“Why is my sister attached to a green alien cow?” he asked, with an exasperated look on his face.

Farmville's Green Alien Cow

I shrugged, running over in my head the countless times that my own friends and family rushed to the computer after a day out, with an earnestness that puts a die-hard Brangelina fan to shame. “If I don’t harvest my farm right now,” my 13-year-old cousin told me last month, explaining why exactly she needed to use my computer RIGHT AWAY, “my strawberry crops would die.”

Her terribly rendered pixel strawberries, with the shiny strobe effect that would put a dentist to shame. Her hot red strawberries, that smell like nothing and taste like nothing. They would die.