Farmville Mania

What’s Farmville? Ask the young ones and they would tell you about it, frontierville, mafia wars, Zynga Poker and many other Facebook applications that people craze nowadays. I never got hooked to any one of these before but I won’t deny that I am a “computer game addict” – from Tetris, Super Mario Bros, Plants versus Zombies, Crossword Puzzles and many more that gave me sleepless nights and patches of eye bags in the morning. But they are offline applications that do not need Internet connectivity which means that even if I am in the most far flung places, as long as I have my laptop with me, I could eradicate the presence of others and just be focused to my world wherein my laptop, my games and me are the only ones existing.

Then came this online disease that millions of people have been inflicted with – “Farmville Addiction”. I had become a virtual farmer in the Farmville world. Well, it was indeed fun, sowing, reaping, sowing and the process goes on and on with the addition of buying buildings and animals once you have accumulated enough money to purchase. Too late I was already hooked – spending money for my smart bro, staying up late at light just to harvest my crops before the time runs out and they wither. Seeing my friends’ farms are also my motivation in expanding my farm – I wanted my farm to surpass theirs or I wanted to reach their level (but I wanted it fast).

Spending more on my Internet connectivity, researching for any cheats that would hasten my “leveling up”, thinking about it the moment I got home, the moment I wake up on weekends, spending my whole weekend in front of my computer just doing farming, indeed I became an addict. Heck, I even thought of purchasing (real money involved) Farmville money and coins. (‘Twas good though that it didn’t reach that far J )

Such madness has devoured my being for more than two months after which, the euphoria has mellowed down, and has slowly left my system. I have come to terms with myself and realized that indeed, it was not doing me any good.  Seeing myself plunged in that abyss just made me realized how “sick” I was. I should have been using my time in the most productive way possible.

With the new technologies that come popping up every day, it’s undeniable that we oftentimes get hook on them especially if they have caught our interest. But let us always control ourselves and

not let them control us.

“On October 27, 2010, a mother in Jacksonville, Florida, pled guilty to second-degree murder in the January death of her 3-month-old boy. The woman told investigators that she was playing Farmville and the baby wouldn't stop crying. She told investigators that she shook her son, smoked a cigarette "to compose herself," and then shook him again. The child died from shaken baby syndrome.”, David Hunt, Florida Times-Union