Charlie Just Became Mayor of Who-Gives-a-Crap . . . Land

After annoying us for most of the week with coverage of the anti-Mosque aficionado league and Roger Clemens, the NYT decided to devote its coverage to something that is more annoying than the combined forces of the Kardashians, the Jersey Shore, and people who tweet pictures of their cats.

Ladies and gentlemen, the New York Times presents Foursquare!

Alexandra will never forget the first time she was anointed the "mayor” of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. It was an overcast Wednesday in April and she was driving to the city on her last day of an internship.

Remember the old days, when the only way to become the mayor of a bridge was by beating your fellow bum in a knife fight? Life was so simple back then.

Never mind that she had to drive 15 minutes out of her way from her apartment in Sewell, N.J., to her desk at the Philadelphia City Paper. Or that it involved having to pull out her iPhone while weaving through morning rush-hour traffic to “check in” to the Foursquare application.

Misfeasance? Check. Reckless driving? Check again. Completely disregarding common sense due to a rather terrifying lack of good judgment? Checkmate. If you should ever crash your car and the person you crashed into turned out to not have been looking because she was checking in on Foursquare, you should be legally allowed to set her on fire.

Once she tasted “mayorship,” she was hooked. “Being the mayor of a major bridge — how cool is that?”

It's not cool at all.

She was so excited by her “nerdy achievement” that she posted a Twitter message about it.

Good lord, she managed to make that even less cool.

While Foursquare has been talked about in corporate boardrooms as the next big thing in social media — it has some 2.5 million users — it has also spawned a more trivial pursuit: a petty and vicious battle over virtual pieces of turf.

How something that features daily messages informing everyone that "Cher Horowitz is at Starbucks" can spawn something that is even more trivial is astonishing. This would be like some lunatic becoming inspired by the Birthers to leading an impeachment charge because Obama has not proved that he is at least 35 years-old.

Strangers are locked in bitter rivalries. Workplaces have been carved up into virtual battlefields. College campuses have become factionalized. Even some homes have become social media minefields.

You will respect me! People are afraid of me! I drive ... I drive ... I DRIVE A DODGE STRATUS!

Even more baffling is why users have become so emotionally invested in being a mayor, as there are few, if any, tangible benefits. While some bars award free beer and some shops give small discounts as a marketing ploy, the majority do not.

If I owned a bar and some asshole walked in claiming to be the mayor of my bar and demanding free beer, I would immediately introduce him to Harry the Head, the 5-pound miniature bat I show to people when I want them to leave and never come back.

Rather, Foursquare fanatics can’t seem to get enough of the mayoral bragging rights (even if it seems debatable that being a virtual mayor is worth bragging about).

That's not debatable. Whether Iraq is ready to see U.S. troops leave is debatable. Whether you should brag about being the mayor of a bridge is not.

For those still using their cellphone just to make calls, Foursquare, which started in March 2009, is a social media platform that lets users “check in” at places like bars and restaurants, and “unlock” points and badges. To play, users need to download an app to a GPS-enabled smartphone, like an iPhone, and pull out their device whenever they want to check in. The player who checks into a particular place the most within a 60-day period becomes its mayor.

And, of course, the NYT does not explain what the hell it is talking about until halfway through the story. And how condescending is the first clause in this paragraph? I bet you the writer is mayor of Doucheville.

One of the most fought-over battlegrounds seems to be the workplace. It usually starts out innocently, with a handful of techie co-workers checking in to a location. Then two things may start to happen: more colleagues check in, and, before long, the Type A’s start competing to be mayor.

My favorite thing to do when I was at work last summer was get into pitched online battles with Nick Burns, the company's computer guy. I also like the implicit assertion in this paragraph that the techies are not Type A's and would never compete to be mayor. I guess they would just be content with being the guy the mayor calls when the porn viruses overwhelm his computer.

But it doesn’t always end there, as Ian, a 34-year-old digital strategist in Toronto, found out. At first, co-workers at OSL Marketing, a branding agency where he works, fought over the mayorship of the two-story building that houses the company. Then they started creating venues inside the 10,000-square-foot offices: the receptionist desk, parking spots, the kitchen. (Anyone on Foursquare can create a new venue.)

So it's like Risk, except dorkier. I wonder who the office bathroom's mayor is. I bet you he sweats when he eats.

Hey, you think whoever wanted to be mayor of Parking Spot #3 was crazy? That guy has nothing on these two lunatics:

After losing his mayorship at Atlas Cafe, a coffee shop in Williamsburg, Mr. Lopez turned his attention to a hidden passageway between the Manhattan Bridge anchorage and a bland Department of Transportation building. The alley doesn’t show up on maps and, more importantly, there seemed to be little competition for mayor. Plus, it had a cool, noir-sounding nickname, Stabber Alley.

“I just want a place to call my own,” Mr. Lopez, 31, said.

For a while, Mr. Lopez lorded over Stabber Alley by simply checking in once a day. Then an acquaintance, Barry, came out of nowhere and stole his title. What’s more, his new rival seemed to be bending the rules by checking in from a remote location. Although Foursquare uses GPS to pinpoint a player’s location, most smartphones are still relatively slow and inaccurate, so Foursquare lets users check into places as far as 300 meters (about 328 yards) away.

Just to be sure, Mr. Lopez staked out Stabber Alley to confirm that Mr. Barry was not actually there even though he checked in. Once, he said, he saw Mr. Barry checking in while walking across the street. Under the loosely defined etiquette rules of Foursquare, a “drive-by” check-in is not allowed.

(Mr. Barry did not deny the charge: “I did check in sometimes while in my office, which is a block away. Usually at lunch I would walk over to the alley and check in, and when I forgot, I would usually check in later while at my desk,” he said.)

Then Mr. Lopez’s geeky side got the better of him. A Web developer by training, he downloaded a computer programming interface, or A.P.I., from Foursquare’s Web site and programmed a script that automatically checked him into Stabber Alley every day at 1:23 p.m.

It worked, and he was reunited with his title. “It’s cheater versus cheater,” Mr. Lopez said.

Wow. Just wow. Before today, I would have been pretty sure that fighting over who would become mayor of a place called Stabber Alley would involve two bums who needed to be involuntarily committed for everyone's own good. Now I am absolutely sure of it.

But for some, breaking the rules is so offensive that they feel compelled to shame the culprit, usually by turning to other social media like Facebook and Twitter. Among the self-appointed hall monitors is Mike, 25, a Web designer in Philadelphia.

Wow, Foursquare has narcs. And I bet you they are every bit as popular as Martin Prince.

Last year, in his early days of using Foursquare, Mike noticed there was a nearby user named Elizabeth who was mayor of almost every venue near his home on Fifth Street in South Philadelphia. He figured that Elizabeth must have been cheating, possibly checking in from her car, so he took a screen shot of her Foursquare profile, which included a photo of her face, and posted it on Twitter, accusing her of deception.

He must have a lot of sex.

Since then, Mike has managed to eke out his own mayorships. He also happens to date Alexandra, the sometime-mayor of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

Oh, hey! He landed the mayor of the bridge! High five! No, you missed. Try again. . . Nope, missed again. . . Here, just hit the palm . . . I'm not even moving my hand anymore, how are you still missing? . . . OK. Whatever. Just bump the fist. . . Oh, you're blowing it up. Of course you are.

When two Foursquare power users are in a relationship, everything is up for grabs. Like their homes.

For two months, the couple were in a tug-of-war for mayorship over Alexandra’s two-bedroom town house, which she shares with her cousin. Eventually, Mike relented and let his girlfriend be the mayor of her own home. But he wants it to be known that he hasn’t given up completely.

“If I could catch up and steal the mayorship,” he warned, “I’ll do it without question.”

Guys, I think Maureen Dowd just found herself a new column! Heck, I don't even know why I'm even making fun of her for that. Anything to keep her from writing absolute travesties like this one.

He didn’t seem to be joking. Although Mike is currently mayor of 16 places, he is unhappy about their declining cachet. Instead of cool bars and leafy parks, he is now the mayor of places like a Taco Bell.

“My mayorships have been whittled away to meaningless 7-Elevens and gas stations,” Mike said.

"What happened to my Kingdom?" pondered Mayor Denethor, as he surveyed the smoldering ruins of his once-proud nation. He took a bite out of his Crunchwrap Supreme -- the last remaining jewel in his crown -- as a lone tear spilled down his cheek. Somewhere in the distance, a tiny violin played.

[I'm skipping a section where Mayor Denethor and his girlfriend, the Bridge Mayor, take a vacation to unlock Badges in Brooklyn by "prepar[ing] a Google spreadsheet to ensure efficiency." It is sadder than it sounds].

In fact, I'm skipping everything. I guess I'm old fashioned in that I did not need to know where you were unless I wanted to know. And if I wanted to know, I would follow text you. I know that sounds insane to kids today, but that's really how we used to do it.

And if you wanted to be mayor, you needed to either smoke crack or extend term limits right when your term is about to expire. And you kind of needed a city, town, or at the very least, a village. Heck, I'd even give you hamlet. But I won't give you Stabber Alley. That's too much.

Now, if you'll excuse, I'm off on patrol, because I'm the sheriff 'round these here parts.