Ask Me Again & I’m Gonna Crush You

For what seems like the six gazilionth time, I was invited by someone on Facebook to play Candy Crush. All I know is that if I get one more invitation to play candy crush I’m going to crush something and it’s not going to be candy.

So now that all of you Candy Crush addicts have been duly warned, stay away from me and my Facebook. Don’t send me game requests, don’t invite me to play, just please let me be candy free.

I don’t know exactly why or when my Candy Crush aversion developed. Heck, I love wasting time as much as the next person. Go on, ask my family, they will vouch for my countless time draining too numerous to count hobbies and addictions.

But for the life of me I just can’t understand the current fascination with the Candy Crush app. My eldest son tried to explain it to me (after he lamented about how addicted he was and how stupid he was to have downloaded it in the first place). He tried to hook me but I just didn’t get it. Judging from the ages and shapes of the people around me who are playing it, my problem had nothing to do with the generation gap.

Frankly, I just think it’s a game without a point. It’s not like my once beloved and then neglected Farmville with the great intricate graphics, a game that taught you that things take time and you need to invest time and effort in order to reap your reward.

Back when Farmville was all the rage, I was a mighty good farmer. I loved planting the crops and harvesting them. I loved shearing the sheep and picking the fruit off the trees. I loved deciding which crops to plant depending on how long they took to “grow’ and whether I would be available to harvest before the crops withered. It got so addictive that every time we would drive anywhere and we would pass fields, orchards or sheep I would point out to my kids that it was time to harvest and chuckle (to myself) in glee.

Ahh, the good old days of meaningful online entertainment replaced by bright colored noisy bling that needs to be crushed.

Okay, okay. When I’m in a magnanimous mood I might concede that maybe there is some level of scheming and planning involved in playing Candy Crush (though not quite Chess master level), but aside from the fact that you probably won’t catch me in that mood all too often, so what if you crushed candies and moved up levels??

Candy Crush kind of reminds me of the rat race of life. People doing what they have been told to do, trying to advance and move up without questioning whether or not they really need to, elbowing people out of the way without giving a second thought to the consequences and most of all sacrificing precious time for what they think or hope they will get in the future.

No one I have met really likes being part of the rat race of life so what exactly has made all these people play it’s imitation, Candy Crush?