Green: Children of the digital corn

Before one enters the digitized gates of FarmVille know this: It is not just a Facebook… Before one enters the digitized gates of FarmVille know this: It is not just a Facebook application, but a drug, a depravity, a drain that takes one’s time, energy and — in some cases — money and sucks it mercilessly away into its cold heart, black like the color of its pixilated sheep.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched several friends spiral downward into this bottomless pit of inanity, down deeper than the potatoes they spend so much time harvesting.

Two of these friends agreed to share their stories. For privacy reasons — and because their addictions are already socially humiliating — they will simply be known as “J” and “E.”

We begin our tale with J, a happy, enthusiastic girl who is quick to laugh and entertains a variety of interests. Recently, however, J has been apportioning an increasing amount of time to FarmVille.

“I am level 25. A local celebrity. One ribbon away from a Good Samaritan,” J told me as she loaded her farm, which is favorited on her Internet server.

“I’ve also earned all my ribbons in the Green Thumb category, as well as the Tree Hugger category,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“It took a lot of perseverance. It took a lot of time, too. You have to take time out of your day to harvest your crops so that you don’t waste your money.” She tells me these things matter-of-factly, as if she’d been waiting all her life to proclaim her FarmVille glory to the world.

As our interview progressed, it became clear that J was still in denial about her FarmVille addiction. When I asked if it had ever negatively affected her day-to-day life, she turned on me, like a bitter winter frost to a field of helpless tomato seedlings.

“I don’t want to talk negatively about it,” she said defensively, as if she was a new mother and FarmVille her precious infant. When pressed further, she admitted it was sometimes a distraction in social situations.

“My friends will be hanging out together in my room, and I’ll have to tell them to hold on because I need to harvest my crops.”

The withdrawal from FarmVille only intensifies when J goes to class.

“When I’m in class, I always feel this need to get home and harvest my crops before they wither and all is lost.”

J said she plays the game “probably every time I log onto Facebook, which is quite a lot. If [the application] shut down today, I would be lost. I would be so lost.”

Though FarmVille has clearly hampered J’s day-to-day lifestyle, she is one of the lucky few. She still views FarmVille as what it is: a distraction, a release from the outside world.

E, however, is the worst kind of FarmVille addict: the one that wants to be, nay, must be, the greatest farmer in all the land and won’t stop until she has achieved this near-impossible status.

“I’m a very competitive individual. I saw this pagoda,” E said, giggling mid-sentence, “that’s worth 48 FarmVille dollars, and I realized that I had to have it. My little virtual farm would not be complete without a pagoda. That’s all.”

E is the type that plans her farming systematically. It’s not just a game, but an algorithm to be solved.

E believes that sometimes decisions must be made for the good of the farm.

For example, a recent New York Times article about FarmVille quoted an anonymous blogger who said she was pregnant: “I was starving … and he told me I’d have to wait a few more minutes so he could HARVEST HIS RASPBERRIES! I waited … in the car and waited for his stupid raspberries to be harvested.”

While this might seem unjustified, even cruel, to non-farmers, E said before we judge the raspberry farmer, “Two questions must be asked: How hungry is she really, and, more pressing, how close were the raspberries to maturity?”

Ever the thorough farmer, E took the time to test this theory out.

“First of all, I did research on this in response to the article. I sacrificed a square of my farm to plant raspberries and let them die. And they took upward of four hours to die, despite having a growing period of two hours. Usually, plants wither in maybe 40 percent of the time it takes them to grow. Perhaps he didn’t know this information. He probably assumed they were like other crops, which they were not.”

Like J, E was hesitant to admit just how much time she spends on FarmVille, taking a long pause before answering, “On my 400-square plot, it can become a chore to tend my crops, and so I stagger my planting so that I will only have to harvest about 40 crops at a time. So maybe four times a day.”

“Oh, what a lie!” cut in J, who was sitting nearby, before the two begin jabbering on about the enormous amount of time it takes to adopt animals.

E spoke passionately on the civic importance of adopting animals on FarmVille.

J leaned over to tell me, “I would like you to know that I just left a message on a new farmer’s farm that said, ‘Your farm is a joke. Get plowing, b*tch.’”

I am left between the two, speechless and confused.

I fear it is too late to salvage the once promising futures of E and J, but for the rest of you, take this as a warning and stay away — far away — from FarmVille.

E-mail Molly at mog4@pitt.edu.