How to Tell a Story

Watch LOST. Seriously. It really says something about the writing for a show when the plot comes to involve time travel, electromagnetism, talking dead people, and a monster made out of smoke, and yet nothing's ever felt more real. Last night's episode was one of the more ridiculous ones, and yet I think it was one of the best so far.

ForumWarz

I discovered the CRAZIEST game today. It launched online a month ago, and I was laughing out loud for much of my experience with it today. I direct your attention to www.forumwarz.com

ForumWarz is basically a self-contained internet simulator, where the object is to "pwn" forums by attacking them with dumb comments and bad code. It's much more complex than that, obviously, but the whole presentation is just brilliant. From the IM simulator called "sTalk", to the online search engine "Septillion", everything is a parody of something elsewhere on the net. One of the best parts of it is that you jump into it without having to register, and only after you complete the first 10 minutes or so do you have to register, in order to save your progress (and earn a cash reward). The game is hilarious, and definitely not safe for work. In fact, in order to even start playing, you must type into a box "I am not offended easily". And believe me, you WILL get offended. Go check it out.

Redefining "Friend"

I noticed something interesting today. "Friendships" have taken on a new meaning with the onset of social networking. Now, clearly this isn't breaking news. Everyone knows that a "friend" on Facebook is not necessarily someone you even know. If you've ever played any of the Facebook app games like Battle Stations, you'll notice that friends help you get ahead in the game. Playing that game caused an influx of 20-30 friend requests per day. Initially, I accepted them all with a Limited Profile limitation on them. Then I realized that was stupid, and I removed them all. Now I'm proud to say that my Facebook friends are only people I actually know and have spoken to, whether in person or online.

So why do I say that the definition changed? Well, today, I spoke for a while with an online acquaintance of mine. She had recently been hired by a gaming company, and we spent much of the day talking at random points about random things. I had known who she was before this job, and I had definitely taken a liking to her, but not until today did we actually speak one-on-one, instead of through a public forum. Anyways, tonight I received a friend request from her on Facebook. I accepted it without thinking twice, and before I realized what I was doing, I switched over to LinkedIn to see if she was there, and if I could add her there as well. It seems that we now have this duty to make sure that any form of social networking site we're a part of knows that we've made a new friend. There's no reason why I should have been jumping from site to site making sure my new friend was added on all of them. But somehow, I've now been trained to think that that's the proper thing to do. It was a weird experience, that's all.