Facebook and me

I have had a Facebook account for some time, but I don't really use it for anything. I cannot see what is it that draws people in using Facebook. In Facebook I haven't done really anything else than clicked the accept button for friends requests. Maybe it would be more fun if I would be more active with it, but it makes it so hard. Basically everything that I can do in Facebook I can do in some other place of Internet, but better. For me Facebook feels like limited playground version of Internet and I don't want that.

When logged into Facebook it has little box asking "What's on your mind?" And people seem to tell it, and then I can see it also. What I see is bunch of worthless text. It's like endless amount of small talk that goes nowhere. I have that enough on Twitter, but Twitter has more good stuff and there I follow people whose text I want to read, in Facebook I follow people I know. Maybe Facebook has some filter where you can friend someone so you can see his profile, but block the updates to your feed.

In Facebook one can share interesting link. But I can do it also with Twitter and Delicious, and those are not limited to just my friends. With pictures same thing as with everything. There are lots of good Internet image-hosting sites that I can use, so no need for Facebook.

One big thing with Facebook for me is that it is so focused around the friends system. When I put something in Internet I'm willing to put in in place where everyone can see it. And if I want to share something with only certain people I can do it sharing it personally, using e-mail or instant messengers. I have no reason for putting things in Facebook where the group seeing it is limited, but not as much as I want in certain situations.

And then there is groups and applications. Shortly, not interested, do not need. Also there might be other things that I didn't mention, and don't even know about, well can't be anything that cloud get me hooked on Facebook so I ignore it.

Why I play games?

I'm a gamer and I have always been. I don't remember the time as a kid when I didn't have a Nintendo Entertainment System. So I have played video games all my life and I know that I will be doing it in the future too. The question about my gaming is Why? Why do I play all these games? Why I have spend hours in front of computer screen and television?

I once asked person why he played World of Warcraft, game that I see no reason to play, it just doesn't excite me. (I might write more about this in some other post.) His answer was that it is good waste of time. I can't say that I didn't understand the answer, it just was something that I wouldn't had said about a game. I play games to pass the time, but it is very rare for me to consider a game just a way to waste time. I'm too involved into games and gaming to consider it just a thing to pass time with. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing this blog post.

Because I can't think one clear reason why I like some games it is also part of a reason why it is so hard to tell why I play them. Some games I play just because the gameplay is fun, like in Katamari. Some games are almost all about interesting story, like 1213 series. In some games I like to test my skills, like in many online fps;es and Guitar Hero.

But the thing that keeps me playing comes from different direction than those. You see, I'm one of those persons who thinks games as an art form and although different forms of art give me different things there is one thing that connects them and it is emotions they give. As a art from games give out emotions to me as a player. In some games these emotions come out stronger and in some they fade back.

That's why I think that Shadow of Colossus is one of the greatest games in Playstation 2, because it is made out of feeling epic. That's also why I think that Ravenholm is the greatest part in Half-life 2. I knew all the time that there was something near, I had little ammo and because how Half-life is structured I feared that place, feared and loved. Great games give out big emotions and feelings. They aren't the only reason why some game is good, but I'm sure that if I wouldn't get those emotions I wouldn't be playing so many games.

About internet identities

This is some of my thoughts about internet identity. I'm the kind of person who hates internet nicknames like Sephiroth66, or Naruto1337. Those are unoriginal and in most of popular internet services there are bunch of different Sephiroths. I can understand if someone takes a characters name because they like the name, but "Let's take the most bad-ass character in anime/video games name and we are cool" -thinking is stupid and it results a swarm of narutos, sephiroths and dantes running around internet.

I'm also that kind of person who wants to use same nick in every place because I want that if someone knows me as a Xyz in one place he will know me as a Xyz in every other place too.

My few first internet nicks I used were pretty awful but even they were original. But my mostly usen internet nickname came from a friend who mentioned something about Apsu, well he was talking about something abut Apsu. I liked that as a name and it felt similar to my real name, although only thing common whit it is same letter at beginning. From that on I started to use it as my internet identity and it was time when I started to really dig deeper in to the land of internet.

After some time Apsuing I notices that there are many places where name Apsu is taken and I had to come up something else and like I said I like to keep my nick same in every place. So because I didn't want to go with different nick I had to do some minor chance to Apsu. The one I started to use the most was Apsu-P or later Apsup I basically added the first letter of my familyname to that so it was kind of Apsu P.

It wasn't until just resiliently when I thought about what if I dump Apsu totally and start use Apsup as my primary nick, because that would get me over with problem of Apsu. I had thought about going from Apsu to something totally else, but I didn't want to throw away that internet identity that I had internalized. Also there was the thing that I was Apsu in every place possible. But when I thought about Apsup I realised that even tough it doesn't sound as good as Apsup it would still be similar enough, also at the moment there isn't so many places in internet where I am active and couldn't chance my nick. So I desisted to try it. I went and changed every Apsu to Apsup that I could.

I still feels a little weird and I don't feel that Apsup is as deep in me as Apsu was, but maybe it will come with time. Only thing I really miss that I can't use the wordplay Apsu-rd anymore. But that isn't so big loss for that I can now go in almost any place in internet and know that Apsup won't be taken.