Thaindian News

Apr 8 (THAINDIAN NEWS) In last night’s episode of the famous cartoon “South Park” the boys show the world how hilariously silly people can be when it comes to social networking. The show entitled “You Have 0 Friends” features Stan, and what happened to him as he get “sucked into Facebook” against his will. Cartman and crew all join forces in order to force Stan to get a Facebook page (they even make the profile for him, “Surprise!”) and while Stan is pretty much the voice of sanity and reason, everyone around him seems to be lost in an alternate reality. This time, however, Stan gets sucked in too…literally. Rather than me giving out the whole episode, you might want to watch it for yourself. The entire episode is available here It is funny and not as full of expletives as some of the shows.

With this little dose of comedic reality just airing last night I found the story of a 12 year old which was released earlier to be quite ironic. The boy, who lives in the UK, has accrued a debt of about $1367 dollars or over £900 all on buying Farmville supplies! His savings account contained £288, and once he wiped it out, he went on to his mother’s credit card, without her knowledge. Zynga, the company which created Farmville, and many other Facebook games, has stated that they will not forgive the debt.

According to his mother, “The total spend is about £905, but the credits are still rolling in. Facebook and [game creator] Zynga will not refund anything as [the son] lives in my house. Facebook has disabled his account and Zynga has unhelpfully suggested I use password protection on computers in the future.” She then contacted her credit card company who told her that the only way to get a refund for her money was to turn her son into the police. “He would be cautioned and I have been told that this caution would stay with him. Obviously the idea of a stupid farm simulation jeopardising his future earnings is not something that I want to consider,” she said. Because of incidences such as this, many are asking for games like Farmville to have automatic alerts when large amounts of money are spent in them, such as those on gambling sites. As of yet, this is not the case.