So I see where British lawmaker Nigel Mills got into trouble when photographs were taken of him ...
Partying wildly and drinking heavily at a club with a tie around his head?
Stealing money out of the Parliament chump-change till?
Going into a motel with an attractive young woman who was not his wife?
Well, Mills is a "player," but not that kind of player.
This guy got into trouble after a photograph was taken of him playing Candy Crush Saga on his tablet during a committee hearing in Parliament. The photos were published in The Sun newspaper, and Mills apologized.
Boy. Makes me glad I'm not a lawmaker who was photographed doing what I do best at meetings at work ... doodling.
I feel for Mills, especially if he'd been doing what fellow legislator Edward Leigh said Mills had most likely been trying to do: keep himself awake. I can relate to trying to stay awake, as I'm a bad sleeper and prone to snooze during any instance that involves sitting for a prolonged period of time, even when the subject matter is interesting.
I'm also fascinated how much this Candy Crush Saga saga has spread.
Candy Crush Saga is one path I haven't gone down yet. I become less likely to do so with each new Facebook notification that some unlikely seeming friend has invited me to play. (My problem? I'd rather eat candy than play games with it.)
"Candy Crush was the top downloaded free mobile app of 2013," according to a British Broadcasting Service story about Mills and his game playing. "Users must swipe the screen to match grids of brightly colored sweets to score points and pass different levels." Oooookaaaay. FarmVille didn't grab me. Bejeweled Blitz didn't grab me. Bubble Witch Saga didn't grab me. I didn't even know about the fafillion other games I found on a full list of Facebook games at levelupcity.com.
I'm not the only one who has become annoyed by these invitations. Just about every Facebooker has seen the meme of Madea, filmmaker Tyler Perry's tough-talking, gun-toting grandma, cocking a pistol and inviting the viewer to "Send me another game request." (Well, there's the one where actor Samuel L. Jackson, in his Pulp Fiction movie character getup, delivers the same message in a more profane manner.) Every once in a while I'll see a Facebook friend ditch the meme messages and go on a rant against friends sending game requests.
"When you add an app to your account you grant it some permissions," one Facebooker explains in the Help section of the website. "The game app you are referring to may use its permission to post as you and [gain] access to your Friends list to send Game Invites to your friends automatically." One can turn off notifications for each game generating the requests.
Or one can accept the invitation, as Mills perhaps did.
Even those of us who are not Candy Crush-ees have to admit that we've fallen prey to other frivolous attractions (electronic Solitaire, anyone?), especially if we're trying to stay awake somewhere.
Facebook itself has sometimes been a useful way to stay alert, as anyone with a large, eclectic collection of friends will find out. Let something political go on or a social crisis occur and varying opinions will fly freely, usually expressed in ways more fascinating than manipulating images of candy on a small screen. Maybe Mills would have been in less trouble had he had scrolled his News Feed. At least he could have pretended that he was using social media to keep his constituents informed of the meeting proceedings.
Meanwhile, if we nongamers are too lazy to get off our duffs and disable game notifications, we can just continue to grin, bear and ignore those requests and invitations.
Until we start getting such invitations to join yet another social medium.
G'on. Send me another email:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 12/14/2014