So David came across this online game a while back on his PC, Zynga poker. He got right into it and had some online "buddies" that played with him. To be honest I think it was getting a bit over the top as he was constantly playing the thing. It was really demanding of his time as well, as he couldn't even go to the toilet at times until he'd done this or that.
Experienced onliners would realise that that's just too much and you should pull back a bit, but as much of this online stuff is still new to David he couldn't see it. This went on for some weeks to get to that point. At the worst he was staying up until 3-4am playing it, as the US players get up in the mornings at about our midnight.
And then it happened.......
Something happened at their end in the US with the game. Some technical hitch that saw various people not be able to log in. The screen would just say "login failed, please check your internet connection".
Of course that was the only site that wouldn't work in the entire internet, but that message puts it on you to think that maybe it was a problem at our end. I said straight away it wasn't and it was their problem, and that I had no idea what happened at their end, that it was impossible to fix from our end, and that was that. These things happen with the internet. I mean the site is clear across the world in the US.
Then oh the wails and anger of despair. Wanting me to fix it. I'm saying I've got not the faintest idea how to. Demanding that I drop everything in the middle of whatever I'm doing to help him log back in. I said I can't. He gets the shits because I'm "not helping him", and all the unreasonable bla that goes along with a situation like that.
This goes on for 4 days.
At first to me it was, well this will be a internet learning experience for him to not let him get so addicted and involved in one single site. But as the days passed he was getting worse. Never wanted anything to do with the internet ever again. Wished he never bought the PC. Threatened to throw it against the wall at one point (I simply said "well it's your PC you can do what you like with it").
After three days of me politely helping him out for a few hours or so to no avail, and him getting more and more over the top about it, by the fourth day I'd pretty well had enough of such juvenile behaviour. We argued about it on the fourth day, me telling him to grow up basically and not spit the dummy over nothing.
The most I could do for him was to get him to explain his concerns on the Zynga forum so that admins could address the problem (forums were new to him as well), and to set up a facebook account with him so he could play it through facebook.
Surprise surprise, the Zynga admin said it was a problem on their end that they were "working on" (I resisted the temptation to say "I told you so"). But it did give a space for David to vent his frustration about it all directly to a company representative.
The facebook thing seems shit as it keeps freezing and coming up with the unresponsive script thing, and he loses chips (just free BTW).
He has now become more reflective and aware of the traps you can fall in during these days of cyber existence.
He's now discovering lots of his friends are on facebook and is getting in touch with them.
After 4 days he's finally taken it as a learning experience and started to move on. Whew.
*sheesh*
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