In North America anyway! Ha! Scrabble has launched their official version on Facebook but because of certain legal issues it can’t be played in the the States or Canada.

That’s hilarious!

I don’t Facebook myself but I know many who do and also play the much adored ripoff. I just think it’s funny that the “official” version of a game can’t be played in the hotspot of activity that started the whole desire to make an “official” version in the first place!

My GF was a vigourous Facebook refusenik – until last night, when I got a friend request from her. Shocked and appalled, I demanded an explanation. It was forthcoming, and simple; a friend of hers who has moved to Vancouver suggested she sign up to keep up with her life out there, since she “never calls”. Which is true, because it’s expensive, Lucy points out.

This strikes me as another possible reason why Facebook is so popular in Canada.

Canada’s cellphone voice plans are just as suck as their data plans. I was just reviewing the major carriers’ plans; you’re hard pressed to find a 400 minute plan from any of them. AT&T’s plans start at 450 minutes and are no extra charge for long distance, whereas Rogers hits you with 30 cents a minute long distance charge on top of the airtime fees.

So given that, and the following:

a) young Canadians are more likely to have only a cell and no landline,
b) young Canadians, especially those at university or recent graduates, are likely to have friends from all over the country,

you have a perfectly reasonable explanation of why so many more Canadians use Facebook than Americans.

Reading the Globe last week, I discovered that Toronto is the largest network on Facebook. Which is crazy since the cities of London and New York are obviously much larger in meatspace, but TO’s Facebook population dwarfs theirs. It’s crazy but it’s entirely believable to a Toronto resident: over the past couple months, Facebook has come up in conversation more often than even the weather. It’s spread quicker than a zombie plague. And in fact, to those who refuse to sign up (I’m on Facebook myself, but I know a few holdouts), it’s like your friends are one by one succumbing to the virus. Instead of asking for your brains, they ask if you’re on Facebook, and if not, why not?

That Torontonians would get all wrapped up in relentless, privacy-invading bulletins of friend-related minutiae flies in the face of our reputation as a quiet, withdrawn people. I suppose you could explain it by saying we are indeed withdrawn, and that Facebook appeals because it is the form of socializing that involves the least amount of actual socializing. Or, you could just call bullshit on the “quiet Toronto” myth. Either one works for me.

But then I remembered a past realization, that Toronto, city of SARS, filmic home of Resident Evil, Land of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead remake, is of course the capital of the zombie world. Which explains how infectious networking would especially catch hold here, but which also goes a little towards supporting another half-baked theory: that zombies in fiction symbolize P2P networked communications, and the fear of zombies reflects the fear that old, hierarchical, gatekeeper media have of a society that has no place for them.

That’s probably too cultural studies for a nice saturday afternoon, so let me clunkily segway into a mention of zombie-demon musical sensation Evil Dead: The Musical, which is back in Toronto. I saw it a couple of days ago for the first time, and it’s worth attending. It’s one of the only entertainment events that you can walk out of soaked in blood, and it contains some great writing such as one character’s dying words, “Death’s a bitch… a stupid bitch.”