Your last present for Christmas is an answer for why Candy Crush is addictive.  Because if you are anything like me and you play it before bed, you fall asleep thinking up boards.  You dream about combining two speckled doughnuts.  If you have a ten minute wait somewhere, rather than grab a book, you convince yourself that it’s not worth your time and open a round of Candy Crush instead.

Someone has studied this behaviour.

And she has determined that what we’re addicted to is momentum.

These games move from easy boards that you pop through like Doritos and hard boards, which make you feel smart when you finally pass them.  Easy – hard – easy – hard; never a predictable pattern so you write off the last board as an easy one, but a gentle dip and rise that makes you feel good and carries you from board to board.

Stephanie Michele writes,

This is the scientific formula for human momentum. Set a goal and then organize and leverage smaller actions along the path that are aligned to that goal. Celebrate each milestone easy and hard making sure to space out the hard ones to avoid discouragement. Discouragement murders momentum and blinds us from seeing and celebrating progress.

So it’s all just vanity.  We feel smart, so we keep playing.  It’s linked to Facebook so our friends see our progress.  I always assumed that it was meant to not only give us a group of people from whom to collect tickets or trade advice (or, more cynically, to give King.com more access to new players), but to have us feel less alone while we play in our respective houses.  Because video games are sort of lonely. But maybe it was meant to bring out our sense of competition, to have our friends notice and stroke our ego.

But, for me, it’s more than that.  It’s more than just momentum.

I’m aware that Doritos are engineered to make me want more empty calories.  They not only taste good, but they plug into some part of my brain that convinces me that it would be a sound idea to finish the whole bag despite rationally knowing that it is too much food before I take the first bite.  And there is something about this game that taps into my brain, turning off the constant buzz.  When I’m playing, I’m not worrying.  I’m not thinking about what needs to get done or my worst fears.  I’m just crushing virtual candies.  It’s the same release that comes from throwing plates against a wall, without the clean up.   I don’t need the music; I can silence the game and get the same effect.  But those moments when I’m crushing candies are the calmest moments of my day.  They are the only moments when I’m not fretting.  Or if I am fretting, I’m not fretting about real stuff.  I’m worrying about creeping chocolate.  There needs to be something said for an activity that is a massage for my brain.

So yes, I play a lot of the ‘Crush.  And I probably couldn’t turn it off if I tried.  I talk about deleting it at various milestones, but I don’t think I’ll stop until I hit that figurative wall and find a level that I absolutely can’t pass.  And even then, I could see myself going backwards and playing the first levels again for old time sake.  Because it feels good.

So… I hope you’ve had a relaxing day.  And if you haven’t had a relaxing day, sit down next to me and tell me about while I crush some candies.  I promise I can listen at the same time.

The next one of my Christmas gifts to you is an update on the hardest level of Candy Crush as crowdsourced by tons of players.  I never closed that original poll, and people kept answering. (Feel free to leave your answer there if you wish.  Maybe I’ll revisit this again in a few months.)  In fact, hundreds of people kept answering.  So I figured it was worth a relook if new answers skewed the results.

Why is it important to know the hardest level?  Because then you can anticipate, plan ahead, and hoard boosters from the prize wheel.  Why the hell would you spend a lollipop hammer on level 31 if you know that in two boards, you’re going to have to clear a lot of jelly?  It also helps, when you’re stuck, to know other people got stuck in the same place too.

So, to review, when I first wrote the post, the hardest level was 65.  The other nine most dreaded levels were: 33, 70, 79, 97, 125, 147, 165, 252, and 410.

The least favourite level has changed over time to become level 33.  It ousted 65 from the most hated spot.  In fact, level 33 earned 24% of the vote.  Whereas only 13% of the people answered that they disliked level 65.  Also added to that original list are multiple votes for  levels 23, 29, and 30.

There is the problem that more people have encountered those lower levels vs. the higher levels, and therefore, while they may really dislike 33, they have no clue that 350 is going to suck hardcore.  So the results definitely skew towards those first 200 levels.   There was also a tendency to dislike recent boards.  In other words, a lot of people who reported hating 97 were either still on 97 or were below 100.

Still, there’s more to be learned if we look at types of boards.  30% of people hate bring down the ingredients boards.  Only 22% of you hate clear the jelly.  And 30% hate timed levels.  I should add to that more options, some of which I didn’t even know about when I wrote that poll: the cannons, the chocolate machines, licorice, the 5-break whipped cream, and bombs bombs bombs bombs bombs bombs.

Okay, so start pre-dreading levels 23, 29, 30, 33, 65, 70, 79, 97, 125, 147, 165, 252, and 410.  And if you’re past them, breathe a huge sigh of relief.

What has been your hardest board?  Or tell us about a recent difficult board where you got stuck.

You can open another gift under the figurative tree in another few hours…  Which is just my way of saying another post will go up.  Hope you are having a wonderful Christmas.

Merry almost Christmas.  I know some people start opening gifts the night before, so pretend that I have wrapped a bunch of treats and placed them under your tree to be opened throughout the day.  They are all Candy Crush tricks that will help you get through the various level*.  I thought we could all use a bit of mindlessness.  So the first box you open contains advice on how to balance Odus, the Candy Crush owl in Dreamworld.

Oh Odus, I love you.  You are so cute.  I like hanging out with a bird while I play.  It is much nicer than hanging out with that incredibly tall man or the squat girl with the long arms.  They stare at me and make me uncomfortable.  Actually, the girl doesn’t look at me insomuch as she looks through me.

It took me until about board 30 before I realized that the Dreamworld board is pretty much EXACTLY the same as the regular Candy Crush board with the added task of balancing two colours.  So they’re actually harder, even though in retrospect, they seemed easier at first.  The two colours are — of course — imbalanced on the board.  There always seems to be more of one than the other.  And beyond that, sometimes you have a great move fall into place, such as a speckled doughnut next to a striped candy, but you can’t use it because if you do, it will clear off too much of one colour and not enough of another.

So how do you balance Odus the Owl?

I deal with him the same way I deal with a toddler on the verge of a tantrum: don’t look at him, don’t talk to him, don’t even breathe near him. Instead, I look at whatever the other colours are on the board that I DON’T have to balance (for instance, if Odus’s two colours are red and blue, I will make matches with yellow, green, and purple) and make matches with those.

It’s difficult to count just how many matches you need to get to Moon Struck, but suffice to say, it’s better to focus on making matches to get to Moon Struck and then allowing Moon Struck to work its magic.  It usually ends up clearing large chunks of the board, and you don’t even really need to use a move within Moon Struck to do this.  The sad part is that you’re not really using a strategy per se.  You’re winning because you reach a point in the game where the board starts exploding and for a few brief seconds, balance flies out the window.

But still, I’m not one to look a gifted Sugar Crush in the mouth.

Another tip for the Dreamworld is that if you ever get a speckled doughnut, combine it with one of the non-balance colours on the board so it doesn’t accidentally mix with one of the balance colours.

Another present will be ready to be opened in the morning.  I figured if you were stressed out with Christmas stuff, you could use the distraction.  At the very least, know there is someone Jewish hanging around during the next 24 hours if you want to talk.  All I’m doing is reading, lounging, and crushing candies.

Merry Christmas.

* Uh, I guess this is sort of just like real life gift giving because maybe I’ve gotten you a completely sucky gift.  Maybe you hate Candy Crush, and if that’s the case, I’m sorry because it’s not as if you can return these posts and get store credit.  Feel free to skip or skim, though even if you don’t play the game, you’ll understand the last post.

It’s the week of Christmas, and you’re only sort of going through the motions at work.  So here are some more interesting things to read and think about, though all non-IF related.

Your OED Birthday Word

The OED has a fun search tool that you can use to see which word originated in the year of your birth.  The word for my year was “Internet.”  Perhaps a premonition of my life to come.  What is the word for your year?

Twitter Royalty

Did you know that if you have more than 1000 followers on Twitter, it puts you in the top 4% of Twitter users.  Meaning, 96% of people on Twitter have under 1000 followers.  While it may feel as if everyone and her mother is on Twitter, the real numbers are very different.

According to the Daily Dot, “The vast majority of Twitter users basically haven’t used their accounts since creating them, and they generally have one follower or less.  Among active users, the median follower number is 117. This means that more people are following than being followed.”

So… it’s interesting to see the hard numbers and then to also see things like the implosion of Justine Sacco play out.  Is everyone on Twitter, or are few people on Twitter, or do people run to Twitter just to watch trainwrecks when the people who are actually on Twitter call them over to see?

The Justine Sacco thing made me sad, actually.  The stupidity of the tweet, the piling on and glee at her insensitivity, and then the self-righteousness of believing justice had been served.  The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth from start to finish, and I only heard about it in retrospect.

SIRI and the Gates of Hades

If you ask Siri, “what is July 27,” Siri will tell you:

And if you ask her, “what is September 3,” Siri will say:

Isn’t that… odd?

I read about this trick on the Daily Dot, and the most common explanation I’ve read is a glitch on Wolfram Alpha.  But still… I will be looking around cautiously on July 27th.

The Memories You Inherited

Linda sent me an interesting article on how memories are passed through families.  It sounds like they were looking at traumatic memories; nothing about good memories or a fondness for things was mentioned.  So, for example, if I developed a fear of crickets, and then I had children, even if they weren’t raised in my cricket-hating house, they would have inherited my fear of crickets.  Or something like that.

Or perhaps not since the study was related to smell.  And my fear of crickets is not tied to smell.  Though I despise perfume.  Maybe I’ve passed that along to the twins since they also seem to dislike perfume.  Or maybe they’re just saying that to bond with me because they know I don’t like perfume.  Either/or.

Your thoughts on any of these things, or tell us some interesting things you read this week.

So I read a bunch of posts in a row which were worth a mention but not worth a whole post.  This is the part where I vomit them all out at you.

Who Gets the Say?

Yahoo News had a story about the change in donor anonymity in Australia in 1998.  Gamete donations made after 1998 are not anonymous — donor-conceived children can know information on their donor if they choose.  Gamete donations made before 1998 were potentially anonymous.  Donor-conceived children born before 1998 wanted information on their origins.  Before the government changed the rules and made information from before 1998 donations known to donor-conceived children, they asked a group of donors their opinion.  Half were okay giving the information to the kids.  The other half asked for continued anonymity.

The question then becames whose rights superseded the other’s rights?  Is it more important for donors to get to keep their anonymity if they donated believing they would always remain anonymous?  Or is it more important for children to get information and understand their origins?

While I feel for the donors and don’t think it’s fair to change the rules down the road — when they donated, they donated with the understanding that they would remain anonymous — I have to side with the children in this case: the only people who had no say over their creation.  Donors had the choice to donate (or not donate) their gametes.  Parents had the choice to use (or not use) donor gametes.  But those donor-conceived children who want their information never made a choice about the way they were conceived.  I think they have a right to information that affects them if they want it.

At the same time, I feel the donor’s frustration.  Parents are under no obligation to reveal to their offspring that they were donor-conceived, yet donors — the people who provided their gametes — are under a different set rules?  And as they say, this violates a contract.  How damaging will this be for the donor world in the future if contracts are changed without all parties’ consent?  As a side note, half of the donors who were against losing their anonymity were for personally giving their information to those donor-conceived.  They didn’t mind that contact or trading of information insomuch as they didn’t want a blanket rule thrown retroactively backwards.

And that’s what Australia ultimately did in the end: they placed the rights in the hands of those anonymous donors.  They can choose whether or not to reveal themselves or pass along information.

Your thoughts?

Cowardly Confessions

The Stir had a post that I was certain was going to be IF-related and then turned out to not be… sort of.  The title: “I Secretly Hate When My Friends Get Pregnant.”

Oh, I thought, this must be about how they also wish they were pregnant, and how they need to be happy for their friend while still feeling sad for themselves.  But no, it’s just an anonymous rant about how friendships change when one person gets pregnant and the other has older children.  And then it becomes a mom-petition: the author claims you’re bumped down in your friend’s informal ranking system because your friend will connect with other people in a similar situation.

At the very end, the author acknowledges that she totally gets where childfree people “are coming from when they can’t muster a whole lot of happiness over a friend’s pregnancy.”  Except… for the most part… this isn’t why we’re upset.  It isn’t about worrying about being ousted from our friendship status by other women with similarly-aged babies.  It’s about being confronted on a daily basis with salt when we have a very large, painful wound called infertility, and that salt is being inadvertently shaken (emphasis on the word inadvertently) by someone we love.  As much as I love babies, it is sometimes hard to be around babies; seeing that tangible reminder of what I can’t have.  But if I want to see my friends, I have to also see that baby.  So I deal.

Friendships change as life changes.  The lasting ones weather those obstacles and even use them to ultimately climb closer to one another.  But not every friendship is worth that sort of effort.  Some friendships have a shorter lifespan; which is not a comment on their worth.  Both those people who remain with you through the years as well as the ones that are intensely in your life for a short period of time all have a place in the friend continuum.

So I really wasn’t sure what to make of this post.

Your thoughts?

Social Media: a Feeling-Hurting Space

Amy Poehler had a quote on People.com on how her feelings are always hurt inadvertently (there’s that word again) by social media.  We say things, and we don’t think about how they’re being taken by those who read our words in the same way that we self-censor and think through what we say (for the most part) when we’re speaking to a single person, face-to-face.  This is not to say that we don’t put our foot in it during private conversations, but there’s a lot more room for those inadvertent hurts when it comes to directing comments to a large group of people simultaneously via social media.

Poehler is talking more about seeing herself discussed online, but it did make me think about the inadvertent hurts of Facebook.  And if it’s inadvertent, how deeply do we let it cut us?

What do you think of those sound bites?