dear Farmville
Dear Farmville,
We’ve spent an extraordinary amount of time together over the past few months, but I think my days as a virtual farmer are coming to a close. I am breaking up with you.
I still remember how we met through a friend. Over the course of about a week, I was fascinated to watch my buddy James transform from “Farmville is so lame, I can’t believe people play this thing,” to “Hey I checked out Farmville and it’s pretty cool,” to “I haven’t eaten or slept in two days and I made a second Facebook persona just to play this thing more!”
The early days off our fling were a magical time, harvesting electronic crops, plowing imaginary land, and then planting new make-believe seeds. In the beginning, the leveling was captivating – I’d anxiously await the next new sets of available seeds and decorations, double-fist-pumping in the air when I’d hit a new level. I figured out the trick of trapping my little farmer in hay bales so that I wouldn’t have to wait for him to walk around to each square. Life was good… or at least, this awkward “second life” was good (in the strange world where seasonal patterns and watering weren’t necessary to make crops grow).
But then I got hooked on you. I started setting alarm clocks to remind me to harvest blueberries. I befriended dozens of Facebook friends just to get more gifts. I fell asleep at my computer. I talked real people into playing. I pleaded with Farmville friends to send me more orange fences. I ordered novelty business cards that said “Badass” for my title, just to score a few FarmVille bucks to buy Sweet Haiti seeds.
I started to question where our relationship was heading after I bought that stupid million-coin villa, seemingly the highest achievement I could find to try to justify all the ludicrous wasted hours. Oh, I had so many questions… Why were pesky raccoons perpetually ransacking my cousin’s garden every time I visited? And why do I get 86 coins for brushing my cat? And why is my horse bigger than my tractor? And if I’m reminded every 42 seconds to fertilize other people’s crops, why couldn’t I fertilize my own damn crops?
We were caught in an endless cycle of planting and harvesting again and again to get more abilities to plant more and harvest more, a dangling carrot to keep me clicking and clicking. Sometimes, when I’d be 93 clicks into a crop cycle, you’d lock down because you’d been “enhanced.” And then I’d go back and re-click all those little squares. You were a cruel mistress, FarmVille.
Finally, I got to level 36 and realized that I didn’t care if I could plant asparagus at level 37. Like the creepy kid said in the Matrix, “there is no spoon,” I realized that there is no asparagus! It’s a video game about farming! We might as well be watching electronic paint dry! The amount of time that 70,476,996 people are cumulatively spending playing this game right now, addicted to continuous synthetic achievements instead of making the world better, makes my brain hurt.
So goodbye, my old friend. I am leaving you for a real woman. I’ll always remember the soybeans we grew together.
- Jeff Young, former FarmVille addict