If you are an active member of Facebook, you are more than likely familiar with, on an intimate basis, a game called Farm Town. Farm Town is a virtual farm. You plow your land, plant your crops and reap the rewards (coins) of selling those crops at harvest time. You even have the ability to "prostitute" yourself in the village market by offering to harvest other farmers' crops. You can sell your farm for larger farms, purchase silos, waterwells, logs, barrels, pigs, chickens, roosters, goats....you get the picture. You beg your "farming" friends to send you gifts of animals and trees so that you will not have to make these expensive purchases yourself. After all, you are saving your coins so that you can buy that farming mansion and pond you've been lusting after on the neighboring farm.
However, the future of Farm Town may be compromised. My son called earlier to let me know Facebook had a new virtual farm game called Farm Ville. He's at level 3. Will the popularity of Farm Ville cause Farm Town to become a Ghost Town? Will that spur a trend of popular "ghost" games. Or, based on the following story, does this mean that players from Farm Town and players from Farm Ville will engage in illicit "farming" affairs? Will the farmer take a new wife with each new virtual "farm" game created? Only the future will tell.
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Amy Taylor, 28, filed for divorce after she caught her husband cheating in Second Life, an online community where players create avatars and transport themselves into virtual worlds. "I caught him cuddling a woman on the sofa in the game," Taylor told England's South West News Service. Taylor married Dave Pollard, 40, after the pair met in an online chat room in 2003. She said the first sign that their marriage was in trouble occurred in 2007, when she caught her husband's avatar having cyber-sex with a virtual prostitute.People become emotionally invested in their virtual identities, according to Ellen Helsper, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, who has studied the impact of the internet on relationships. "For a while, there was this impression that as long as it's online, it doesn't matter," she told the Associated Press. "But research has shown it's not a separate world." She added that infidelity was "just as painful, whether it's electronic or physical."
However, the future of Farm Town may be compromised. My son called earlier to let me know Facebook had a new virtual farm game called Farm Ville. He's at level 3. Will the popularity of Farm Ville cause Farm Town to become a Ghost Town? Will that spur a trend of popular "ghost" games. Or, based on the following story, does this mean that players from Farm Town and players from Farm Ville will engage in illicit "farming" affairs? Will the farmer take a new wife with each new virtual "farm" game created? Only the future will tell.
__________________________
Amy Taylor, 28, filed for divorce after she caught her husband cheating in Second Life, an online community where players create avatars and transport themselves into virtual worlds. "I caught him cuddling a woman on the sofa in the game," Taylor told England's South West News Service. Taylor married Dave Pollard, 40, after the pair met in an online chat room in 2003. She said the first sign that their marriage was in trouble occurred in 2007, when she caught her husband's avatar having cyber-sex with a virtual prostitute.People become emotionally invested in their virtual identities, according to Ellen Helsper, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, who has studied the impact of the internet on relationships. "For a while, there was this impression that as long as it's online, it doesn't matter," she told the Associated Press. "But research has shown it's not a separate world." She added that infidelity was "just as painful, whether it's electronic or physical."
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I'm just sayin' I gotta go harvest my crops,
--Margo
Comments
Their addiction is so strong, I'm beginning to wonder if they have a special plot of virtual land where they are growning some "special" plants. I'm sure you know the kind I'm talking about. The ones's that are used for medical purposes, but also are used just help people forget about their problems.
Personally, I kind of wish that both farmtown and farmville have begin a massive battle for virtual land that will escalate into an all out war. Then maybe they'll nuke eather other into obilvion and people will finally stop sending me farm town gifts. =)
I'm going to go ahead and jump in here. If your wife was going out to a real farm and hanging out with men, how would you react? If she were talking to random men on the telephone, what would be your response? If she ate lunch with individual male coworkers, would it bother you at all?
I'd have her on the side of road hitch hiking, because she would have missed the train pulling out for Splitsville long ago.