I’ve been on facebook for a few years now.  I was a myspace convert at the time when myspace decided, in its infinite wisdom, to try and make itself more like facebook as it was then.  Alas that was its death knell and 90% of its users left overnight, me included, and defected to facebook.

Facebook is called a ‘Social Networking Site’ and in those days when I first joined, that’s exactly what it was – social.  People chatted, played games, sent each other kisses and hearts and collected eggs.  If you had 400 friends on your list in those days, then all 400 saw everything you posted to the wall.  Now, just around a tenth will see it and you have to pay for any more to see it.

I used to be a big farmville player up until a couple of years ago.  Just yesterday I revisited my farm with the intention of playing again and spent a happy few hours rearranging things.  Today I find that I cannot see a single post from any other players on my wall and nothing I do can make any farmville posts appear.  The game requires you to get ‘help’ from your ‘neighbours’ in order to complete quests and part of achieving this is by responding to their farmville posts on the wall.  If I can’t get anybody’s posts, how the fuck am I supposed to actually play the game huh?

It’s bad enough actually getting the bloody neighbours to help at all but not getting their posts either, I haven’t a prayer.

Other games on facebook limit your playing time by giving you a set amount of ‘energy’ that once depleted means you can no longer play for several hours until your energy bar has refilled.  You can of course pay real money to buy energy..!

I mourn the old facebook days when it was actually social.  Today, facebook is not a social networking site, it’s a pay to advertise site that gives you an option to talk, but no one actually bothers.

Come to think of it, I don’t actually mourn the old facebook, I mourn the old myspace.

I just want a game that I can go to for an hour or so here and there for some mindless diversion.  I want a game that doesn’t require me to solicit help from folks who have no intention of doing so and one that doesn’t limit my playing time with an energy bar.

Oh, and it would help if I didn’t have to spend real money either.

Alas, I firmly believe no such site or game exists anymore.