I finally create a fluff in Facebook of my own. The idea of fluff is not new, Tamagochi pioneered the market of virtual pet. Linking up your virtual pet with virtual the pets of your friends over the internet is also not new, Sony had made the now defunct Post Pet in the Web 1.0 era. On the surface, fluff offers nothing new. You have cute cartoon animals, you can buy various virtual food or habitant with virtual money. You can earn virtual money either by petting your friend’s pet or place bets in virtual pets races. It is just a plain old boring virtual pet.

I have quite a number of friends is obsess about petting and feeding the virtual pets.  I try to understand why fluff is so popular and many people are addicted to this simple 2D virtual pet. Cute graphics definitely helps, girls love cute things and then pressure their boyfriends to play along. Piggy-back on Facebook is also a major factor. Many people logon to Facebook quite often, so playing fluff and recruiting new members is very convenient. Fluff catches their eye-ball and it is only a mouse click away.

I think the most important factor is the racing system. To be exact, it is not the race itself, but the speed attribute of the fluff. You can increase this number by feeding your flutt. In order to do so, you have to pet your friend’s flutt to earn virtual money to buy food.  Your friends will pet your flutt in return and hence complete a never-ending pet, feed and race cycle.  If there  exists some sort of score, it is just human nature wanting to get a higher score. When the score goes up, it will give the mind a sense of satisfaction, even the score really doesn’t mean anything. This mentality applies to fluff players, applies to online RPG gamers who pursuit high level and stronger weapons.  To some extend it also apply to those who accumulate wealth but never spend a dime.