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Thanks, Internet, for ruining everything — again.
You couldn’t simply accept the awesomeness that was Flappy Bird. This ultra-simple, yet completely addictive game was programmed to tap directly into your brain's amygdala, igniting a complex and extraordinary mix of emotions ranging from pleasure to pain. It also had its 8-bit talons hooked around the portion of your gray matter that regulates impulse control, since once you started playing, you could not stop. And we all loved/hated it, until people who could not keep the emotions and social media accounts in check destroyed the game and, very nearly, the nice fellow who created it.
See also: 28 Days of Fame: The Strange, True Story of 'Flappy Bird'
I was comparatively late to Flappy Bird’s brief but incredible run as an app phenomenon. Self-described indie developer Dong Nguyen launched the game way back in May of last year and it was ignored for months. The craziness started in November or December of last year and, even then, did not trickle down to me until earlier this month. It happened almost exactly like this:
I was, as I often do these days, trying to engage in a little chit chat with my nearly 16-year-old daughter. I noticed she was intently staring at her phone and I figured she was, as always, consuming massive numbers of Tumblr posts.
"No," she said somewhat tersely, "I'm playing Flappy Bird."
"Flappy Bird? What's that?"
"It's a game. Everyone is playing it." What you do not hear here is the exasperation in her voice. Then she added, "It's addictive."
No one knows more about what's hot in the social space than my daughter so, ignoring how quickly she dismissed me and the fact that she was not going to explain the game, I located Flappy Bird in the App Store and downloaded it to my iPhone 5S. Within moments, I was experiencing that mixture of pleasure and pain so common among Flappy Bird players.
Fast forward to a just week later and the whole thing is done. Over. And you all are to blame.
First of all, there is the natural human impulse to question any kind of sudden success. If someone doesn’t draw you a picture to explain why something like Flappy Bird is such a blockbuster, you assume the worst.
"He's gaming the system! He bought all those reviews."
"He's making money! He must be evil."
Nguyen politely responded to, it seemed, virtually every query about his game for almost three months. At first, it all read like anyone else trying to support his game via social media interactions. Nguyen’s replies were often stilted, but English is not his first language and his heart appeared to be in the right place.
Yet the more popular Flappy Bird became, the angrier the posts (mostly on Twitter) got. (Though, I'm not even certain all of these tweets were actually angry.)
The Internet is dripping with sarcasm about any number of topics. We just can't help being witty, cheeky or smart at both the right and wrong moments.
Here's a typical tweet Nguyen had to contend with:
@dongatory FLAPPY BIRD HAS RUINED MY LIFE! I'VE BEEN PLAYING IT FOR 8 HOURS STRAIGHT AND I SWEAR MY EYES ARE BLEEDING
— millicent (@meteoricmalik) January 25, 2014
Nguyen's reply is almost heartbreaking:
@meteoricmalik It's just a game. Take care of yourself first. I don't make game to ruin people lives.
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) January 25, 2014
What no one seemed to get was that all that sarcasm was likely lost on Nguyen. He was not in on the joke and certainly didn’t seem to see that people like me were, crazy as it seems, enjoying the endless frustration that came with playing Flappy Bird.
Table slaps, exclamations and involuntary shouts are, during Flappy Bird game-play, pretty commonplace. On social media outlets like Twitter, the easiest way to shout is in ALL CAPS. So many Flappy Bird addicts posted tweets in this style that Nguyen may not have realized that no one was actually yelling at him.
Even though Nguyen had thousands of Twitter followers and was quite good at customer engagement, he didn't appear to respond well to the platform's tendency toward schadenfreude. I think the reason people posted their frustration was for the entertainment of other players, even those who had yet to discover Flappy Bird. We could all revel in everyone's endless cycle of failure and pain.
But slowly, surely, the fusillade of negative and highly emotional comments seemed to break Nguyen down.
As Senior Tech Analyst Christina Warren's excellent autopsy proves, Nguyen wasn’t gaming the system and he certainly wasn’t making money through illicit means. He was just a guy who made a game that became the biggest phenomenon of this still early year.
You all drove him away, because you can't control yourself. You're tone deaf when it comes to others and, well, because you simply can’t have nice things.
Sure, some of you apologized:
@dongatory i regret tweeting this, i'm v sorry
— millicent (@meteoricmalik) February 8, 2014
But it’s too little and way too late.
I hope you're all pleased with yourselves.

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