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For the past couple weeks, a scandal has raged in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Apparently, according to a report by Novinite.com (via GamePolitics.com), the City Council of Plovdiv has lost one of its councilors due to excessive virtual farming through the Facebook application Farmville. At the beginning of March, several councilors were caught playing Farmville during the annual budgeting period by “the Chair of the Council, Ilko Iliev, who reacted strongly, scolding the eager Internet farmers.” Unfortunately, the admonishment wasn’t enough to keep the civic leaders in line, as several councilors continued harvesting virtual crops via their city-purchased laptops and city-provided Wi-Fi instead of paying attention to the tasks at hand.
This led to an even stronger reaction from the council, which ended up relieving “the most persistent Farmville enthusiast, Dimitar Kerin from the nationalist party Ataka,” of his duties by voting him off “the committee he was part of because of his Facebook addiction.” According to Todor Hristov, it was necessary to remove Kerin from the committee because, he stated sarcastically, Kerin “needs more time for his virtual farm.” Even more humorous, councilor Kerin defended himself by claiming he was unfairly singled out and he had “reached only Level 40, whereas Daniela Zhelyazkova, a councilor from the rightist Democrats for Strong Bulgaria party, was already at Level 46.” |
