The Official ‘The World’s Gone Mad’-Rant: Farmville

Posted by yseult on Feb 2, 2010 in Issues | 4 comments

I can assure you all or disappoint everyone right here: this will not be an article about Farmville. But what this will be an article about the problem that the new social media can bring to your immediate relations. Boring, right?

Indulge me for a moment, it might be worth your while. Maybe it’ll irate you to read what follows, maybe it will give you something to think about. Your pick.

Web 2.0 was supposed to bring us all closer together. Fair enough. With Facebook and Twitter and co. everyone has found their little niche in which the investment that it takes to stay in touch with people has been minimised in order to maximise the immediate access to everyone. You don’t have to actually talk to someone to know that they’re still alive and actually doing ok. Just look at their Facebook activities or have a quick look at their latest tweets. All good. No need for an intervention.

Now, I don’t want to bring out all the usual sociological observations about the change in social interaction and how peer pressure passes through these new media nowadays or even the economic ideas behind something like Farmville. It’s been said. What I am more interested here is on a much more basic level than that. The online games. Facebook has done a good job at implementing the different games into an easy accessible game fix during the day directly in Facebook. I am the first one who likes the occasional Bejweled and I am also on Farmville.
Lately however a rather conservative and yes, Christian part of my acquaintances on Facebook have started to become nothing short of obsessed with Farmville. The stressed out status updates have worried me for a while, and when I heard in a podcast about the matter, that some people actually to believe that this game helps them to ‘solidify’ friendships and help them knit together more distant contacts from their work or a priest to his parishioners, I am falling rather silent and that pretty quickly.

Yes, I am also on Farmville, and sure it’s a fun thing, but do I map my days according to it? Or does the game still follow my day? That’s the main question to be asked here. But let’s stay on the idea that it solidifies friendships and contacts for a moment. How does someone reach that conclusion (other than excuse the addictive influence the game has already had on their lives) ?

Having friendships, an exchange of opinions and human contact in general takes time, it takes energy and it can be tiring. Particularly when you work in an environment that delivers a certain service, in a way people always think that you have to be receptive to them no matter what. So, these games lower that amount of energy that is needed in order to keep up with your friends, or colleagues. Because at other times, you are not up to give the time in order to stay ten minutes after mass or after work in order to get the community juices flowing and knit the group or friendships together. Or you just can’t be bothered to pick up that telephone and spend 40 min. talking to someone. Why not drop them a line on their wall or help out on their farm. Surely that’s enough.

And all of a sudden, you find yourself having spent 40 min. on Farmville. The same amount it would have taken in RL to talk to someone, listen and process something. Instead you’ve been clicking about 250 times on a virtual farm and in all actually built nothing.

Yes, of course Zynga and thus Farmville does charity and yes, of course it’s just fun.

But am I really and truly the only one seeing the obvious here? The world is becoming more and more solitary for each and everyone of us and not because it is becoming less and less beautiful (although that certainly is a reason), but because friendships that can be maintained only virtually, through the web, aren’t really worth a whole lot, are they? Or where are your Farmville friends when RL really hits you?
It doesn’t help that the only people that actually to say something about this state of ‘the world’s gone mad’ are people like Dr. Phil on MTV or other similar ‘convincing’ media outlets.
The idea to unclutter your life and start to become an influence in the people around you seems completely lost in this respect and yes, I am sorry, I am shocked at how many decent Catholics (Amercian and other) in my contact list have actually broken out in hysteria over their lost bonus’ every time Facebook has a glitch or is slow. These are the same people who are adamant about a lot of things (some of them might even condemn you to hell if you don’t vote properly, whatever properly is) and for them the impetus to love and be charitable is a truth in their lives. I doubt they realise just how much time it is that they are wasting and how much more could be done in the time they play Farmville.

It’s time to really ask what the social media is actually about? And what will it be about in the future years? Because in the beginning, it was supposed to be about people and their interaction either with content givers or creators or with other readers and users. Not to sound completely pessimistic, but if the nature of interaction is constantly lowered (Letter to Email to FB message to FB Wall Post to ‘I’m tending your crops’ on Farmville) then what about the nature of exchange and in that respect people themselves? Can there even come anything out of it that does not spell intellectual poverty?

SQPN: The Secrets of Farmville #1
Farmville entry on Wikipedia
Welwoche Ausgabe 04/10 u.A. zum Thema Facebook