Flappy Bird: Tap Tap Tapping Your Way into Despair

Tap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap. Tap. Game Over. “Damn!”

Tap. Game Over. “That's it, I’m never playing again!”

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…Tap tap. Tap tap tap tap…. Tap tap…. Tap… tap tap tap tap… tap… Game Over. “Aw, damnit! So close!”

Seated in the fetal position on his sofa, his phone gripped in sweat and tensing fingers, the teenager stares at his screen with a look so angry it could set a fire more powerful than a phoenix’s fart.

The teenager has been in this position for almost half the day. His eyes have not wandered anywhere beyond the screen, and his phone is so hot that it can warm a snake’s enclosure for an entire decade. His head has a bald spot - not in the normal place where men lose begin to bald, and it is not at all hereditary, but it is a bald spot caused by continuos tugging of hair in frustration. But the teenager presses on. For all over Facebook, sit the varied scores of his peers, all higher than his highest. This is another chance for him to be better that someone at something unimportant to the next month of his life and after. He must take this opportunity, seize it, for if he does not, he will lose the chance to be marvelled by the girls that he has on his Facebook.

Again, he tries, and again, he fails. He cannot see any harm in sitting there all day. The only harm he sees is the inability to hold a record score. What he does not realize yet, though, is that his battery is running out, and if he were to score a high score, his battery might no last enough for him to see it, screenshot it, share it, and bask in all its glory. ‘Get Ready!’ his screen beams, lit up with a dull background colour, ensuring that the teenager keeps his eyesight after the long hours he spends playing this game.

The bird on the screen is flapping slowly in mid-air, next to the two ‘tap’ prompts, awaiting the teenager’s touch. The teenager finally sighs, and presses again his finger to the screen, thinking that this time, this time will grant him the score that he is after. A bold white zero sits on top of the screen, waiting to be changed, and taunting the teenager at the same time. In the distance are skyscrapers, with lit windows, probably filled with people shaking their heads at how long the boy has spent on this app.

He lost again, a loud thud noise tells him so. ‘It is a game of skill,’ he thinks to himself. ‘If that is the case, then I guess I have no skills.’ This game does just that. It puts the teenager and every other person with it downloaded down. It deems them useless. If they cannot get a score higher than ten, it does not display a medal on the scoreboard after they lose. In fact, there sits an empty hole where the medal would have sat, indicating that the player does not even deserve to view its pixels. And beneath the scoreboard, sits an innocent looking white button with a green arrow-head in it – ‘go on, play again,’ the game taunts. And so, the teenager does.

The winged bird with no tail and huge eyes is led by the teenager through seemingly narrow pipe openings. One mere touch of any part of a pipe, and the game is well and truly over. It is a game of balancing skills, the skill to know when to tap or let the bird freefall – let it freefall for long and soon enough it will have its pixelated beak planted in the Super Mario-esque grass. Tap the screen an additional tap and the bird will become a Flappy Turd, gliding down a pipe until it is nestled on the hard floor.

There is no pause button - one must not think once to ever pause it and get on with the game at a later time, be there some form of distraction at a time where a good score might be evident. The teenager must continue playing despite the needs of anyone around him depending on where he is in the duration of high score attempts. The washing will have to wait, dinner will have to get cold, the dog will have to walk itself, for there is no pause button and he again, must press on.

While the teenager taps away, other teenagers tap away too. During work breaks, lunch times at school, meeting conferences, restaurant gatherings, parties or an entire day, all people become teenagers at heart when playing Flappy Bird, tap tap tapping their lives away, for that high score that will most likely never come.