I jumped on the foursquare bandwagon as soon as I heard about it. The application/ game was exciting because a few close friends and I joined at the same time. We’d all go to the same place (usually a bar) and check-in together. We ousted each other for mayor of each other’s apartments and competed over highest weekly points. Within a few days we obtained the Adventurer, Bender, Crunked and Local badges, and by the time we hit a month we were 10+ badges deep, ranging from Swarm to Super User. 

Then foursquare started to slow down. Badges were few and far between. Mayorships are well-established and unchanging. We moved apart, so the fact that Ben S. checked into the Chipotle in Rochester, MN doesn’t really help or interest me. Not to mention the monotony of daily check-ins consisting of work, home and the train station. Yeah, it was cool to get the I’m On A Boat badge, but that happened well over a month ago, and I’m tired of whipping out my phone everytime I go to get a sandwich. 

This begs the question: why stick with it? Once you tick off most of the badges you are ever likely to achieve (the Al Roker badge is beyond most of our dreams) and you’re both the mayor and only person checking into whatever seemingly witty name you’ve come up with for your house, what is drawing me to stay? Why check-in?