Venting before I do any damage!

Just have to blow off a little steam in order to not go off on a bender. I've been obsessed lately with a certain game on a certain social network who shall remain anonymous except they are named for a body part.... Anyway, Kyra got me hooked, and Ethan plays as well. I let them have accounts on this network under my supervision, even tho they are not strictly old enough (ehem, cue the guilt over teaching a lesson about working around the system...) I got into the game so much that I created a couple of different personas in order to play more. Well, I finally reach saturation level with the game, after about a week of playing for such long stretches that I didn't eat much, and so decided to dump the extra personas. That started a bunch of redistributing the wealth, so to speak: spending these people's "money" and sending it off as gifts to me and my kids. Furthermore, my zeal in helping them reach game goals had me playing their pets, and adding new network people so as to get more "money".

Yesterday it all backfired on the wrong person: Kyra's account got disable because they suspected her of being a scammer. They said she was accepting people as friends who were not friends. What gave her away? Her account name which is clearly not a person's name, or all the gifts I sent her? Who knows. She has been slapped, but as they say, they are watching her for suspect activity.

Which brings me to my rant. How frigging hypocritical! As I got enmeshed in the game, it came to my attention that people were adding friends indiscriminately, and creating people on this network with goofier names than Kyra's, names like "John SPP", just in order to earn "money" from the training program. How is a last name like an animal less suspicious than a last name of all consonants, I ask?? So irritating!! We're not trying to scam anyone, we play nicely, we give complements and gifts. Other than bending the rules slightly, we're doing nothing wrong, whereas...

And to be clear she is being slapped by the network, not by the game. The game admins acknowledge that people will have multiple accounts, and you get rewarded for having a lot of friends. No way to have 1000+ friends than by accepting the friendship of total strangers.

So the whole thing has soured my experience of this social network. And I feel guilty for possibly getting her in trouble with my overzealous play. So join me in trying not to jump boldly off the wagon to bury my guilt... (On the plus side, my right shoulder has been bugging me more from the increased computer play, so probably just as well I take a little break from the game...)