Let's all get Baked in YoVille!

Greetings, all readers of Key City. You'll know me as "Vdogg".

In my early days I was a weird kid; few friends, always in a little world of my own making where I was some kind of hero, unlike real-life. But now, I'm weirder than ever and I'm here to make my mark on this planet. I will do so by making people think, wasting their time and writing silly entries right here on Key City. Without further introduction, let's begin!

The Yo-Ville Brownie

The 7-Eleven gas station chain is a well-versed marketing player. Some years ago they "transformed" several select locations into "Quik-e Marts", a fictional convenience store from the popular cartoon "The Simpsons". They did so by adding interior decorations as well as exterior signage which masked the existing 7-Eleven signs. They also created and marketed rare cartoon-world-based goods for sale at those stores. If I remember correctly, they had some kind of cereal and Duff-Cola.

In 2010, 7-Eleven has teamed up with a company called Zynga. Zynga is one of the few companies out there around the same time who capitalize on people's being bored at work. Actually, bored at home too. The company makes online games where people have some kind of social interaction while playing. Essentially, the user would complete tasks and spend a kind of "energy" which could be replenished by time and by monetary donations and clicks to sponsors. The social network site Facebook is the host to Zynga's addictive varieties of online timewasters. The lawsuit trail suggests that this market is fiercely competitive between at least 2 major companies knocking off their competition's games for quicker money. YoVille is one such game made by Zynga.

The unique viral nature of online marketing has transcended the virtual boundary and made its way into our-level physical world as this work of art. Suddenly an online game business necessitates the need for recipes, packaging art, people who have to deliver the products, etc. What 7-Eleven did was sell edible products with special packaging which designated them to come from "FarmVille" or "YoVille". Radio ads were played encouraging shoppers to check out a 7-Eleven for an official "FarmVille" product.

One such product is this "Baked in YoVille Brownie". This brownie is very interesting and cutely racist due to several attributes. Its individual units are laid out inside bigger containers with a picture of a Brown person on it. So let's get this straight, there's a Yo-ville where brown brownies come from? The appropriate title of the product is "Baked IN YoVille". So now we got a brown guy selling, eating and getting high off brown brownies baked by brown people. It also does not say much for the town of YoVille, implying everyone there is a drug user. And a brown one at that. However, the startling revelation on the back of the individual container completely put all doubts aside as to whether it's all a big coincidence: the brownie contains exactly 420 calories! No joke!

Anyways, the marijuana aspect of this is completely benign to me. What irks my soul a small bit is how they made marijuana a brown-person's habit! Hey, let me be clear, marijuana is for everyone! No specific race, gender or creed need be excluded from our one big global melting Pot! Shame on you, Zynga. If it were "Brownies baked in FarmVille" and "Swisher Sweets rolled in YoVille", I think nobody would be offended. Wait a sec..