What I Realized in Playing Flappy Bird

Nothing.

This game is absurd. It is not fun to tap your screen, make a bird fly, only to watch it die. If there's any benefit to it, this game does not fail to make me poo-poo in the morning. Every time I bump a pipe, “Shit!" I have never found the word 'shit' as meaningful as to describe what I feel and do.

Death is certain in Flappy Bird. There is no life meter. There are no extra lives. No second chances. Game over. As in real life, it will end at some point. It just takes one tiny mistake to ruin everything. 

This game reminds me of Sisyphus, a Greek mythological tyrant who was punished by Zeus for his deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever. It's just like Flappy Bird, you're being compelled to hurdle immense pipes only to watch your bird plummet back down, then repeat this absurd process forever. 

In the book The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus explains that at some point you must come face to face with the absurd. I agree. Flappy Bird is, as with the story of Sisyphus, a symbol of futility. The only way make to  any sense of this game is to accept that Flappy Bird in itself is fun and deny the longing for any reason or option. 

"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." It is only when you start dreaming of something better that you become aware of the hopelessness and loneliness of your situation. 

In short, I think to find reason in playing Flappy Bird, there must be some kind of Zen. There must be some kind of "flow." Otherwise, Flappy Bird (or-whatever-Flappy-Birdish-like-thing-you-are-doing) will lose its meaning. You will start uninstalling Flappy Bird. Then, back at where you started – with nothing.

photo from http://ukmobilereview.com/