Let me explain why this is so confusing. There are only about a dozen of us who work at Axiom on a daily basis. We have some out-of-staters, some who work from home and some who are simply not here every day.
My Foursquare competitors are limited to the three people in my office who have Foursquare and use it on a daily basis – Principal Mike Ferrara, Project Manager Stephanie Lopato and Intern Steve Retka. I took the mayorship from Stephanie early on, and Steve and Mike are still new so they don’t have the ability to catch up.
So imagine my surprise when I lost my mayorship to Matt. Who’s Matt? There’s no Matt that works here. We don’t have a client named Matt. I see every single person that walks into our office everyday, so it’s not as though someone has the ability to come to our office 27 times in the past 60 days without someone noticing. For the record, Matt has 102 mayorships. Something tells me we’re not the only victims of his ambitions.
My question is this. Why does he check into Axiom when he’s clearly not here? Why does he want the mayorship? What’s the motivation to lie about checking into a venue that has no perks for their mayors? And the big question: Why doesn’t Foursquare have a “report” option for us to alert them of cheaters?
Before I wrote this blog post I began some initial topic brainstorming via Twitter. While some provided some helpful ideas on how to confront the cheater, my favorite response was from an old college friend of mine.
Talk about food for thought. Am I the only one who cares this much about the integrity of the game? If you’re wondering, yes I am “that girl” who will pull out the Scrabble Dictionary if you lay down a questionable word.
Am I missing the fun of Foursquare by following the rules, or am I justified in my wanting to reprimand the cheater?