Growing up in South Dakota was rough. Although I lived in the only big city for dozens of miles, the city was surrounded farmland, so any time I left the city, I felt like I could have been attacked by children of the corn. The state loves corn so much, that they literally built the world’s only Corn Palace, an arena who’s exterior is decorated by corn. Obsessed much?

South Dakota was a bad match for me, because I didn’t like camping, fishing, pheasant hunting (the state bird by the way) or the outdoors in general. I definitely wasn’t a farmer, so I was never of much use to people there. Unfortunately, we did know farmers that were members of our church, so from time to time I was forced into hard labor by my parents on a chicken farm occasionally. We had to wake up at 3 am, drive 40 miles to the closest chicken farm and pluck chickens from their cages. We had to grab their legs, and for some reason, when you did this, they would instantly become submissive mother cluckers. Most of them, anyways. Some would try to peck your legs, or excrete things from their backsides, which is weird, because their eggs also came from there. We would carry them to people on trucks, put them in new cages, and then the farmers would steal all their children and make money by selling them to grocery stores.

Back in 2009, when Facebook was in its tweenager form, they had an awkward phase between being a college student hookup directory, and its current form of megalomaniacal evil corporation. The thing that seemed to keep it afloat at that time was a farming simulation called Farmville. My wife and a bunch of other wives were sucked into playing it. Obviously, I was a much more sophisticated and polished gamer, so of course, I didn’t get sucked in. My sophisticated palate of games were the much more grown up Xbox game that required skill and dexterity to play. Farmville was just addicting enough for the non-casual gamers to stay on Facebook. It also elevated the importance of farming in the eyes of the mommy aged ladies, so that demographic at least cared about farms in general for a little while.

I guess farms are valuable or whatever, because society would end without food, corn mazes and Farmer Wants a Wife. And they are integral to horror movies. Without those big corn combines hunting people down people in cornfields, we may have had to come up with crime ridden city horror movies. And how would Kal-El ever turned into Superman if his space ship landed in the middle of a big city? He would have been experimented on and destroyed before he ever got to play in a football game at Smallville High. We need farms at the very least for fictional superheroes. Without them, we would have to watch garbage like Big City Executive Assistant Needs a Wife.

Obviously, that means we need to interest the younger generation in farming. Luckily, they fell backwards into it without our help. You see, there just so happens to be a trend going on in the teenage bubble right now that us oldy’s just don’t know about. It’s called aura farming. I heard the term on Tik Tok and I was like whattt is this? I went to my reliable source of WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT, Urban Dictionary (ironically to learn about a rural term), to find out what it is, and when it didn’t quite provide the answer to my satisfaction, I had to resort to something that ironically lost me aura points. I had to ask my son.

Of course, he laughed at me, because, of course, I’m already a year behind in the slang, but I had to know. First he explained the aura part, which I am familiar with, which they just describe as your level of coolness. When you add the phrase farming, that involves gaining levels of coolness by doing stuff and things to gain aura points. However, if you try too hard, you are considered “aura farming” too hard and you lose aura points.

It’s almost like the younger generation just steals everything from video games. Leveling up, HP, aura, all those things come from video games. I guess when we raise them on video games, it becomes inevitable that they steal from the medium we raised them on.

Since they are now familiar with farming aura, it’s an easy transition from aura farming to real farming. We just trick them into real farming, by telling them it’s a game and they gain aura by doing it. It’s actually quite devious, which I am happy to be. We could also tell them that if they start a farm they could be on a reality show called Farmer Wants a Wife, and if they want to level up even more, they can go to chicken farm and distribute chickens from one cage to another. To level up even more, they do a job and we will let them live in a palace, a Corn Palace to be more specific.

We might have to be subtle, or we could just stick a VR headset on them, and make them think they are playing a game called Farmville or another game, but in order to beat the final boss, they have to complete real life tasks, like getting a job.

It’s all about motivation people. If they think of real life as a game, then we might be able to trick them enough so that they eventually do it just to gain “aura” points. Then we can expand from aura farming to aura manufacturing, aura corporate, aura human resources, and even aura retail clerks. It just might work, but we have to start now, because if we don’t, then they will never visit the aura old folks home and take care of me when I get old.

While I’m busy plotting the future for our kids, you should at least view some Bitter Friday Giftures. I promise you will gain more aura points for it.

When I grew up in South Dakota…

Anytime I left the city…

The state loves corn so much…

South Dakota was a bad match for me…

Though growing up…

If you know anything about chickens…

In its awkward stage, Facebook tried to popularize farming….

We may have a way to popularize farming…

It’s a new form of farming…

If we can trick them…

Then we may be able to trick them…

By telling them its…

Then we just expand aura farming…

You’re Welcome.

ARRRGGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Aura Farming Ben