Would you play Russian Roulette with your digital life? The idea of committing ‘social suicide’, by which we mean deleting all of your Facebook, Twitter and whatever-else-have-you profiles has probably occurred to quite a few of us at one time or another. We all get strung out at times, what with the endless stream of information, the incessant requests from friends and constantly being ‘tagged’ at different locations, it all gets a bit tiresome. Haven’t you ever felt like pulling the trigger and just ending it all?

Well, that’s exactly what Social Roulette intended to do for you, if you were brave enough, until meanie old Facebook put its foot down and banned the new app the instant it learned about it. Social Roulette is by far and away one of the most radical apps ever conceived, all the more so because its oh-so simple to play (just like real Russian Roulette). Simply pick up the gun, pull the trigger, and there’s a one-in-six chance that it will “kill” your Facebook profile, deleting all of your posts, photos and friends, before deactivating your account permanently. Lose, and your dead, in other words.

According to the app’s description, the ‘game’ was aimed at people looking for a way to make a clean break from Facebook, or else for anyone looking for a short thrill:

“Everyone thinks about deleting their account at some point, it’s a completely normal reaction to the overwhelming nature of digital culture. Is it time to consider a new development in your life? Are you looking for the opportunity to start fresh? Or are you just seeking cheap thrills at the expense of your social network? Maybe it’s time for you to play Social Roulette.”

With five-out-of-six users living to log-in another day, a number of daredevil ‘winners’ of Social Roulette were the proud recipients of a message posted to their timelines stating that they’d played the game and survived. Naturally, the message also encouraged that user’s friends to gamble with their lives too.

Somewhat predictably though, Facebook quickly clamped down on all the fun and games, killing off the app almost as soon as it discovered it by restricting its access to their API. Social Roulette had only been ‘live’ for four hours before being gunned down so unceremoniously, but nevertheless it did score 10,000+ likes before going down in a hail of fire:

“It took us four hours to create the project, and it took another four hours after the launch for Facebook to respond by blocking the API key and restricting our ability to create Facebook applications,” said the app’s creator Kyle McDonald in an interview with TechCrunch.

“The app was flagged by an automated system for ‘creating a negative user experience.’ After review, they decided they don’t like our logo either. We tried to follow the branding guidelines but we must have misunderstood them.”

Like the strict parent that it often appears to be, Facebook gave no specific reason for blocking Social Roulette, though given the social media giant’s ultimate aims of enslaving every single person on the planet, it doesn’t take a genius to work out why. Here’s all they would say on the matter:

“We take action against apps that violate our platform policies as laid out here: https://developers.facebook.com/policy/, in order to maintain a trustworthy experience for users.”

According to TechCrunch, McDonald is still hopeful that Facebook may lighten up and allow Social Roulette to resume its killing spree. He claims to be “working to address certain issues”, but in all honestly it’s unlikely we’ll see a reincarnation anytime soon. After all, Facebook purposely makes it extremely difficult to permanently delete your account (something you can do here, don’t be tricked into thinking deactivation is the same thing), so its hardly likely to let third-oarty developers do it for you.