The End of FUN Read Free Page A

that not everyone had it yet, so it was like being part of this special club. Of the Shit.
    Like, I’d be wandering around the Mission and I’d see a couple exclamation points off in the distance—exclamation points that only I could see—+1 user! +1 user!—and then I’d catch sight of the people under the points, and it’d be a couple cool kids just like me, and as we passed each other we’d YAY! out in our minds like superpsychic adventurers on the hunt for bonus fun.
    So that part was cool, and it was fun, and it was FUN ® . (Well, duh. It was the Shit.)
    But there were some minor issues, though. Bugs and glitches or whatever. Take for example Homie ™ . It’s evolved over time, but back then it was just this pixelated, barely 3D robot face. Bluish on top, orangish on bottom, no mouth, no nose. Two dark, blinking circles for eyes. Pretty much the first thing my Homie ™ did was catch a communication virus, the infamous allyourbase_ex, and after that you never knew when the voice recognition was gonna glitch out, or maybe it’d start talking in half-Japanese. Both of which happened when I was trying to final confirm my username.
    What I wanted was
the last cowboy
, but when I told Homie ™ , it blinked and said,
    > ok!
    i cannot understand u now!
    please to speak louder!
    â€œConfirm username:
the last cowboy
.”
    > ok!
    what was that?
    u r desire of original name?
    is this can be for a person?
    â€œYes, an original name. For a person. Me. I desire to final confirm my username:
the last cowboy
!”
    Homie ™ flickered.
    > “original boy”?
    â€œNo!”
    > i’m sorry!
    that is a name already taken!
    would u like “original boy_1”?
    â€œTHE LAST COWBOY!”
    > i’m sorry!
    that is a name already taken!
    would u like “original boy_2”?
    â€œStart over!”
    > awesome!
    original boy_2 confirmed!
    :)
    When I contacted an Admin he told me it was like 800 to unconfirm it, which was total crap, and in the end I was like,
Forget it
.
I’m not paying
. Anyway, it could have been worse. I could’ve been original boy_3 or 4 or whatever. Sometimes I still feel a little pang of envy toward original boy_1 and, of course, the
original
original boy. Really, though,
the last cowboy
was what I wanted. Personally, I think that would have been the Shit.

So there I was, living in SF, having FUN ® , free as a bee on the sea. Yeah, the hivehouse was weird, and yeah, I was scamming my family, and yeah, any insect flying over an ocean is bound to get fatigued and crash, but for the moment it was awesome. I’m kind of amazed I got away with it so long, but the truth is this: when people want to believe something, you don’t have to work that hard to convince them. Every week or so I called Evie and Dad to give an update on my life in Sacramento. School was fine. California was fine. I was fine. And they bought it! I think they were just happy to have me out of their hair.
    As it turned out, I was one of the last people to have FUN ® for “free.” It was like a week later that they got FDA approval, and people started paying for beta. In retrospect, I should have read the User Agreement, because it was a way crappier deal to get on for “free” than to pay for a contract.
    One problem was, they kept changing the rules. Like the YAY!s. At first they were optional, but then they became mandatory, and then you couldn’t just YAY! a hot product in the YAY!log to collect points—you were supposed to talk about it, too. It was a lot of work. I started to get a little behind. OK, a lot behind. Because the truth is I hardly even touched the YAY!s.
    Here’s the other problem: FUN ® is
fun
, but it’s also got some
really
addicting distractions. Like take, for example, the game
Tickle, Tickle, Boom!
(YAY!). Say what you will about the console versions, the FUN ® adaptation is
insane
. You