The obsession with DrawSomething, the latest craze in social bathroom time gaming, tends to begin rather innocently. The words you’re given to play are new, fresh and challenging. You start off playing during bathroom breaks, or waiting in line. It’s easy. It’s fun.

My personal journey with DrawSomething began as an interesting way to socialize with my friends that enriched our friendships.

But things grow dark quickly in the world of DrawSomething.

A week after I started playing, I had 30 more friends to play with thanks to the Facebook Connect feature. I would take a longer lunch break just to take my turn with all thirty games. I became impatient. The quality of my drawings decreased as I rushed through it. I was spreading myself too thin.

I started to get more and more anxious. I had my alerts on, so throughout the day my phone would tell me “Your buddy wants to play! Take your turn now!” My friends were reaching out through my iPhone, yelling “Play with me! Play with me!” And why should I deny this?

The more I played, the more reasons I came up with for hating it.

Reason 1: The need to play every single game on your list.

During any free moment of the day, I decided it would be a good time to spend a quick couple of minutes taking my turn with friends who were waiting on me to draw something. What should have been 5 minutes quickly turned into 45 once my list grew to over thirty friends. It didn’t seem fair to only play with a select few from my list when I had a crowd of people waiting for my glorious drawings.

Fact: DrawSomething is full of powerful sorcery that creates an undying need to take your turn with everyone who is waiting.

Reason 2: It gets way too personal.

I initially started playing with a few close friends. That was fun. Then I started getting game invitations from ex-boyfriends from high school, people I would usually avoid on the street like the plague.

And I was drawing for them.

And they were drawing for me.

They witnessed my finger sliding across their screen. They monitored every stroke, every erasure of a mistake. They judged. This was just way too weirdly personal, and DrawSomething made it seem like it was okay, when it really wasn’t.

Reason 3: Lack of respect for unrepentant 1-coin gamers.

I started to judge the people in my life by which level of difficulty they chose to play. The most surprising of people would constantly choose the 1-coin (or “Easy”) word levels to draw. I ain’t here to play a kid’s game, underachieving friend from college.  I started to look at these friends differently. My quickly deteriorating opinion of the people I love was frightening.

Reason 4: It’s called DrawSomething, not WasteMyTimeWithStupidWordClues

“MYTHICAL HORSE NOT A UNICORN” is a phrase someone wrote during one of my games to represent the word “Pegasus”. There was no accompanying drawing. In a fit of rage, I deleted our game and unfriended them from Facebook. In retrospect, it was a little extreme. I’M NOT PLAYING AROUND HERE, PEOPLE.

Reason 5: The pop culture references are all over the place.

From “Elton John” and “The Beatles” to “Tyra” and “OMGGIRLZ”, DrawSomething seems to be lazily casting a wide net for their audience and it’s aggravating. I thoughtless chose to draw “WUTANG” for my boss who begrudgingly exclaimed “Do you realize how old I am?” during water cooler talk the next morning.

Reason 6: Every move you make is recorded.

Do you hate having your every move watched? Do you have drawing delusions of grandeur? Perhaps this game is not for you.

Source: http://memewhore.tumblr.com

Reason 7: The reminder of how sad you are for humanity.

Have you ever tried playing a random stranger on DrawSomething? If you have, you’ll quickly realize that the majority of the population cannot spell. A friend of mine, Travis, drew a beautiful tissue box for a stranger. Here is an example of the horrors that followed:

TISSUU
TISUE
TISSUU
TISOU
PASS.

In conclusion:

Oh, and don’t draw beautiful tissue boxes for strangers.