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Earlier this week, I decided to log back in to my Whyville account that had not been used in a very long time. I logged in to find that I had quite a bit of clams; 2.5 million to be exact. I immediately thought about putting them back into a CD, which is what I have been doing for the past year or so, just letting my clams keep increasing, and then I realized that I had no use for any of the clams. I don't buy anything anymore and there is no point to me having millions of clams sitting around when there are Newbies on Whyville who have less than 100 clams. So I began to donate them, and doing so has opened up my eyes.
I started out by going to the popular places in Whyville, or rather the places that used to be popular; I found Whyville to be almost deserted compared to when I used to hang out here. I remember there always being people in so many different chat rooms, and now I can only find people at Beach South, Sunroof, and Woods. This is one thing that has changed, but I've also noticed another huge difference. I remember giving away clams before when I was more active, and almost everyone I gave them to would be grateful and happy to have clams. A few years ago, it was much harder to earn clams and people were happy to have anything they could get. There used to be this thing called "The Whyville Way" (as coined by Deriko) meaning that everyone was nice to each other. Whyville used to be such a great place to be, and so many of us followed this Whyville Way.
Now, things have changed. I have given away over 100,000 of my clams so far, giving each person 1000, or sometimes as many as 2000 or even 3000 if they seem to be in need. It seems that these people should be happy; I mean, imagine if a stranger walked up to you and handed you $1000 for no reason other than they wanted to be nice. I for one would thank that person probably a million times and tell them how happy I was; I would be very grateful (college is expensive, folks). However, that's not quite the reaction I got for being a kind stranger. I have given to over one hundred people so far, and although a few of them were extremely grateful and thanked me, that wasn't the usual response.
Instead, most of the people I gave to asked for more clams, and complained if I told them I could "only" give them 1000. I explained that I wanted to be able to give to as many people as I could, and yet they still begged for more. Many people had even said that they only had a certain amount of clams, many of them saying less than 100. So you would think that 1000 clams would be a lot, something to thank me for, but most of them didn't even say thank you. They either just poofed and moved on with their lives, or stayed to beg for more.
I don't know about you, but to me, this doesn't sound like the old Whyville Way. There is a new way of life here where the only goal is to get more clams than everyone else. No one hangs out in the chat rooms anymore just building community. I remember when I was active here the group of friends we had that would hang out at the Greek Theater. We had so much fun building friendships, and now it just seems we're here to build our bank accounts. I don't feel so good about giving away my clams anymore; at first it was rewarding, and now it's just sad. I am handing out my clams by the thousands, and no one is even saying thank you, so I'm starting to forget why I've been giving out my clams in the first place.
I'm not really sure if I like this new Whyville. I think most of us need to take a look around and be grateful for what we have. I wish that some of you could see the Whyville that I saw, where almost everyone was nice and followed "The Whyville Way".
- Morgan612
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