Earlier this week I posted about what I played during the holiday break. During the holidays I wasn't near my high-end gaming PC. The PC I had at my disposal was so low-end, the "eMachines" logo had been scraped off, presumably because the eMachines people were embarrassed that it was still in use.

Still, like a junky looking for a fix, you'd be amazed at how you can dig around and find computer games to play when you're desperate. That's how I got involved with the "Pirate" game available on social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.

The whole Facebook application scene is tremendously demoralizing. First there's the poking. And as if that wasn't enough, Facebook scientists invented "Super Poking," which can happen to you at all hours of the night. Eventually my wife told me to stop. Then there's that application where you can buy, sell, and own your friends? Yeah, that's great for my ego. I'm worth like two bucks. People I don't know are passing me around like a cheap pack of cigarettes.

But the Pirate game -- The Pirate Game!! -- that's my obsession right now. Here's the way it works: You put together a pirate crew, consisting of your friends. Then you click on buttons that let you do pirate-y things, like "Pillage" or "Plunder" or "Torrent that new Nicholas Cage Movie." The more friends you have on your crew, the more successful you are as a pirate.

That's the part that kills me: Your success in the game is based on how many of your friends you can get to play. It's like a pyramid scheme, except that with pyramid schemes, someone at least gets to make some money.

This is more like playing in a game of football where the winner is the team that can put the most players on the field.

The game is so transparently viral that I should, by all means, remove it from my profile and walk away. But it has an experience bar, right? And I'm constitutionally incapable of ignoring any experience bar. I have to make it go up.

If you're like me, this puts you in the position of having to put social pressure on your friends in order to get them to join your crew. Myself, I like to be subtle, gently working the pirate game into a conversation:

I discovered you can also hold your friends' things for ransom (by stealing their cell phone... or child). Less effective is that trick where you gradually fill a room full of kittens with chlorine gas, promising to release one kitten for every new friend who joins your crew. My friends are tired of that one.

And there's nothing worse than a lonely pirate. He hobbles up to the hapless villagers on his peg leg, pulling a pistol out of his smoking beard, demanding their valuables. "Har har!" the peasants say, pointing at him. "Look at how small his friends list is!"

The lonely pirate lowers his falchion and his pistol, his head bowed in shame. The thickness of his pirate beard masks a silent, solitary tear.