I don't want to play Scrabulous with you.

Look, we’re friends, right? And not just on Facebook. I mean, we’re pretty tight in real life, you and I, aren’t we? So there’s something I’ve been meaning to say, and it’s kind of gotten to the point where we should talk it out. You see, I really don’t want to play Scrabulous with you. Not even a little bit.

And yet you keep inviting me to add the application to my profile in spite of the fact that I continually ignore your requests. At first I thought you might have forgotten you had already sent the invitation multiple times. But now I realize that you just really want to play Scrabulous with me, and I feel it’s my duty to tell you right here and now that it’s never going to happen. I hope this doesn’t affect our friendship.

Now, listen—don’t get all pouty on me. I’m not saying that I support Hasbro’s attempts to remove Scrabulous from Facebook. In my opinion, that’s just another example of big corporations trying to limit the definitions of “fair use” on the net in order to put more money in their pockets. And for the record, I did notice that you’ve already joined the Facebook petition to save Scrabulous, and I totally respect that. It’s your right to free speech and, really, it’s beside the point.

I just don’t want to play Scrabulous with you. Period.

If you must know, my objections are twofold. First, I already have enough internet-based addictions, and I see no need to stoke the fires with yet another Facebook app. But the deeper issue for me is that it just doesn’t look very fun. No offense, but I’ve played a little Scrabble in my day, and the only thing that made that any fun was the competition derived from having to come up with good words under extreme time constraints without the use of a dictionary. I mean, what’s the point of wondering if “quixotry” is a word if you can simply google it on your lunch break? Where’s the sport in that?

Anyway, not to belabor the point, but I just want to say that I really am firm on this. I know that Scrabulous is all the rage these days, and that it has even spawned music videos touting its penetration into popular culture. Fair enough. But sometimes, you’ve just got to sit one out.

I’m glad we had this talk. There was this other friend of mine once who always wanted to post Super Poke messages to me. I didn’t say anything at first, until sometime around Halloween when this person started throwing vampires, ghosts and goblins at me like every day. I knew then that it would never end until I said something, but I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t handle it very well. We still keep in touch, but somehow I feel that things will never be quite the same.

So I hope you know it’s only because I value our friendship so much that I tell you, once again, that I will never play Scrabulous with you. Ever. But don’t worry, we can still test our movie knowledge together sometimes, and maybe even write on each other’s Super Walls from time to time. But unfortunately, that’s where I’m going to have to draw the line. I hope you understand.