About a month ago I saw a post on one of my students feeds about a website called Raffstar. Heavy with advertising, Raffstar gives out prizes randomly to those who acquire free tickets. Plus Raffstar gives the majority of its advertising revenue to a selected well-known charity for that prize. Raffstar claims that this is win-win-win approach to giving out prizes. The webuser wins a prize, the advertiser wins 'hits' (possible customers) and the charity wins a donation. You don't have to do anything to get a ticket and typically you can only get one ticket per item per hour.
It seems pretty harmless(and it is) until you get someone who is compulsive (like me)doing this. I found myself constantly logging on and trying to increase my chances to win a prize. If my son woke me up in the middle of the night, I secured another ticket. For my own sanity, I had to create a cutoff prize by which I would no longer try to win any prizes after it. Oh and by the way, I never came close to winning anything!
Raffstar reminded me that I need to be really careful about what I get involved in. Being as compulsive, competitive and consumeristic as I am, I really have the ability to lose sight of the fact that I am as sucked into something as I was and neglecting other important things.
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