Thousands of dollars on fake gifts.
Terriffic.
From Wired News:
Over the last month, Nikoma Lee has received more than $1,000 worth of gifts from friends she barely knows and only recently met through a new service called FunHi.
For Lee to receive gifts from near strangers is probably not all that uncommon, as she's a beautiful young woman beginning a career as a model.
During the same time period, George Georgiades, a 25-year-old consultant, has spent about a grand giving presents to his own group of new FunHi friends.
But these are not ordinary gifts. They're purely digital: little flashing icons of cars, planes, diamond rings and other virtual representations of expensive items included in messages members send each other. And FunHi members don't seem to care that the real money they're spending on the gifts, at prices as high as $30 an item, is going straight into the company's coffers.
"It gives me the same pleasure like at Christmas," says Georgiades. "When the money ran out, I went and got more. A hundred dollars at a time, (and) over time it added up."
You won't be surprised by the type of people who are scooping up most of the loot.
Of course, being a young good-looking female doesn't hurt, as the members with the most fans are all women whose pictures show them in sexy, alluring poses.
Talk about pathetic. Why are these people spending money on crap like this. What are they getting out of it? What does one of these "young good-looking" girls get out of receiving a $14.99 FunHi Luv Bird?
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but if I had a few hundred bucks to blow on a young good-looking girl I'd take her out to a nice supper and a movie. Maybe buy her a necklace or other real gift that she wanted. I certainly wouldn't flush my money down the toilet buying digital gifts from some online social game.