I blame the fact that I even *have* a Farmville farm on my mom’s need for neighbors.  Sorry, mom. I love you but I’m outing you.  You’ve caused this downward spiral that is a super demanding, imaginary farm that makes you feel guilty when neglected.

And since I accepted my mom’s Farmville neighbor request? I’ve learned that Farmville is either the most incredible thing on the planet. EV-ER. Or the most annoying game invented.

There is no in between.

For instance: Brother Jeff de-neighbored everyone because he was tired of his Wall getting inundated with Farmville updates every 15.3 seconds.

If you’re already “a farmer,” this will sound all too familiar.  If you’ve yet to experience Farmville and you have even a shred of a competitive bone in your body - don’t touch Farmville with a 15 foot pole.  It’s a misery that wraps you up in it’s constant demands and lures you with awards.

And to someone who lives for competition?  Awards = Lifeblood.

A Farmville addiction goes something like this:

You accept someones neighbor request – which usually comes along with some kind of gift, like a cow.  Your little starter farm begins easily enough with an obnoxious pop-up request to create your alter-ego Farmville self with all kinds of options to make you look like a rock star. Also? The Farmville people give you a tiny, totally manageable plot of land with 6 squares of pre-planted strawberries and eggplant.

Then?  You figure, “What the hell? I’m here, let’s turn me into a perky, totally awesome farmer with purple overalls and super cute freckles.  And while I’m at it, I’ll plant something. No harm in that, right?”

I’ll stop right here.  What you SHOULD HAVE DONE is accept that neighbor request and then forget Farmville existed.  Let the bait, a la pre-planted crops, turn brown and rot.  Keep your generic, asexual farmer person and then wipe your hands of the situation.  You did your part.  You became someones neighbor. 

Truly, that’s all they – the Farmville Crazies - really care about. 

Lots of neighbors to Farmville Crazies mean they can reach level Super-Awesome.  Because without neighbors, Farmville decides you aren’t worthy of a bigger farm or becoming a Super-Farmer.  Whether your farm is big or small makes no difference to them – the Crazies.  They’re on a one-track mind, people.  And it goes something like, “BE MY NEIGHBOR SO I CAN BE AWESOME. DON’T MAKE ME SLAP A BITCH.”

But then, see, all of your neighbors (aka fake friends who are mooching points off of you for the single desire to better their own farm) can do when they visit your farm is kick the raccoons or shoot bee-bees at the crows or rake up leaves that somehow gather when you have zero trees.  There will be no extra points for fertilizing your crops or feeding your chickens. Because your crops are brown and disgusting and chickens? What chickens? Along with zero trees you also have zero animals.

It’s the ultimate payback because to the Crazies, you’ll be known as the lame-o who doesn’t really *play* Farmville.

However, the real issue here, what’s really biting their ass, is that they’re mad because they only get like, 5 points instead of 50 when they visit your farm.  It’s the part where irony comes into play and favors you, the lame-o.  The Crazies can’t de-neighbor you because THEY NEED YOU or else Farmville might shrink their farm or blow up half of their buildings or send them a note all, “You cannot reach level Super-Awesome without exactly 350.5 neighbors.  We’ve just discovered that you’ve been de-neighbored. So that means you’re not Super Awesome. And we cannot accept anything less than Super Awesome. Therefore your request has been rejected.”

That is the most shameful, embarrassing Farmville horror for a Crazy.

But you, Farmville Reject, you can smile.  Because instead of harvesting crops for 3 hours, you cleaned the house, went grocery shopping, rescued a helpless kitten stuck in a tree and had amazing sex.  I’m pretty sure that means you win.  At life.

If you don’t ignore Farmville?

*sigh*

You re-visit your farm to check out your super cute farmer and notice that your strawberries and eggplant have come to fruition AND someone fertilized them (OMG. SO AWESOME. Fertilizing MY CROPS!) so now, instead of regular sized strawberries and eggplant, they’re these big, beautiful, voluptuous wonders of electronic nature that Must. Be. Harvested.  One cannot allow such a thing to go to waste.

And then you plow more land and plant more crops.

Because the feeling of accomplishment you get after harvesting those first few crops?  So. Damn. Fulfilling.

Then you start adding more neighbors because you’ve used every inch of space to plant soy beans because soy beans are cheap and have a good ROI.  Which means you make more $$.  More $$ means you’re closer to Super Awesome.

Also, you’ve convinced yourself a bigger farm is a good thing.

You must have a bigger farm.

And soon, random awards like “Super Terrific First Timer” and “Fantastic Planter” and “Amazing Gift Receiver” start popping up everywhere, showering you with accolades and coins.

Coins mean you can buy more soy beans.

More soy beans means you’re yet another step closer to Super Awesome.

So you keep planting and harvesting, planting and harvesting. All the while you’re begging people to be your neighbor by sending them random gifts like a milk jug or an apple tree or a duck all, “Be my neighbor?  I think you’re suuuper awesome!  Here, a present. For you.  Because you’re suuuper awesome…”

And finally…FINALLY you have enough coinage and the required neighbor count for a bigger farm. 

So you upgrade your farm and you plow more land and start trolling your Facebook Wall for Farmville updates from your neighbors, trying to snag coins or free presents or to be the first one to adopt the lost, helpless animals.

 

Because how can you ignore a helpless kitten or an ugly duckling?  You can’t.  It’s mean.

Then you buy a chicken coop and a dairy barn because your animal population is starting to get out of control.  After said purchases, you learn there is only space to cram 20 chickens into the coop (and of course, only ONE CHICKEN COOP is legal.  Any extra coops are considered boot-leg and are grounds for Farmville exploding your entire farm. Which? Super shitty) and the each damn dairy barn is only allowed one bull and 19 cows.

1 male bull. 19 female cows.

I’m liking the bulls odds.

Apparently, so does Farmville, because every so often, you go to collect milk from the barn and a miracle of life has occurred:  A baby cow.

The shitty part?  You can’t even keep your prize.  You have to give it away or ignore the fact that it was born.  What happens to it when you click “ignore” instead of “help the poor, newborn calf?”

You don’t ignore a helpless calf.  That’s pretty much animal cruelty.  And no one wants to go to jail, here.

So you help the calf.  And the “MY COWS HAD SEX. (LOLZ. OMG. SEX!) Someone adopt the adorable offspring? PLZ?”announcement gets published on the Wall of every Facebook friend you have – Farmville Crazy or not.

And FYI? This kind of announcement makes you look like an ass-hat to the non-Farmville Crazies.

Then? Then you learn that the pink nugget hovering over the heads of all of your adopted and gifted animals means THEY WANT TO GIVE YOU SOMETHING.

IN EXCHANGE FOR MONEY.

It’s like prostitution.

And every animal likes to give you something different.

Also like prostitution.

Once you do whatever it is you need to do to get the coins, the pink nugget goes away for an indeterminate amount of (animal recovery) time and then it pops up again.  It’s a never ending, vicious cycle.

The calves (who never grow up, so you are never able to put them in a damn dairy barn) need to be brushed, the horses give you hair (WTF?), turkeys give you feathers (for headdresses, probably) and I’ve yet to figure out the usefulness of penguins.  Apparently someone at Farmville was all, “I know!  Let’s make a penguin!”  And the Farmville boss was all, “The penguin has to be able to *give* something when the nugget hovers over his head.”  And I guess the Farmville people decided that giving away penguin flappers was probably a bad idea, plus the penguin would only be good for two pink nuggets and then he’d be out of flappers, so instead the penguins magically produce ice cubes. 

And the rabbits?  They shit angora wool, y’all. Who knew?

Where does the competitiveness come in?  The damn ribbons.

 

There is a ribbon for everything.  And to make it even more interesting, you can get four different ribbons of varying colors PER AWARD. Once you look at the ribbon page and figure out what accolades you can earn, you begin to feel compelled to repeatedly pet your 4 cats so you can get the “Cat Lady” award and you start squeezing fences into one corner of your farm in tight rows cause there’s a ribbon having lots of fences.  And the buildings…you buy 300 of them to earn the final ribbon and get a super awesome gift…but then you realize your farm looks like a dollhouse exploded and you want to sell off your 15 houses and 25 tool sheds and 150 wishing wells…but you’re afraid because what if during a Farmville audit, they see you really just cheated and sold all of your buildings and then they take away your Architect ribbons AND your super special gift?

Shameful.

So instead?  You line up your tool sheds and wishing wells and cow patterned silo (It was too awesome not to buy…at the time…) on one side of your farm, all packed together almost beyond recognitition like carnival gone wrong.

You’d store all of them in a barn but, conveniently enough, the barn only holds 6 items.  The hell? ITS A BARN. It’s like the storage unit for the universe.

So you try to outsmart Farmville and buy 15 barns, figuring they take up less space than 300 buildings of varying shapes and sizes.

(And FYI: Farmville also created Farmville dollars.  And Farmville dollars are a rip off that can buy you things like a barn that holds 25 items instead of 6.  But to get lots of those dollars, you actually have to pay REAL MONEY.  And if you pay REAL MONEY for Farmville, your obsession is probably at the point of needing therapy)

Farmville even went as far as to create special awards for harvesting about a million of the same crop.  After earning your third star on a single crop, you get the Super-Awesome award that is simply a shitty wooden sign with a picture of said crop that you’ve been planting and harvesting, planting and harvesting, over and over and over again for around 3.6 months. 

By that point, you’re so tired of seeing watermelon that the thought of encountering one of the big, multi-shaded green fruits in real life makes you want to go ape-shit and beat it with a hammer.

Instead of sympathizing with your desire to murder the watermelon and giving you a highly satisfying watermelon canon that allows you to blast the things against the side of your 15 barns? Farmville does one better and gives you lots of coins and the shitty wooden sign award that is a big, blazing picture of the same crop you’ve come to loathe.

But, being the competitive person you are, instead of deleting the award, you yank it out of your gift box and erect somewhere on your farm.

Basically?  It’s a massive warning flag that shows you’ve been indoctrinated as a Crazy.

And I currently have three of those shitty, wooden signs.

And sharing your success? Remember my earlier comment about Brother Jeff?  Sharing all of your ribbons and baby cow births and Level Ups! is a really, really poor decision if all your friends are not Farmville Crazies.  If you’re all, “Y’all, I am totally Super Awesome. I just won King of the Compost! Cat Lady!  Awesome Tree Hugger Fence Putter Upper awards. Oh! Also? PLZ adopt my green alien cow and this random super adorable cat that wandered onto my farm? I can’t take them.  Farmville won’t let me. LOLZ.”

Your facebook friends will unfriend you.

Because all of those updates?

SUPER ANNOYING.

Lastly, Dear Farmville: Please do everyone a favor and introduce the birth control pill for the cows.  I don’t care if they literally have to take it up the ass.  The baby calf situation is starting to become a serious issue that should probably be addressed.  Mostly because they never grow up.  Which? Kind of strange considering the baby turkey’s mature into adult turkeys in like, 3 days.