Depression That Follows Facebook Games

Have you ever started playing a game and no matter how absurd or boring other people found it, you could not stop yourself from stopping until you have completed it? The same can be said for flash games, especially ones on Facebook. You don't have to download anything and all you have to do is allow them to post unnecessary ads on your wall. They also have this beautiful leaderboard to show which of your friends are better at the game than you, which only makes you feel more competitive and spend endless hours trying to beat them. All that time staring at the computer screen when you could be doing something productive like studying or paying attention to the professor when s/he's lecturing.

Then, when it's all over, when your profile image is the highest on that pixelated ladder, you get this amazing feeling and you're feeling so smug you post it on your wall to show off- but wait! What is this? The leaderboard for all of Facebook... and you're not even in the top 9000! Guess it's time to keep playing so you can defeat all these other people.

Many sleepless weeks later...

YES YOU HAVE DONE IT. Congratulations, you have won this small fraction of the internet (for now). You're getting this extraordinary emotion as if you were the most important person in the world, as if you just conquered the universe and nothing else mattered but you and your unbelievably high score.

You suddenly pause and become shocked. You start hyperventilating. Why? You have accomplished something that no one else has before... so... why? Maybe it's because you just wasted a couple months of your life away at something that you would probably never get recognition for. What has this game done for you besides waste your electricity, impair your eyesight, and destroy your social life? It does not pay the bills or help you pass your classes. Well, it did exercise your brain and probably increased your reflexes, but that's beside the point. In reality, you have accomplished NOTHING.