This is all a giant experiment, right?

Some wit on the internet made fun of the fact that people apparently lost it during a Facebook outage recently and called 911 emergency. Specifically, he said something about new mothers wandering down the streets asking people if their babies were pretty and to "like" them. The hysterical laughter masks a deep disquietude.

We all like our shiny devices and we love using them in the eternal game of societal oneupmanship ("checking in" to a swanky club, or Gawdhelpus, even an airport first-class lounge). However, given the magnitude of time and money dropped on these things, a long, hard, cynical look is called for. 

Consider most Pharmville games and their clones. Repetitive tasks, which somehow get you addicted and then you start paying for the privilege of watching fake crops grow or something (I have never played it). Then there is the game from Kardashialand. This appears to have taken the appstores by storm and is projected to gather 200 million$ of revenue this year. To put things in perspective, that is what about 10,000 students will pay for instate tuition at major US universities. That is about 100 top of the line NIH grants awarded to only the best and brightest principal investigators in the life sciences. That is two and a half times what India has spent on its Mars orbiter mission.

I am trying to find meaning in this. There has to be a reason why intelligent young adults, many of them burdened by crushing student loans, in an economy perennially stuck in the doldrums choose to throw their hard earned money at such distractions. I mean, this must be the Golden Age for those of short attention spans. An entire Netflix is at your command for the price of 3 or 4 cups of coffee a month. You can immerse yourself in intricate strategy games, or shoot em up with Master Chief. But you choose to crush candies while on the thunderbox.

Mayhaps this is all a giant social science experiment. When we peel away the layers of coders and celebrity endorsed inanities, perhaps there are a bunch of PhDs standing behind, collecting and analyzing the data*. And making you pay for it. That would be delightfully meta.

*Our man Nandi introduced me to the OkCupid blog a long time ago.