A Public Service Letter

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Dear friend:

Hello.  My name is Sean Shannon.  You probably don’t know me because I walked away from whatever small measure of “Internet fame” I had nearly ten years ago.  However, I know someone who knows you, and that person has asked me to talk to you about something.

Like you and your friend, I too use a variety of social networking tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, to stay in touch with old friends and, once in a while, make new friends.  Modern technology is so wonderful, isn’t it?  Back in the day, coordinating plans with friends would involve making phone call after phone call, or even sending out invitations through the mail.  You know, that stuff comes in that box at the front of your driveway that mostly consists of coupons and advertisements for stuff you never use?  It’s hard to believe that at one time that was considered a revolutionary way to communicate, isn’t it?

Anyway, in addition to helping us stay in touch with one another, these social networking tools also provide a variety of other tools, including games, and really, who among us doesn’t like to play games?  Games allow us to escape the banalities and pains of our real lives, letting us pretend we’re things like farmers, or spies, or mob bosses, and work on being the best we can be in our alternate lives because we don’t want to think too much about the problems in our real lives.  I say this as an experienced game-player and someone who can appreciate a good game as well as any other person.

Here’s the thing.  Your friend tells me that you play the kind of games that frequently post about your game status on the social networking tools.  Whenever you gain a level, or find a hidden treasure, or need some rare item to complete a special collection, the game posts a message that we are all forced to read, whether or not the rest of us care about the game in question.  When you play the game for a long period of time, you leave a long series of status messages, sometimes in excess of a whole screen length.  If you play more than one of these games, as you may very well, this can mean pages of game messages the rest of us have to read.

Now, I know this is hard for you to believe, but some of us — indeed, many of us — don’t want to hear about your latest in-game accomplishment, or what special item you need from someone else to get to the next level.  We use social networking tools mainly for serious purposes, like communication about important things, and when we’re forced to scroll through message after message about what you’ve been doing in these games, it makes us want to bash your head against a wall.  We’re trying to stay updated on something for a job, or a family member’s operation, and we have to wade through message after message about you needing a rare ring or a five of clubs or a bag of horse manure to fertilize your fields.  If you need horse manure, we’ll be glad to give you some in real life, preferably by jamming it down your throat.

Keeping this in mind, your friend and I have some suggestions for you, to help both your friend and I retain what small measure of sanity we may still have.

First, stop inviting us to these games. The answer is NO.  N.  O.  NO.  Not only do we not have time to spend on these things, but your invitations further clutter our inboxes, forcing us to lose even more time deleting them.  If we ever decide to play these games, we will let you know.  Until then, please assume the rest of us have more important things to do with our time.

Second, if the game has an option to turn off sending status updates to everyone, for the love of humanity, use it.  The rest of us have our own accomplishments, like finishing a big project at work, but we don’t call you every ten minutes to let you know how far along we are on the project.  If you’d like to share your in-game accomplishments, you can give us a quick update the next time we meet, or even in a daily post you write yourself.  Not only are the game’s notifications tiresome to wade through, but they also contain lots of game advertisements we’re sick of having to look at.

Lastly, and this is especially true for games that don’t let you turn off status notifications, stop playing so much.  We’re glad that you have so much free time to engage in these fun pursuits, but not only do the rest of us not have the time to follow your progress in all the games you play, but all those status updates remind us of how little time we have for our own leisure pursuits.  Seriously, you’re making us more frustrated than we already are.

I know this must be hard to hear, but please, take a moment and try to think of how you’d feel if you were in our shoes.  We’re not as lucky as you, to be so good at raising virtual sheep or killing virtual double-agents, or to even have the time to maintain all these virtual existences.  Think of the rest of us working away here, and how it makes us feel when we have to read fifty different accounts of your games in a two-hour span.  Be a good friend, and be a less obnoxious game-player.  Your friend will thank you, as will I.

With love and affection,
Ms. Sean Shannon

PS. Your friend also says the next time you use the word “chillax,” you’re going to get an ice pick through your skull.  That sounds a bit harsh, but I can’t say that I disagree with the sentiment.

3 thoughts on “A Public Service Letter”

  1. Um…you know that you have the option to turn those notices off yourself, right?

  2. Dear Tech Guru,

    You can turn off those updates. Move your cursor into the upper right hand corner of those updates and click hide.

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