There are two kinds of people in the world:

Mafia Wars people, and

Farm Town people.

Hopefully you don't have a clue what I'm talking about but, if you really want to know, Mafia Wars is software company Zynga's hugely successful, cartoonish Facebook-based game (in which players accumulate weapons, hits, etc.) and Farm Town is a game where you plant crops . . . tend them  . . . and harvest them . . . all on a fierce and unforgiving deadline that demands your participation every X hours. Both free games share the characteristic of  . . . fancy that! . . . coercin . . . I mean encouraging you, to whom Facebook IS your social life, to spend even more time under the shadow of the blue F.

It used to be that the most common thing you'd see on the screens of people who are supposed to be working was . . . solitaire! Now, more and more, it's either the dark world of the mafia or the cheerful floating diamond of people's farms.

There's something about that relentlessly geometric projection of the diamond . . . like the bird's-eye squashed-perspective of Chinese and Japanese court scroll paintings . . . that I find visually compelling. It's such a brutal symbol of three dimensions, realistic only to the most reptilian parts of our brains. Plus it's outrageously old-school in terms of game visuals. But I get it. There's something weirdly attractive about it.

The best Farm Town story I've heard so far is of the inebriated young woman who called her good friend from a scary bar in need of a ride and was told she'd have to wait half an hour until the friend finished harvesting her Farm Town strawberries.

Mafia or Farm, your choice. Do want to kill imaginary lifeforms on purpose, or by negelect? Ahh, the late 00's!