Non Sequitur #2: The Lost Column

I wrote this some time ago for The Plainsman, but it some how never made it to the Web site. Rather than post it there now, I'll share it with you: the few, the proud, the potentially non-existent audience I write for. (To the three to seven of you who read this, thank you.)

For the love of Farmville

I love my e-farm.

Honestly, I’m only about two generations removed from an agrarian family history, so my interest in tilling online dirt on Farmville is some inborn trait manifesting itself because I can’t actually muster the ability to grow real plants.

Farmville makes me have psychological meltdowns. A game on a social networking site shouldn’t be allowed to do that to me.

Then, I see articles in the New York Times and other publications on how people are planning their lives around Farmville, and I think not “Wow, are those people nutjobs?” but “Huh, maybe I can find some tips.”

This scares me.

I openly discuss my love for my e-crops.

I gladly wander onto neighboring farms to fertilize seedlings for them and scare away the odd raccoon or two.

Considering the general public’s backlash about clogging up news feeds with adverts, I will occasionally post adoption notices to my wall when I come across the odd pink cow or inexplicable turtle.

(Sidebar: If anyone can explain to me why elephants somehow produce circus peanuts, please e-mail me. Also, who pays 86 coins to you for brushing a cat?)

I like Farmville now, but I worry about what can happen to a game when it gets noteworthy popularity.

Will real world agribusiness problems start to pop up within that realm?

Will there be a push to allow users to grow medicinal marijuana in states that have legalized that practice?

Can users be allowed to have their farms go organic, being offered more coins for choosing to be safer?

Will there be a Farmville EPA to swoop in for possible contaminations for having too many animals in a pen or having cows too close to the soybean crop?

Where are all of these coins coming from? Are we selling them to some sort of invisible consumer or are we getting government subsidies?

Should I grow e-corn so I can get an online ethanol kickback to buy some Internet carbon credits from Al Gore’s Interweb?

For that matter, why are we being paid in coins? I thought that sort of thing went out with the freeing of the Serfs. I mean, I don’t want to throw around the word “sharecropping,” but … it makes you wonder.

If we’re allowed to join forces with other farmers, could we soon form large agribusiness conglomerates (or, hippy-dippy communes … I suppose)?

Could we lobby our Farmville designers to put higher tariffs on Farmville crops coming in from overseas?

Of course, if tariffs are raised, we could see a vast amount of e-migration to get IP addresses on this side of the border. Get ready for some angry letters, Facebook.

Now that Facebook is popping up with memorial pages, I’d like to have an e-will put on the record on how to divvy up my farm after the Farmville government takes out the estate tax.

(For that matter, in the event of my untimely demise, anyone who attempts to create a memorial page on Facebook and anyone who would write on the wall of said page will be haunted by me for the rest of their natural days. You’ve been warned, readers.)

Are these legitimate concerns? No, probably not at all.

I’m well-established in the community for being slightly insane, so take that into account.

But, all of this is what comes into my head every time my online flannel-clad self harvests soybeans.

Well, that and how to taint those virtual soybeans to further my hatred for all things vegan. (Vegans, you’ve been warned, too.)