Meeting strangers and that time when my mum was a mobster

For at least five years, my mother was a successful mobster. She'd rob and order hits on people all over the world ... online. Let me explain.

I joined Facebook in 2005 while I was in college. At that point, the social media monster was merely an online yearbook that helped connect me with college classmates and talk about our work. A few years later, my mother wanted in, so I helped her create an account. Shortly after, she enlisted in Farmville. As an online farmer, she cultivated her farm by plowing, planting and harvesting crops and trees. With time, she also started to care for animals and even sought out help from other players, which is where I came in. The exchange went something like this:

Mum: Emmy, I need your password for Facebook.

Me: Why?

Mum: Because I need to send myself some gifts for my farm.

Me: ... Ummm, okay Mum.

Little did I know that I, too, would be a farmer soon as well. In order to send herself gifts, I had to become a farmer. When I signed on the next time, I had a quite a few notifications for all of my crops that needed harvesting ... that I didn't know existed. Knowing that Mum was sending herself stuff, I just ignored it. Then came Mafia Wars.

Her attention to online agriculture was one thing, but Mafia Wars was something else entirely. She loved that game. She went from a casual player to someone who was maintaining her crime syndicate every few hours. And just like Farmville, she needed to send herself gifts, so as you can imagine, I, too, became a mobster. Only this time, the game was posting to my wall. My friends started posting on my wall asking about my gaming habits and all I could do was laugh.

Occasionally, I would put up a status noting that it was my mum online and not to message her anything off-color or fresh. Recruiting me, however, wasn't all she did.

In fact, one of the times I signed into my account, I noticed that my list of friends went up to somewhere in the thousands. I started scrolling through the names and wondered who the heck all these people were.

I don't know anyone in Kansas City, Missouri ... or Louisiana ... or ... how do you say this name?

Mum. It has to be my mother. When I looked over at her friends list, it appeared that she, too, had accepted or added friends from alllllllll over the world. I decided to send her a message to inquire about the surplus of friends that appeared on my account. Again, Mum said she needed to send and receive more gifts, so naturally, more friends meant more gifts. Though it was a perfectly legitimate response, I explained how adding people that she didn't know to either of our accounts wasn't the best idea for myriad reasons. Ultimately, she ended up deleting some 2,500 or so friends from her account. I helped comb through my friends list.

Though she didn't delete everyone, she has slowly gotten to know some of the people she became friends with so many years ago. Each day, she wakes up and checks her list of friends to see if there's a birthday - there always is. She makes sure each one receives a birthday greeting. As a result, she has Facebook messenger pals all over.

There was no way I could delete all of the people she had added that day, but honestly, I'm glad I didn't.

It's now 2018 and though Mafia Wars ceases to exist on Facebook, through my mother's participation as a gaming mobster, I, too, have met some really interesting people. In fact, I have exchanged holiday greetings through the mail with some.

Who would have thought that an animated game on social media would lead to such long-lasting conversations and friendships?