Stan Jackson needs a fence. Joe Bob Farnsworth found a stray cat on his farm.
If you’ve seen these updates from your friends in your Facebook stream, you might be puzzled. But notifications such as these are part of the wonderful world of Farmville, a game played on Facebook that boasts over 82 million players across the globe that allows players to construct their own virtual farms. The seemingly innocent game was the professional demise of one Bulgarian politician, however. The Huffington Post writes:
Council members of the Plovidv City Council in Bulgaria are among FarmVille’s fervent fans: the Bulgarian councilors were recently caught "milking virtual cows" on FarmVille during budget meeting debates (using government-issued laptops, no less).
The Chair of the Council, Ilko Iliev, delivered a strong scolding to the officials–to no avail.
Novinite, a Bulgarian news outlet, reports that not long after Iliev’s warning, one politician, Dimitar Kerin, was yet again nabbed tending to his online crop.
Kerin was promptly voted off the council committee for playing FarmVille on the job…
Kerin said, in his defense, that he was not the only FarmVille fanatic in the bunch: he explained that he ‘had reached only Level 40, whereas Daniela Zhelyazkova, a councilor from the rightist Democrats for Strong Bulgaria party, was already at Level 46.