The dark side of FourSquare #1: Mayor Rage

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Since Foursquare is still in its early days everyone is loved-up with the soical network, its smart use of location and its dinky badges.

Thing is though, as more people log on and check in, competition for mayorships gets fiercer and the fall-out can be dark.

Sure we can all collect badges and take pride in our massive collection of Beer icons but what everyone wants is a mayorship. It may only be of your local newsagents. It may be that only other patrons of that newsagents are 60-somethings who probably don’t know what iPhones are, but you’re still Mayor.

In the early days anyone could be Mayor of anything. These current times, you have to show real commitment to become Mayor of somewhere decent and some little upstart can knock you off at any time. That’s when displaced Mayor Rage kicks in. Hell you don’t even need to be displaced to feel animosity to the Mayor of your favourite pub. Why should he win all the time. What about the little guy?

My favourite Friendfeeder Louis Gray illustrated Mayor Rage in a post this week:
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As one commenter points out – people get run over all the time in supermarket

A little friendly rivalry is one thing, but I can see Foursquare rage spilling out. We all know people get angry on the internet (youtube comments, anyone) and we all know geeks can get really stroppy when upset and well, it’s just asking for trouble in my opinion. So yeah, mayor of my favourite pub, watch your back.

Related: Does Foursquare make you sad?

Anna Leach

8 comments

  • Will human as we are we have different view about something. Its the respect for others point of view is the most important.

  • You can’t really control a person’s comment or point of view so you just have to respect their comments much as you would like your comments to be respected too.

  • I want to comment at something you said:
    “As one commenter points out – people get run over all the time in supermarket”
    That’s why super markets got transformed to Mega Structures in our century. In a capitalistic society people want to buy things the don’t need, they buy because their happy to spend their money to useless things.

  • You have been putting on making your site such an interesting and informative place to browse through.

  • You have been putting on making your site such an interesting and informative place to browse through.

  • So this is what FourSquarers do? To earn points to be a virtual mayor or something?

    Do correct me if I’m misunderstanding something, but isn’t it a little, uhm, funny to compete for a virtual title?

  • Thank you for the efforts you been putting on making your site such an interesting and informative place to browse through.

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