"No I can't leave yet, my tikka masala will be done in 3 minutes."
"I have to go to Cuba for this gang war."
None of this is verbatim, but this is the kind of stuff people have said (myself included). I don't work on a farm, cook anything with a weirder name than spaghetti, or go to Cuba to assassinate rival gangs (I keep my gang wars local). But once upon a time, back in the day, I played all the stupid, time consuming games on Facebook such as Farmville, Cafe World, and Mafia Wars. It became so difficult to keep up my strawberry fields and pot roast that it felt like work and I had to quit.
A turkey dinner takes 2 days to make or something like that. Saving up enough Godfather points to buy that AK-47 could take weeks. You have to have patience to play these games. Or a credit card. Yeah thats right; instead of waiting for those Godfather points to accumulate you can just buy some more! With real money! Thankfully I never went that far, but I know there are suckers out there that did.
The creators of these games are smart. Drug dealer smart. First they give you the product for free, knowing you will get hooked. Then they let you have a little more from time to time. Soon enough you need more than you're getting and that's when they have you right where they wanted you. They've set up a nice little online shop where you can get your fix of purple cows and whatever ethnic foods your cafe serves. They've been able to monetize people wasting their time. If you're reading this while waiting to harvest your acai berry tree don't kid yourself: you are wasting your time. Hopefully not your money yet.
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