Farmville

From time to time, as they do, fads EXPLODE on the scene and permeate every form of media outlet and then slink away into obsolete obscurity. The latest, I have decided, is the increasingly popular Farmville facebook application. For those of you living under a rock, it is basically a SIM knock off which enables you to build up a farm with crops, machinery, animals and other things you find on a farm. Being a huge computer nerd, I own many of the SIMs creations (sim tower, copter, city, THE sims and probably others I've forgotten) so I instantly saw the appeal of Farmville and soon gave in and started Sam's Farm (creativity at its finest).

Now, as fads often do, Farmville is now being referenced throughout the media. It pops up in TFLN (a fad in and of itself), on twitter (fad?), FML, on Facebook and I'm sure in time there will be an AC360 special on college students skipping class to go home to harvest their crops or losing their lives to the online drain that is Farmville (like the bit on a boy who lost his life to Warcraft/internet addiction). I see how this can happen. Your crops grow in real time, but society expects us to have this silly concept they call "responsibility" which causes you to neglect your raspberries that mature in 2 hours. I miscalculated time once and had to have my best friend log in to my facebook to harvest my pumpkins because my work computer doesn't have Flash on it--which is a ranty blog post of its own.

I am very much enjoying my Farm and recently bought a scarecrow and a plow machine. Saving up for the harvester and seeder. The issue is, that eventually I will have all of those things and reach higher levels where I can plant every option and there is no incentive to keep my farm going. It's like in the Sims games when you get your Sim every promotion, buy them all the nicest things, get them a family and tons of friends...or you find the cheat codes and the fun ends much sooner than doing it the real way. Either way, the feeling when you exhaust a game is such a let down I can't even describe it. It's like when you work really hard on a homework assignment and then the teacher forgets to collect it and you're like...whimpery and you have this farm you built up but no one to appreciate it anymore.

So, I have many more things to buy on my farm and I haven't even bought Sims 3 yet but I really hope people are already developing the newest fad to allow me to escape into a fantasy world where all I need to do is harvest my farmland or feed my Sims and things are all ok.