Farm on your own time

Macbooks are adorable, aren’t they? Who wouldn’t want a Macbook? They come in the brightest and most eye-catching of colors; they boast a solid yet sleek, sexy design; and they have, on average, a longer battery life than my (stupid) Droid Eris.

I don’t have a Macbook. In fact, I’ve never had a laptop that wasn’t a hand-me-down from my mom or step dad. But when I think of these little technological slices of heaven, my neural networks thrust forth irritating images of the Facebook home page and other people’s tagged photos. And… FarmVille.

Macbooks are touted as the perfect computer for young professionals and college students — they’re fast, easy to use, they never crash, they allegedly last forever and you can do almost anything with them.

Including harvest your farm during class.

(I should point out that my topic of discussion here is not the use of Macbooks among college students — the only reason I bring them up is because 80 percent of the students I see on a regular basis that bring their laptops to class own this particular — superior — breed of laptop.)

In my experience, approximately half of the people in my classes bring their laptops to lecture. Sometimes, when I’m desperately seeking a diversion that will keep me awake during a dry two-hour class, I’ll glance around the room to count how many people are using laptops, and how many of them are actually using them to take notes. Usually, it’s less than half.

The number one distraction for students who bring laptops into the classroom is, of course, Facebook. I have, on countless occasions, sat behind girls (it seems like it’s always girls) who literally do nothing all class period but peruse Facebook. The best part is, many times they sit there refreshing their own profile page.

I had a discussion with a roommate once in which we calculated how much each person spends in tuition on each class they attend. For in state students, it’s around $20 per class, depending on credit hours and length. These people spend $20 per lecture to come and spend an hour glancing through their own tagged photos, rereading comments and checking out the overall look of their page. That’s something I’m only vain enough to do in the privacy of my own room. I’m hesitant to admit that I do it at all.

Obviously, people are entitled to do whatever they want with their tuition dollars. But when you’re sitting directly behind someone who spends an hour or two doing nothing but planting or buying or harvesting or feeding — or doing whatever the hell it is that people do — on FarmVille, it can be extremely distracting. People who text during class don’t bother me because they’re usually fairly discrete about it; they hide their phone under the desk. I’ve never played (not even sure if that’s the correct verb) FarmVille, I am not a FarmVillain, or whatever, but it’s the only video game I’ve ever encountered that has actually intruded into and disturbed my perfect, ignorant little game-free world completely uninvited. If I’m not staring directly into someone’s cow pasture in class, then it’s clogging my News Feed or alleged “friends” are sending me invitations begging me to give them chickens.

I don’t care about your chickens. Keep your farm away from me, or I’ll take a torch to it.

I never felt violated by a video game before the advent of FarmVille and its Facebook counterparts. To me, video games were a somewhat isolated subculture that you could choose to be a part of or ignore at will. As a new media communications major, I had to take New Media Futures, which irritated me, but it didn’t make me despise the gaming industry. FarmVille hasn’t done that either, but it has created a negative mental model that I associate with Facebook and now Macbooks (thanks for the terminology, Loges). Other than that, it’s disruptive and distracting in class.

Also, I should mention that I have no qualms about reading over people’s shoulders when they’re farming or Facebooking in class. Anyone who may be disgusted by that has severely lost touch with the reason they’re in class in the first place.