How did writers distract themselves before Facebook?

If someone had told me six months ago that I'd have my very own Mafia, well they would have been completely misguided.  If someone had told me that I'd have a hypothetical Mafia that essentially involved me pressing buttons and watching a tiny bar crawl along a screen then they would have had some pretty good predictive skills.

Mafia Wars is currently my favourite distraction, brought to me in association with Facebook - the ultimate waste of time.  The worst thing about it is that I engage with this application in the knowledge of how futile it is, like some low rent World of Warcraft, minus the gameplay and interaction that I presume goes with the game (based on one episode of South Park).  For those unitiated (I like that I speak as if people read this - as if I'd told people that this blog exists and sent them to read it.  Actually, I'll post a link to this on Facebook - so hello to the one person who actually clicked on the link), Mafia Wars is one of many games on Facebook that involves you building up an empire of some sort by completing tasks by accumulating energy points and clicking buttons  The only skill you need is time.  Time gives you more energy, which means you can press more buttons, which unlocks new screens where you can press more buttons.  You can fight people as well, which also gives you points, which means you move onto another level where you get a full energy refill and CAN CLICK MORE BUTTONS!

My excuse for this was the end of my first year of the PhD  I had a continuation report to write, which was really fucking hard to do, and such a laborious task requires a break - which in Jim Stripe parlance means going on Facebook and wasting time  The alternative Facebook task would be to become a fan of every single mindless idiosyncracy of humanity (for example, 'checking your sent messages after a night out and dying inside,' 'I hate you because your shoes are from Burtons Menswear,' and 'Sniffing your finger on sly when you've fingered a girl.'  I've made all of these up, but it's possible that all three exist), so I guess the button clicking is a step up from that.  Several of my 'friends' (ie, acquaintances that have sent requests and then not even said hello.  I'm sorry, I'm too polite to decline people that I've vaguely known, whilst also being not dramatic enough to have frequent friend culls) have signed up as fans of 'getting wrecked.'  Brilliant - you like to get hammered - thanks for celebrating the fact in a way I've not witnessed since the first week of sixth form.

After dealing with the PhD (for the first year at least), I needed to finish writing the book - and again I get distracted when I can't think of the right sentence or where the story goes - and my instinctive action is to go online, go to Facebook and check on my Mafia - which always takes longer than I hoped  Yep, it's more pointless than a decade of Loose Women, but I still do it.  Before that it was Facebook Scrabble.  A few years ago it was internet forums, and more recently trawling Myspace for bands. But before all of this - how did writers procrastinate?  Not just the writers, really - there are plenty of people out there with things to do.  Perhaps it was E-bay, or Sickipedia (definitely not a futile past-time), or maybe it was DOING SOMETHING USEFUL.

For fellow Facebook users, it's even more annoying because I bombard my wall with a plethora of requests for energy packs and ebony cigars, or for assistant in taking out the Republican Guard in Cuba.  It all sounds very engaging and thrill-a-minute, but just take the time to add the application and see what it's all about.  It's about nothing. 

Okay, so it's not announcing how bored I am, or pissed off with a certain someone via status updates, or tagging me in photos from nights out before I've even woken up the next morning - but it's still using Facebook to waste time  Before, perhaps people did this in front of the television, but we've all gravitated to Facebook.  As a writer who wants people to read hundreds of thousands of my words at a time, I should be encouraging people to step away from their laptops and do something more productive  Instead, I am - in my own way - as bad as about half of this country. 

And we're all getting rather bad aren't we?  We share the tiniest details of our lives with as many people as possible, put out statuses that will generate a bit of attention/sympathy and join groups that tell the world we want to beat cancer and the like - as if that's something that really needs to be stated (OK, I don't do any of this - but about half my 'friends' do).  We are now in touch with more people from our collective pasts than ever before, and without actually communicating with them at all, we are privy to a series of crushingly dull insights into the day-to-day events and non-happenings of people we barely care about.  How did it come to this?  I preferred it when the internet was for geeks, loners and perverts. 

I need to tell myself to hoover a room instead of going for that instinctive mouse movement that gets to my Mafia  Or at least find a more worthwhile thing to do (like writing a blog?).  What I fail to understand is why I wittingly continue to play this stupid button pressing game, in spite of my own common sense  Admittedly I don't have the full set of farms, vampires, rollercoasters and cafes that could basically fill up a life with button pressing, but at the same time people do the same sort of shit every day in call centres and call it a terrible way to live.  How did admin become the new fun?