Owned!

I am sure I am not the first person ever to write a blog post about the Facebook application Owned!. Nor will I be the last. The reason that so many people can write about this application is that it is very, very creepy.

The premise of Owned! is that your friends bid on you, you can bid on them, and then it is some sort of cute market where you see how much everyone thinks you are worth, how much you think your friends are worth, and so forth. However, Owned! is not just for a circle of friends. It is for everybody on Facebook. Meaning? Anybody can buy anybody.

I have had people I do not know big on me. Someone from Iceland. Someone from Serbia. As of this last blog posting, someone in San Diego, CA "owns" me. Someone I have never even met. Someone with no mutual friends or anything. In this game, a complete and total stranger "owns" me.

That creeps me out.

Worse yet, once you "own" people, you can give them away as "human gifts." You can even select wrapping paper for your gift. Now, perhaps there is an element of humor that I am missing to all of this. But I am pretty certain that this is just not cool!

In the settings, there is not even an option to be traded amongst just friends. If they had that, this would be a very different blog post. However, anyone in the world can come along and "own" me, or give me away as a gift. I do not know if that actually invades any Facebook privacy laws or not, but I happen to think that it is very creepy. And it is an application that I will shortly hereafter be getting rid of.