I
play Words with friends.
In
fact, I usually have a dozen or so games moving along at any moment.
Games with my wife… games with my sister… and games with people
that may not exactly be friends (I’ve never actually met them),
but we share a bond thanks to the game and participate in friendly
contests.
There
is, however, something that frustrates me. I’ve always understood
the approach to rematches being simple enough: the person making
the last move in one game should request the rematch and make
the first move for the next game.
I
can’t honestly say that I have any really solid reason for why
I believe this is the way it should move along. There is no rule
book that I’ve seen, and I’ve never exchanged the thought with
anyone I’ve played against. Instead, it’s just been handled more
as polite housekeeping. Put simply, my words: “Things finished
on my watch, and I’d like to keep it going. Shall we play again?”
The
part that reinforces this for me has been that most people seem
to move ahead this way. Most of the people I’ve played with… that
I am currently playing with… handle the end of one game and the
start of a new one in this fashion. Person with the last move
in one game makes the first move in the next.
Still,
it’s a pet peeve. A personal thing. Nothing that expresses a true
right or wrong, but just the way I would like things to be. It’s
worked out that way far more often than it hasn’t, resulting in
a scenario where I take it as a bit of a slight when the other
person doesn’t initiate a rematch when the game ends on their
turn.
How
often do you encounter things in the online community where something
seems to be handled by others in a way that doesn’t match up with
what you believe is the correct way of moving forward? Probably
all the time. In some ways, we’re talking about wireless interactions
that aren’t that dissimilar from leaving dishes in the sink instead
of moving them to the dishwasher, or where you pile up your dirty
laundry. Someone in the house wants the remote left in a different
place than where you put it, in the same way that another person
clicks reply-to-all when you really would prefer that they responded
only to you.
On
Twitter, there is a huge debate about the way people follow each
other. Some people pull this trick… and, honestly, most of the
great and fun people of Twitter think this is a really dirty trick…
where they follow you on one day, only to unfollow you soon after
you follow them back. In short, if you don’t look things over,
your numbers stay stagnant while their numbers get a boost. More
to the point of it though, they aren’t looking at you to offer
any kind of interest, attention or support.
Log
on to your Facebook account and post something. Anything. Do you
think all of your friends will see the post? Chances are, very
few of them will. There are algorithms and formulas and this and
that at work behind the scenes, filtering and enhancing and swirling
around. You could have hundreds of friends on Facebook, like and
share and comment all the time, and yet only a few dozen will
find your next post in their news feed.
Honestly,
most of this matters only once we take into account perspective.
Look back at my thoughts on Words with friends and rematches.
As much as I believe the person making the last move should initiate
the next game, it’s possible someone else believes differently.
Perhaps they think the winner should start a rematch, or, that
the loser should make the first move in a new game. And maybe
it’s something beyond that, where they didn’t enjoy the game and
simply didn’t want to play again.
The
point being… pet peeves… we all have our own approach to things.
The real answers are found in making attempts to understand those
approaches. But acting in an anonymous world does not make it
any easier.