When FarmVille Made Loneliness Visible

There was a particular kind of loneliness that belonged to the early social-web years.

You were connected to everyone.

And somehow still alone.

One night in 2009, I described the moment you understood this very simply:

You found yourself planting and harvesting crops in Facebook’s FarmVille.

Or clicking through a little game like Chain Rx.

You kept clicking.

Then you looked at the clock.

It was midnight.

You went to bed.

That was the entire evening.

It sounds almost harmless now.

Maybe even nostalgic.

But there was something revealing about those nights.

The computer gave you a constant supply of tiny things to do.

Nothing important.

Nothing difficult.

Nothing that required commitment.

Plant something.

Collect something.

Click something.

Refresh something.

Check whether anybody had written anything.

Then do it again.

The screen was never empty.

Your evening could be.

That difference matters.

Boredom used to announce itself clearly.

There was nothing to do.

You knew it.

You looked around the room.

Maybe you called somebody.

Maybe you went outside.

Maybe you read something.

Maybe you simply accepted being bored.

The internet changed boredom by giving it activity.

You could be completely unoccupied while feeling continuously busy.

FarmVille was perfect for this.

It gave the evening structure.

Crops needed planting.

Crops needed harvesting.

There was progress.

Numbers increased.

The farm became larger.

Small rewards appeared often enough to keep you moving.

It looked like something was happening.

But when the computer was turned off, very little had happened outside it.

That was the strange part.

A game could fill time without filling the night.

Social networks made the contradiction even stronger.

Facebook was full of people.

Friends from school.

Friends from university.

People from work.

Old acquaintances.

People you had not seen for years.

People you barely remembered.

Photographs.

Status updates.

Comments.

Invitations.

You could spend hours surrounded by evidence that other human beings existed.

Then close the browser and hear the room become quiet.

The word “social” did not guarantee company.

Sometimes it only made solitude easier to compare.

Someone was at a party.

Someone was on holiday.

Someone had uploaded photographs from dinner.

Someone had changed their relationship status.

Someone had apparently spent the evening doing something worth photographing.

You had harvested digital strawberries.

This is not necessarily a fair comparison.

People post the interesting parts.

Nobody uploads an album called:

“Tuesday Night, Did Absolutely Nothing.”

Still, the comparison happens.

That may have been one of the first lessons of social media.

It did not only connect us to other people.

It connected us to edited evidence of other people’s lives.

A quiet evening could suddenly feel quieter.

The games helped.

They gave you something to do while you remained in the same place.

I do not remember thinking of FarmVille as a serious game.

That was the point.

It required almost nothing.

You did not need to learn complicated controls.

You did not need to become skilled.

You could arrive tired.

Click.

Leave.

Return later.

Click again.

The game fit into the gaps of life.

Eventually the gaps could become the evening.

I think that is what I was reacting to in that old entry.

Not the game itself.

The moment of recognition.

You look at the clock and realize that several hours have disappeared.

You cannot say exactly what you did with them.

Nothing bad happened.

Nothing good happened either.

Time simply converted itself into clicks.

There is a difference between choosing to spend an evening alone and accidentally discovering that you have done so.

Chosen solitude can be wonderful.

You make tea.

Put on music.

Read.

Watch a film.

Work on something.

Think.

There is intention in it.

Accidental isolation feels different.

You begin with:

“I’ll check Facebook for a minute.”

Then some small game opens.

Then another page.

Then another.

Midnight arrives before any decision was made.

Perhaps loneliness becomes clearest when you realize nobody is expected to interrupt you.

No one is coming.

No plan is waiting.

The night belongs entirely to you.

That can feel like freedom.

It can also feel like evidence.

In 2009, the technologies were simpler.

There was no endless vertical video feed designed to continue forever in your hand.

The phone had not yet swallowed every idle second of the day.

But the pattern was already visible.

Give people an infinite sequence of small interactions and time becomes very easy to lose.

The individual actions are too small to feel wasteful.

One click is nothing.

One refresh is nothing.

Five minutes is nothing.

But an evening is made from these small pieces.

By midnight, the pieces have added up.

This is one reason I remember that old sentence with some affection.

There is no grand tragedy in it.

Just a person at a computer.

A virtual farm.

A simple game.

A clock.

Then bed.

That ordinariness makes it more accurate.

Loneliness is not always dramatic.

It does not always arrive with rain against the window and sad music in the background.

Sometimes it looks like a normal evening.

You are not crying.

You are not calling anyone.

You are not even particularly unhappy.

You are simply filling time until sleep becomes appropriate.

That may be the quieter version of loneliness.

Not pain.

Absence.

The absence of something you wanted enough to notice only after several hours had passed.

Maybe company.

Maybe purpose.

Maybe just a reason to close the browser.

I also think there was something innocent about those early social games.

They were obvious about being games.

A farm was a farm.

Points were points.

You knew the tomatoes were not real.

Modern digital life is often harder to separate.

Work happens on the same screen.

Friendship happens there.

News.

Entertainment.

Shopping.

Dating.

Learning.

Everything uses the same glass rectangle.

It is harder to tell when you are using the tool and when the tool is simply occupying you.

Back then, at least the virtual field gave the situation a visual metaphor.

I was sitting alone in a room maintaining crops that did not exist.

There is almost poetry in that.

A field with no soil.

Harvests with no food.

Neighbors you could visit without leaving the chair.

Progress that disappeared when the website did.

And yet I would not call those hours completely meaningless.

Even empty evenings become memories.

They preserve the atmosphere of a period.

A particular version of the internet.

A particular version of myself.

Facebook games.

Desktop computers.

Late nights.

The small click of a mouse.

The strange feeling that the entire world was online somewhere and I was watching it through a screen.

Technology changes quickly.

The basic human question changes much more slowly:

What am I doing with this evening?

Sometimes the answer is meaningful.

Sometimes it is necessary rest.

Sometimes it is wonderfully pointless.

And sometimes you click until midnight, look at the clock, and discover that loneliness has been sitting beside you the whole time.

Then you go to bed.