I played a bullshit Star Wars arena game for like two years. 

Mmmm that sounds like hot trash.

I have the same game. I chose emoji's for my balls and there's something so satisfying about popping a whole bunch of them when they're clogged. :) I can't tell you how much time I spent popping these damn balls while I was supposed to be working. 

I finally had to delete it from my phone. The gains were becoming so minimal. It was gonna take me two months to make it to the triangles and I just got mad about it and rage deleted. 

Fucking triangles. When I start feeling like I'll never win I restart everything. There's always that peak and then I forget the game exists and restart again and again. It's my way of sticking it to the man! This game cannot be beat. 

Idk if it counts as trash tier, but I have six years on Clash of Clans. Two accounts, both are hovering near maxing out. 

Also, I've been playing a lot of Bubble Witch saga lately. It's just nice to have something to do with your hands and let your mind check out once in a while. 

That DEFINITELY counts as trash tier. And Bubble witch I'm assuming is match 3 shenanigans?

Match three? Bitch, I be matchin' 30. 

But yeah, no, it's another one of those.

:3

I dunno man I have played a lot of weird ones because the other mobile games that I am addicted to will sometimes have deals with Tapjoy that, if I make it to x level on this other game, I can get like $$$$ premium currency for the game I actually like. 

Like I invested hours into some kind of game that also involved tapping colored balls because it got me like $10 worth of premium currency in one of my otome games lol 

Maybe the real embarrassment is that I have to play low-tier games to keep up with my spending addiction on my top-tier games ....

I think you hit the nail on the head about playing garbage you don't even really like just to get GEMZ in garbage games you do, but, surprise, I've also done this. 

I played stuff from slots to solitaire golf games so I could accumulate points for Line stickers.

And I was kind of obsessed with crane games for a second...

What are Line stickers?

And I assume crane games are just gatchas with all the gameplay just removed and the roulette wheel becoming the whole game. 

Line Stickers are like the Facebook messenger stickers but theres more anime, games, etc. Based ones.

And the crane games are actual claw machines that you can play and get stuff.. and it hooked me in because I got a stuffed chicken!! But then I couldn't stop and I spent too much time watching people.
I was so obsessed, my friends got me a mini claw for Christmas last year.

Hands down, the most embarassing is Design Home:

Is that the game that I was assaulted with ads for for what feels like two years that featured the generic white bald man. 

Just before I reluctantly got a cellular telephone five or six years ago,  I went through a phase of playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook.  I hit a wall where I plateaued with a mouse at around a million points pretty reliably without much spent on powerups.  Then I discovered playing on a smart phone or tablet and hit the 2,000,000 mark for the first time.   Then all my friends who had been remotely competitive with my earlier scores gave up and I was alone,  and without the joy of utterly defiling people I cared about,  it wasn't fun anymore. 

match 3 games are a cancer on the world and in my mind. I refuse to install them because I know exactly what will happen to me. 

The trick is that Blitz rounds only take a minute.  But that minute turns into a minute twenty with powerups.  And there's thirty seconds of intro and outro animation,  and scoring, and then multiply it by twenty because you either do well and don't want to waste a vcd winning streak,  or you do lousy and don't want to end on a dud game. 

Is this like Word Stacks or something? I mean, does that count as a mobile game? (This probably answers my question for me, right? lol)

I dunno! Is word stacks a game laden with ads and microtransactions? if yes, it definitely qualifies.