wells, and garden features.

I still hadn't realised how bad it was and people were starting to comment.

Then the most ridiculous sentences started rolling off my tongue.

-I can’t make that, sorry, I have to expand the farm.

-Damn is that the time, I need to go harvest my raspberries.

I spent an entire night buying and selling hay bales and went up at least three levels, a monotonous task that involved clicking and more clicking.

The next day the other addicts started asking questions.

-So how did you get so many points so fast?

-What were you doing, in one night, did you buy points?

I smiled knowingly at them all.

-Simple calculations, seeing as you’re so talented at these games I am sure you can figure it out.

Then it hit me, I was hoarding my Farmville secret. I thought I was really something. I had been sucked in. I noticed others avoiding me for fear I would spout feverish monologues about my farm. So I forced myself to quit the farm, to sell it all and step away from fake sheep and palm trees. I was never, ever playing another Facebook game again, any game for that matter.

A year later someone showed me word twist…and well….