Councilman Booted For His Farmville Obsession

Bulgarian Dimitar Kerin won't have to decide if he should tend his crops or pay attention to Plovdiv City Council business anymore. The committee voted him off 20-19, saying that he obviously "needs more time for his virtual farm." From the article: "Kerin was not alone in his obsession among council members. Council chairman Ilko Iliev had previously warned several of them that the new wireless network and laptops provided to all 51 council members were not to be used for playing games on social media sites during budget meetings. Kerin was singled out for continuing to manage his farm and milk his cows despite Iliev's warnings. "

Re:Plovdiv City?

[clone53421]

http://www.plovdivcity.net/plovdiv_information.html [plovdivcity.net]

It doesn't look like the guys lost his job

[the_humeister]

The article notes that he was voted off of his committee. It doesn't say whether his actual seat is gone.

Re:Too nerdy.

[Culture20]

Never played it, but I'm betting if you don't spend time tending your crops, they die in real-world time. I used to play a diku-mud fifteen years ago where you were charged "rent" for your equipment on a real-world basis. If you stopped playing for a while, you lost your equipment when your gold ran out. So, I used a HDD syncing bug to my advantage to clone equipment (specifically diamonds) to sell at local shops to get enough gold to last a long while. But I still got addicted because of the "gotta help my 'friends'" aspect.

Re:Too nerdy.

[Hatta]

I think you misread me. Gun collections and sports are equally worthy of being obsessed over as a virtual farm, none of are particularly nerdy though. Amateur astronomy, ham radio, programming, etc. are worthy of being obsessed over too. But the technical complexity of the subjects drive away people who aren't nerds.

Everyone gets obsessed over the things that interest them. Nerds just obsess over more complex things. I hope that's a less inflammatory way of phrasing it.