Farmville and Foursquare Among 50 Worst Inventions

According to TIME’s list, Farmville and Foursquare are among the world’s 50 worst inventions.

 

 

The list of “the world’s bright ideas that just didn’t work out” included both the location-based social game Foursquare and Zynga’s Farmville.

Farmville is the most addictive of Facebook games is hardly even a game — it's more a series of mindless chores on a digital farm, requiring the endless clicking of a mouse to plant and harvest crops. And yet Zynga, the evil genius behind this bizarre digital addiction, says more than 10% of Americans have logged in to create online homesteads.

Recently, a 22-year-old mother (Alexandra V. Tobias) from Jacksonville, Florida, arrested for shaking her 3-month-old son to death after his crying interrupted her FarmVille game. She told the cops that she shook the baby, then smoked a cigarette for composing herself and again she proceeded to shake him again. She said his son would have hit his head during one of the two shakings.

 

When broadcasting your every thought via Facebook and Twitter isn't enough, there's Foursquare, the next generation of creepy social networking. Instead of saying where you are, you can use your phone's GPS to broadcast the address. Just another tool tapping into a generation of narcissism, with which you can earn badges for checking into your local Starbucks more than anyone else.

 

View the full list for “The 50 Worst Inventions”