"Kaipuhan ko na mag harvest today! Baka malapa si crops ko! Pwedeng i-harvest mo man si crops ko? Can you tend and look after my farm?"
These are just few of the common statements you will hear nowadays. Suddenly everybody has a farm that they have to build, plant, and tend to almost everyday or even twice a day or worse they have to stay for hours.
Harvest, harvest, harvest. The unending influence of the online social network’s application is scarily occupying or is now incorporated in our daily activities. I say “our” because I was guilty of it, I say “was” because my addiction to those applications ended already and I’m glad I did. Been there done that, even before Facebook applications rampantly conquered the online world, I was addicted to online games way back my late high school, college years, and a little after I graduated. To mention a few of my sort of “I-got-addicted” games they are: Audition, O2Jam, Gunbound, NFS, a little of CS and sad to say I really didn’t actually get to understand DOTA until I was only clicking and clicking and attacking the enemies because I barely knew the abilities of each hero and the usage of every item that you have to purchase. So here comes Facebook, to mention some, I also played Pet Society, Mafia Wars, Street Racing, Farm Town, and Typing Maniac. I didn’t bother trying Friends-For-Sale, Restaurant City and the latest addiction of everyone… Farmville. I’m sure there are new ones, who cares, I always click the Ignore button whenever there are invitations. My apologies for that my friends. I guess my interest had a shift of gear and now even going back to the neutral gear.
I miss playing my old games, I tried to play o2jam once again, I thought I lost my touch but still there it is.
Here’s my observation to our addiction on these applications. First, it brings out the child in us. Sometimes, there are games that will choose no age aka they are for everyone. No doubt that even professors for that matter are playing Mafia Wars and Farmville. Second, you see your friends playing those games and you can’t relate whenever they are talking about it, you become curious and you end up playing with them and you become “in”. Third, after playing, you become a frequent player of the game even though not leading to addiction but during those moments you play, you attain a certain feeling of fulfillment and superiority when you see your level higher than anyone else. Admit it or not you feel good when you see your rank higher. Fourth, as a person, especially a typical Filipino, we would always try what is new, then after a few months, the addiction dies off and you will seek another one that is “new” again brought about by our neighbors from the western hemisphere of this planet. There it goes, it’s always cyclical.
FACT: People have the tendency to crave for what is More, Huge, Larger, and Higher. More points, bigger storage devices, higher rank, more games and the like. This is can be as we all know as the survival of the fittest. It’s the online world what does survival of the fittest got to do with it? Look deeper and it is there. If you have the power, you have the rank, you have the larger amount of points etc etc, everybody looks up to you, everybody becomes close to you and eventually making you even more powerful than others because you are remembered. If you are on the low rank you are the unnoticed. This is no other than reality.
If online games / applications make you feel good then so be it, but let us make sure that what is more important than those games are the ones that you have to harvest more rather than harvesting the virtual crops. We are making the publishers of those games richer than we have ever imagined.
Yes we can still function as normal people doing our daily activities while playing with those games, but we become less of a person if we forget our responsibilities and obligations to ourselves and most importantly to our significant others and survival tools such as the studies of students and jobs for us employees. There are games which improves our analysis, strategies as well as hand and eye coordination. If you were improved by it then somehow it’s enough, wouldn't it be better to use it in the real world? These applications were made for us to explore and widen our imaginations and abilities but not to occupy our whole being. Let us enjoy them but let us not make them the only source of fun.
Congratulations if you are able to maintain the harmony between leisure and studies/work. But if you’re not one of them, it’s never too late. Do not let our “ids” (wants, likes, cravings, addiction) control us. Farm on how to survive the real game and harvest the real crops for survival on how to maintain your life. You’re lucky if you we’re born rich, but if you’re not? Better move your asses to the right direction rather than sitting in front of your virtual world. Good luck to us all!
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