my addictions

1. Facebook. It's so scarily addictive, with the wall posts and the status updates, because it's so current. The present-orientation of it gives the illusion of no-distance between people whom you haven't seen haven't talked to in ages, and you don't even have to talk to people if you don't want to, you can be all voyeuristic and just lurk and read friend updates and people update A LOT and it lacks the constrains of labels like 'testimonials' in friendster and there's groups to join and the layout is less spartan than friendster and I am so embarrassingly gushing.

2. Club Penguin. Since I failed the tour guide test, being only 67 days old, I have been obsessively been trying to get acquainted with the place, I mean how difficult can it be right? And most of the other people on it are kids. But I failed the test again. If clubpenguin had a bellcurve i would be right at the bottom. It really doesn't bode well for exams, so I am not going to log on for a while. Or maybe I'll just concentrate on unloading coffee beans and earning minimum coin wage.

So after getting sorta acquainted with the workings of Club Penguin, I excitedly went to talk to my little 5 year old friend again to tell him how he should stop making pizza because it's so much easier to earn money counting coffee beans, and he went

"I dunno...is it hard?"

"No it isn't I cannot make pizzas very well, it's so difficult!"

"No it's not!"

*embarrassed*

And it appears he's figured out a way to solve my problem of having to run away everytime someone talks to my penguin.

"You know when a penguin talks to you, you just click on his face then his face will become black"

"Huh?"

"You report him!" *evil laugh, as evil as a 5 year old can be..*

There's this thing where you can sign up to be a secret agent penguin, which in effect means you become a spy rat, and rat on other penguins who break the rules of ClubPenguin and they will be suspended for 24 hours or something. Supposedly this will make all penguins behave. (Which is quite true - the only overt sins I've seen any penguin commit is throwing snowballs in the coffee shop, and telling lame penguin jokes. ) This, intentionally or not, echoes what Michel Foucault calls the 'disciplining of the docile bodies'. Penguins are docile bodies alright. But that's not the point. Jeremy Bentham illustrated his panopticon concept in relation to prisons. Making something like that happen on Club Penguin is so intrusive and horrible because it spoils the innocence of the place. Then again, maybe the moderators are just trying to preserve the innocence of the place. Whatever. I'm just feeling a sense of loss.