It was, suffice to say, a power check-in – in one fell swoop, I unlocked both the “Superstar” and the “I’m on a boat!” badge. The problem is, it felt a lot like cheating.
Oh, I was on a boat all right. I spent spring break on a Mexican cruise, returning approximately two shades darker and my liver capacity reduced by approximately 20 percent. But I didn’t have the satisfaction of looking up at the Carnival Elation, knowing that with my next check-in I would unlock the coveted badge, because I scored it while still very much land-locked – while standing in the middle of Los Angeles International Airport during a layover, in fact. So I was, indeed, en route to an ocean adventure. But what about my Seaword-bound traveling compatriots? Something tells me that a lot of people are carrying around an undeserved badge.
Now, I know there’s a lot of people with mixed feelings about FourSquare. I’ve decided it’s (mostly) harmless and quite fun, so I’ll take the ribbing when my boyfriend teases me about being the mayor of Cracker Barrel. But let’s put all of that aside for a moment and talking about cheating. I think it’s pretty clear that I’m not the guilty party when it came to my slightly unscrupulous acquisition of the “I’m on a boat!” badge. But what about getting “Crunked?”
This weekend I went out for a very nice date with my boyfriend. We had a gift certificate for Outback Steakhouse that my mom had given us. Afterwards, I wanted frozen yogurt. My boyfriend wanted to have a drink somewhere with a patio. So, we stopped at both Yogoluv and the Heidelberg. My goal wasn’t a badge or even serious debauchery. It was to spend a nice night with my boyfriend. Still, I checked in out of habit – except when it came time to check in at the ‘berg, I accidentally checked into another local restaurant with a name that starts with the same letter. Not a big deal, I figured… I’d been there a few days before and forgotten to check in, so it was fair. Except that when I corrected my mistake, I learned that I was now, in fact, “Crunked” – at least according to FourSquare.
Last week FourSquare had to respond to a flurry of comments, questions and concerns when it announced that you’d no longer be able to maintain mayorships from your couch. But whatever magical GPS formula they’ve calculated to keep people from cheating has yet to implement in Columbia, Missouri, because I was able to check into a venue at 10th and Cherry from 9th and University, two blocks away.
Most of the complaints came from wireless users and people without smartphones, and a day later, FourSquare posted an addendum to its new policy that explained how it was working to preserve the veracity of users’ locations. Personally, I’m not sure what appeal location-based social networking has for the non-smartphone set. FourSquare is fun for me because it gives me something to fiddle with when I’m in line for my frozen yogurt. I imagine it would fast lose its appeal (and really, its purpose) if I had to rack my brain each day when I got home to remember where I’d been. If I was going to complain about anything, it would be that I liked the fact that FourSquare worked on an honor system, since it did help preserve that playground aesthetic for which they’re striving. But with more people playing, maybe we need controls for couch mayors and incorrect venue tagging.
For the record, I’d return the “Crunked” badge if I could, waiting instead to unlock it during one of the many end-of-semester bar crawls in which I’ll very likely participate. It feels inauthentic to have it now, just as it did to unlock the “I’m on a boat!” badge while sitting at LAX instead of standing at the San Diego pier.
In an unrelated FourSquare ethical conundrum (and this is one I’ve been pondering for awhile), should you check-in where you work? With more and more restaurants and bars offering FourSquare-related incentives to their most frequent customers, what happens if an employee has the top spot?