Do we stand up for our own values? Or do we sell our value system down the river, merely because we have a few paragraphs due by midnight?

I am going over to the dark side. Now, to be fair, it's to help a particularly misguided reader. But it's still wrong. I will lose sleep over this decision. And I will feel shame.

I'm about to tell Carleen Corleone (not her real last name, but surprisingly close) how to turn Mafia Wars back on.

Carleen writes:

Perhaps you can help me, I hid Mafia Wars a while back and now I am playing it. I can't 'unhide' it, none of my pesky posts are posted, Do you by any chance know how to reverse the hide?

Now, look, it's not up to me to mount an intervention. I was thinking of giving you all Carleen's email address and suggesting you tell her how harmful to the universe this Mafia Wars junk is. But, then I though, perhaps she's a government employee. Perhaps she works for a bailed out Wall Street investment house. Perhaps playing Mafia Wars during work time will prevent her from causing any more real damage.

Or, perhaps, she's just a nice lady who wants to play her game.

OK, fine. So here we go. Log into your Facebook account. Thus you have begun the first step down a path I'm sure you'll regret. But that's not really my decision.

The easiest thing to do is type "Mafia Wars" into the search box, as shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A

The road to Hell is paved with this search string.

Be careful to type the name right. There are a bunch of "fake" Mafia Wars apps out there and we don't know what harm they'll do you.

Once you click the search icon, you'll see the application, shown in Figure B. Also note that there are 25 million doomed souls playing this horrid little piece of trash.

FIGURE B


Join the war. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Click View Application, which will take you to the game's fan page. Then, under the game's icon, click Go To Application, as shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C


It's not too late to run away. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Finally, you'll see the screen in Figure D that asks you to allow access. Do yourself a favor, close out of Facebook and take a walk. Do anything but Allow Access, because if you do, you'll be playing Mafia Wars. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul!

FIGURE D


Clicking this button may be a terrible mistake. Don't do it. Roll over picture for a larger image.

For those of you stuck with this thing on your Facebook page, you can turn it off. Read my far more socially acceptable article, Kill those annoying Mafia Wars posts on Facebook.

It's an offer you can't refuse.

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.