Where have all my friends gone?

So where have all my friends gone?

Up until a couple of days ago it was normal to have 20+ friends online at any given time. But for some reason, I've been lucky to see that number higher than 9. What are they doing? Why aren't they playing? Or are they hiding?

When my brother lost his job he spent a lot of time during the day playing video games. He didn't want me to find out so he changed his online status to show offline so I wouldn't see him playing. (He didn't know that when you do that and you are actually playing a game all your achievements and gamerscore are blanked out. If you are truly offline then other people can still view your achievements.) But once I told him I knew he switched his profile back to show his status. I have another friend who switched to "offline" to avoid the constant badgering of someone on his friends list. Hell, I've been known to show "offline" at time to avoid someone. Some people just can't take a hint. But the latest craze seems to be showing "away" when you really playing a game. Why?

I don't know why this is any better . . . and it might be even worse. If you show "offline" than people won't think you're on playing. If you show "away" then they know you've logged in so they'll send you a message, game invite or chat invite knowing that when you "get back" you jump in and join them in what ever you're doing. Last night I had 9 friends online but 5 of them "away". The funny thing is that the games they were playing while "away" were always changing.

And then there was the guy in the Texas Hold 'Em tournament. His status in the game said "away" but didn't say that on the dashboard. He folded every hand right away and it got down to just me and him. I hadn't paid attention too much to this pattern so I folded a few hands before catching on. Once I realized what he was doing all I had to do was call while I was in the small blinds and I won every hand. Of course at $2/4 and $5/10 dollar blinds it took awhile for him to relieve him of his chips. I won but it didn't really feel like a victory.

Play the game or get out is what I say. I just wish I had some more friends online to play with.