"Get out of Farmville!"
January 22, 2010 8:17 PM   Subscribe

At long last, Dr. Phil takes on FarmVille (previously).

Dr. Phil previously took on game addiction in an episode titled "Virtual Chaos."
posted by joedan (64 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
This Response video is somewhat funny. Not that funny though.
posted by delmoi at 8:23 PM on January 22, 2010


Sometimes hits closer than you think
posted by The Whelk at 8:24 PM on January 22, 2010


FARMVILLE!
posted by Solon and Thanks at 8:31 PM on January 22, 2010 [16 favorites]


Well it's about fucking time.
posted by nola at 8:59 PM on January 22, 2010 [1 favorite]


This is the apocalypse.
posted by moonbird at 9:00 PM on January 22, 2010 [1 favorite]


As long as there isn't any raw milk involved.
posted by XMLicious at 9:05 PM on January 22, 2010 [3 favorites]


Hey, Farmville's real purpose is to fuel a mindbogglingly large number of masters' theses in a mindboggling large number of fields. Let's not fuck with it, Phil. Don't make me unleash my spot-on impersonation of you.
posted by Miko at 9:07 PM on January 22, 2010 [8 favorites]


His first idea was to send the message: "get out of Mafia Wars! Start a massive criminal enterprise for real!"

... but then his producer pointed out that he probably didn't need the competition.
posted by koeselitz at 9:15 PM on January 22, 2010 [8 favorites]


Cues up the Kronos Quartet
posted by hellojed at 9:45 PM on January 22, 2010 [4 favorites]


I don't know who to root for.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:46 PM on January 22, 2010 [10 favorites]


As long as he doesn't screw with Pirates, cuz that's my game. Nome sane? Btw, if you're looking to join a crew or simply share some stuff, lemme know.
posted by jsavimbi at 9:48 PM on January 22, 2010


Farmville's real purpose is to fuel a mindbogglingly large number of masters' theses

Ironic, then, that it's actually used to procrastinate on a mindbogglingly large number of masters' theses.
posted by mhum at 9:56 PM on January 22, 2010 [30 favorites]


I don't know who to root for.

If we're lucky they'll take each other out in a firefight.

Shit, I'd arm both sides.
posted by Epenthesis at 10:04 PM on January 22, 2010 [5 favorites]


That lede made me laugh. Thank you.
posted by painquale at 10:21 PM on January 22, 2010


Not knowing what Kronos Quartet had to do with Farmville, I turned to google, and found this (well, actually a slightly different video on videosift, but you get the idea). Either way, Inuit throat singing is probably more enjoyable than Farmville.

(And for no good reason, beyond that it was a "related video": Kronos Quartet - Requiem for a Dream)
posted by filthy light thief at 10:46 PM on January 22, 2010


How the hell did we go from World of Warcraft to "Farmville"?
posted by crapmatic at 10:49 PM on January 22, 2010


How the hell did we go from World of Warcraft to "Farmville"?
posted by crapmatic


eponysterical.

.
posted by ryoshu at 11:08 PM on January 22, 2010


How the hell did we go from World of Warcraft to "Farmville"?

By Grinding X for Y
Retracing particular routes
Cashing in Gold for Dye
And pandering for Trash Loot
posted by Smart Dalek at 12:24 AM on January 23, 2010


I find it very telling that the first three people I was aware of who played Farmville were also mentally handicapped.
posted by dunkadunc at 12:50 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


farmville is soooo four months ago. Was this after his episode on friendster?
posted by Betty_effn_White at 2:23 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


First I hated Farmville and Mafia Wars and all that Facebook game crap.

Then I discovered the Facebook Purity script for Greasemonkey.

Then Facebook killed all the game notification messages.

So now I just plain don't give a damn.
posted by sotonohito at 3:55 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


If you don't want to see the messages, you can just click on Hide next to the message and it will ask you if you want to block messages from that game. It's good if you only want messages from the few games you play and want to turn the rest off.
posted by Melsky at 4:37 AM on January 23, 2010 [2 favorites]


Anyone know how to block the game notifications in iPhone facebook?
posted by Iteki at 5:00 AM on January 23, 2010


When you mouse over a feed notification a Hide button will appear to the upper right.

Click it & then a small panel will appear with 3 buttons:
Hide [friend] | Hide [widget, game, application, etc.] | Cancel

If you click Hide [widget, game, application, etc.] then you'll hide it from your feed & get the message:

[widget, game, application, etc.] has been hidden from your News Feed. To manage who appears in News Feed, Edit options. {FB link}

posted by i_cola at 5:46 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


Shouldn't Dr. Phil be giving his brand of hokey motivational speaker therapy to entire towns, instead of picking on a Facebook game?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:12 AM on January 23, 2010


Farmville isn't even a game. I don't know what it is. A delivery system for ad-viewing eyeballs, I guess.
posted by Biblio at 6:30 AM on January 23, 2010


I played Farmville long enough to have crops of grapes in rows which spell out YOU SUCK!

Then my wife reminded me that her parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles, basically her entire (conservative) family is on Facebook, and told me that's not cool, nome sane?

So it was pretty easy to change the "S" to an "R" and now my (long withered, ignored) crops spell "YOU ROCK!".
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 6:43 AM on January 23, 2010


How does farmville fund graduate students?
posted by jb at 6:44 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


Great, now I have to defend Farmville. This sucks.

So this is the same argument that Guitar Hero et al. gets: "Why are you playing Guitar Hero, why don't you buy a guitar and learn it for real?" But the two activities (the video game and the real life) aren't analogous.

In Farmville's case, the real life version takes months or years of work, sometimes for little or no payoff. It takes up your free time, and you do a lot of it solo. The game takes up hours of work, guarantees a payoff (that's how grinding works) and you're probably playing it at work so you've probably still got free time.

So please retire the whole "stop playing a game about x, do x for real" thing, it shows you really have no clue about why people are playing the game in the first place.

Also, this reminds me of when whatsbetter.com was up and running (don't bother, it's a parked domain now). It was a site where it would display pictures of two random things and ask you: "What's better?" For example, what's better, Wes Anderson or a monster truck? This whole post is "What's worse, Dr. Phil or Farmville?"
posted by revgeorge at 6:46 AM on January 23, 2010 [2 favorites]


Anyone know how to block the game notifications in iPhone facebook?

I don't think you can block them from the iPhone version; but if you log on with an actual browser (not mobile) and block them, that will carry over to the iPhone version and you won't see them anymore.

The only time I hear the word "Farmville" nowadays is when people are complaining about it. I blocked it once and that was it. And actually, it's great that everybody is apparently playing the same game, because I don't have to block myriad ones. Last year the "in" thing was to take quizzes of the ilk, "Which Star Wars character are you?", "Which Golden Girl are you?", "Which Dawson's Creek character are you?", etc. What made those insufferable is that they followed Facebook changing its News Feed edit options: You used to be able to block all quizzes, but now you had to block each individually. So as soon as you blocked the Star Wars quiz, there was the Golden Girls one right behind it.
posted by cribcage at 6:47 AM on January 23, 2010


Dr. Phil sounds exactly like Dr. Steve Bruhl here.

"Get out of Farmville. Start a garden for REEEAL[, dummy]!"
posted by nosila at 7:04 AM on January 23, 2010


Great, now I have to defend Farmville. ... The game takes up hours...and you're probably playing it at work

You didn't do a very good job.
posted by cribcage at 7:09 AM on January 23, 2010 [5 favorites]


one time i saw spikeleemajortomdickandharryconickjrmints live and he did the farmville bit.
it was amazing.

My mom plays farmville, I don't even have a face book (avoiding crazy ex reasons). That's really all i have to say.
posted by djduckie at 7:35 AM on January 23, 2010


...the game is less pernicious than the fresh hell willed into being by Dr. Phil.

I applaud you, Ed. That is a fantastic turn of phrase.
posted by nosila at 7:46 AM on January 23, 2010


There's no boss to tell you to pick fruit or milk the cows, they can go untended indefinitely. Bizarre genetic mutations allow pineapples and potatoes to be grown in the same field. And most of one's time is used trying to find ways to convert the local, abundant, worthless coins into hard cash, because in order to buy the things you want, only hard currency is accepted.

Basically, Farmville is the Soviet Union.
posted by gimonca at 7:58 AM on January 23, 2010 [6 favorites]


Er, this seems a bit thin... it's essentially a 13 second clip and a link to to a two-sentence summary and a wikipedia page about what Farmville is. Shouldn't we wait until after the show has aired or something?
posted by Nattie at 8:41 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


This is a good example of the aphorism "Even a broken clock* is right twice a day"

*Unless of course the hands on your clock aren't really hands at all, but electronic. Pulses. Of Light!
posted by device55 at 8:42 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


I don't know how you guys have time to make all these smartass comments when there are watermelons to be picked.
posted by troybob at 8:55 AM on January 23, 2010 [7 favorites]


I so loathe Dr. Phil that I cannot even finish watching the FPP link.
posted by _paegan_ at 9:20 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'm sad that I can't post the awesomely funny FARMVILLE! video to my Facebook, because all my friends and family are playing FARMVILLE and they would be offended at how much I think their game sucks.
posted by LordSludge at 9:34 AM on January 23, 2010


This is incomplete. What do Dr Ruth & Dr Laura think?
posted by i_cola at 9:40 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


Dr. Ruth thinks you should have fun fucking it safely and Dr. Laura thinks you should fuck it because it's your God-ordained duty and who are you to question God.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:47 AM on January 23, 2010 [2 favorites]


I find it very telling that the first three people I was aware of who played Farmville were also mentally handicapped.

You might want to spend a little more time thinking about what you're typing and who you might be offending before you hit post. Especially after what happened a few weeks ago.
posted by kylej at 10:16 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


Great, now I have to defend Farmville.

No, you don't. Nobody cares what games you play on your free time. What people care about is getting spammed by Facebook with inane notifications like "Josh Yokelman just patted his cow on the ass in Farmville."
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 10:41 AM on January 23, 2010 [7 favorites]


The Kronos Quartet in the studio falls into the same category as politics and sausage.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 11:06 AM on January 23, 2010


I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Farmville scratches the Harvest Moon itch. That's why I play it. If you set up a proper crop rotation, the time involved is pretty minimal.

I'm always looking for neighbours, BTW--MeMail me. What? I can quit anytime.
posted by Decimask at 11:26 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


If you die in Farmville, you die in real life!
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 11:44 AM on January 23, 2010 [2 favorites]


I love Jeffrey Tambor, he turn anything into comedy gold.
posted by Elmore at 11:47 AM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


You might want to spend a little more time thinking about what you're typing and who you might be offending before you hit post. Especially after what happened a few weeks ago.

oohh....I gotta know. What happened a few weeks ago?
posted by sourwookie at 12:59 PM on January 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


What happened a few weeks ago?

Dr. Phil showed up in a Metatalk thread about Israel and Palestine.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:02 PM on January 23, 2010 [5 favorites]


I -what?
posted by The Whelk at 1:05 PM on January 23, 2010


>: You might want to spend a little more time thinking about what you're typing and who you might be offending before you hit post. Especially after what happened a few weeks ago.

You have to remember that the place I see people playing Farmville is largely at the public library, so there is some sample bias.
I do think it's a matter of people (whoever they are) not picking up on the game's awfulness for whatever reason- my youngest brother and his seventh-grade friends all seem to be into Farmville, too, and in their case it's just a matter of being really young. For some people, the ad-slinging goes right over their head and they can just sit there and have fun.
Farmville might be awful but at least they're enjoying it.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:07 PM on January 23, 2010


What ad slinging? I see three text ads on a sidebar beside the Facebook games, and that's it, which is fewer ads than I see on this page when I'm not logged into Metafilter.

And what, people who use libraries tend to be mentally handicapped?
posted by Orb at 1:52 PM on January 23, 2010


To derail from this nearly MeTa-worthy derail and back to the hating on Farmville (a...rerail?), I'd like to offer the following anecdote:

My grandfather recently passed away. He was an avid gardener up until his death at 90. He was well-known for his fantastic lemon trees (which flourished in Tucson, of all places). A week or so after the funeral, a member of my extended family from all the way on the other side of the country sent me a Farmville gift: A lemon tree in honor of my dead Grandfather. I hate Farmville. And have no intention of ever playing it. I'm still not sure what to do with this virtual lemon tree.
posted by sleeping bear at 1:57 PM on January 23, 2010


I found that more fun than blocking it is posting your own farmville updates: troybob blew the Mormon rancher next door in exchange for five chickens in Farmville! (To which my aunt was all like 'is that allowed?')
posted by troybob at 3:19 PM on January 23, 2010 [4 favorites]


I find the best way to block the notifications from all these Facebook applications is to use the FB Purity userscript. Otherwise it's a lot like playing Whack-A-Mole.
posted by dunkadunc at 4:58 PM on January 23, 2010


That FB Purity script worked beautifully for me for a month or two, but it stopped working ages ago, and the updates don't seem to work for me either. Am I doing it wrong?
posted by harriet vane at 8:45 PM on January 23, 2010


revgeorge - the whole "why don't you do that in real life?" sceed never comes up if you play GTA and Silent Hill. (At least, so far.) But you make an excellent point - the things games are about and games are not remotely the same - as animal welfare organizations like to point out.

If Dr. Phil has his panties in a twist about Farmville, one can only imagine that he either recently lost or is shopping for some sort of game deal.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 8:52 AM on January 24, 2010


Yeah, the argument about doing in-game activities in real life is somehow completely different when you're talking about Farmville and Guitar Hero versus when you're talking about Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt.
posted by box at 8:56 AM on January 24, 2010


That FB Purity script worked beautifully for me for a month or two, but it stopped working ages ago, and the updates don't seem to work for me either. Am I doing it wrong?

Probably, since it's working fine for me (FF 3.5/Windows 7).
posted by me & my monkey at 9:53 AM on January 24, 2010


I've found that updating FB Purity generally doesn't work. I remove it, then reinstall.
posted by sotonohito at 11:20 AM on January 24, 2010


first three people I was aware of who played Farmville were also mentally handicapped.
You might want to spend a little more time thinking about what you're typing and who you might be offending before you hit post. Especially after what happened a few weeks ago.


Perhaps the poster was speaking of the elected reps they know who play?

Or perhaps the poster is Rush Limbaugh who declared that the Internet was all Nimrods and the real action was on Compuserve.
posted by rough ashlar at 3:31 PM on January 24, 2010


Cheers, sotonohito, that did the trick!
posted by harriet vane at 7:21 AM on January 25, 2010


I was all prepared to hate on Farmville (even though I have a few crops of my own...), but this was a pretty weak post. I get that it's topical and MeFites can easily get on the "Hating dumb shit about FaceBook" bandwagon - and hey! Dr. Phil! It's a slam dunk! But there just doesn't seem to be any there there.

Yeah, so, Dr. Phil hates people who avoid their kids for Farmville? And? This would have been better if we had the whole clip so I could see the full extent of his rage and then evaluate which I hate more - Dr. Phil, or being asked to send "gifts" to my "friends."

Y'know the worst part about Farmville? Kittens wander onto your farm, but you can't adopt them. You can only offer them to friends. WTF?! I LOVE KITTENS. And I know these aren't real kittens, but g-ddamn, why can't I adopt the kitten?
posted by grapefruitmoon at 10:56 AM on January 25, 2010


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