I have a confession to make.
So I said last time it was my goal to try and go out of my way to check-in to new places, I’ve instead gone down a different route – I’m cheating.
Okay, so I’m cheating, but I swear it’s all for good reason. Let me recap that article I mentioned in my presentation: There’s a restaurant that offers a special deal to that month’s mayor – the right to skip ahead to the front of the line. This being a tempting offer, people would check-in while in the near vicinity of the retaurant, and not actually while at the restaurant.
In light of this, FourSquare has given establishment owners the right to dethrone the mayor, if they think the mayor is someone who lied to get to his/her position.
This is what the Huffington Post refers to as an “armchair mayor,” which honestly sounds a little awesome to me. (See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/03/foursquare-cheating-mayor_n_777933.html)
So while in class, I decide to check into my location, and a few others. Here’s a screenshot of my history. Note that I wasn’t actually at any of these locations on that day; all were available selections for my GPS location. (In other words, I'm not a boozehound as that history implies.)
I’m not just cheating because I can, or because it’s fun (and it is), but because I really wanted to explore a question of ethics: can the potential upsides to FourSquare be brought down by cheaters? In particular, it is that blossoming relationship with retailers that I see really coming into question with cheating, and I wonder if eventually cheating will defeat the system, so to speak.
