Word: virtually
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Here's how it works. You join FarmVille, a game on Facebook in which you can create a virtual farm by growing crops and livestock and tilling the earth. Through your toil, you earn virtual money, but to farm more efficiently or quickly, you can also invest real cash (through PayPal or a credit card) to buy virtual goods, such as seed or a tractor. Should you not have any real cash to spare on things that after all do not actually exist, you can instead accept an offer from one of the advertisers on the game site...
...Will O'Brien, general manager of social and casual games at TrialPay, a company that matches advertisers with potential online clients, told the San Francisco Chronicle that offers to swap personal information for virtual cash are designed to reach the young because they're less likely to have a credit card. But they often have cell phones, usually on their parents' plans. Indeed, while Facebook rules state that users must be at least 13, FarmVille seems to be aimed at a youthful crowd, at least by its marketing pitch: "Howdy Ya'll! Come on down to the Farm today...
...game, who your character is determines all. It determines who your friends are—in the virtual world, of course—what your strengths are, whether you worship a goddess or believe in the power of rationality, whether you fear water or heights, or embrace nature and its extremities...
...counter these creative forces, to give direction to the wild imagination necessary for the game, Dungeons & Dragons has intensely detailed rules. Though parts of the game are conceptually simple—a person ascribes himself a character and acts as that character while going on a virtual adventure—the rules for how that adventure unfolds, what each character is allowed to do or say, and what each character knows about the plot is deeply complex. Indeed, the rules are so detailed that there are volumes of books explaining how to play...
Spam hardly needs an introduction. Anyone with an e-mail account knows the acute frustration of being inundated with offers of pills from virtual pharmacists, financial propositions from Nigerian princes and pictures for fetish sites that really, really shouldn't exist. Spam has even gone beyond e-mail: like kudzu, it adapts to clog whatever online inbox you might choose. On Oct. 30, the social-networking site Facebook won a $711 million judgment against the self-proclaimed "Spam King" Sanford Wallace. Wallace, a professional e-mail marketer from New Hampshire who also likes to be called Spamford, used ill-gotten...