All you Facebook lovers, hope you’re reading.

After years of being tormented by email spam for enlarging my penis, winning a million dollars, finding the man I will marry over an online dating site, donating money for the kid who’s suffering from a severe ailment or being part of some ridiculous spiritual chain mail, it’s time for the monsters of ‘social networking’.

Now, I don’t deny that ‘Facebook’ has been a boon in this age of digital revolution, but I guess there are always the downsides to everything that looks oh-so-great on the outside.

Take for instance, when you have been desperately avoiding conversation with that weird guy in office, he decides to add you on Facebook. Let’s say, he’s nailed you right in, leaving you with little to no choice than accepting his ‘friend request’. I mean, it’s just stupid to tell someone I haven’t logged in, in a while, when he can practically see everything you’re doing on your screen. Gees’!

Oh! And have I told you about my 12-year old nephew who’s on Facebook? Well, so is his Grandfather. As if having ‘my’ father on Facebook wasn’t enough. So yes, my parlour lady, my dog’s vet, my ex’s ex, that random guy I asked for directions this morning, and the random guys I have never asked or spoken to about anything, all wanting to be my friend on Facebook.

This ‘social networking’ should do a lot to inflate my ego, right? Well, not always. Especially not when someone tags a picture of you, because they look fabulous in it. But oh hell, I look like I could totally win the first place in a ‘King Kong Reborn’ contest.

Photographs form an essential part of these networking sites. So much so that people love to pose and click now-a-days, just to be seen on Facebook. Nothing wrong with that. But it can get a little ugly when people post mushy pictures with their respective lovers all over Facebook without realising that their ex is still their ‘friend’. Well, if you think that’s discomforting, ever heard of people breaking up over Facebook? That happens too. And what follows is sheer pandemonium. There are status messages posted about how ‘Men/Women suck!’ or ‘Relationships are nothing but a fickle person’s imagination’ or ‘Look at me, I’m so depressed, falling in love is the worst thing I could do’. I mean, people, get a life. Clearly ‘that’ person doesn’t care a dime, if you feel that way. And trust me, all the others who you haven’t seen in the last ten years in person, don’t either.

Well, I guess ‘status messages’ have their way. There will be those who will post, ‘I’m super busy today’ which often makes me wonder, that they still had the time to post it on Facebook. And then there are those who constantly bore you with the ‘I want chocolate’ or ‘I just hurt my toe’ or ‘I’m too sleepy’ or ‘I miss my sweetiepie’ or ‘I’m having a bad hair day’ or ‘I just installed a new chip in my computer’. Yawn!

Talking of status messages, I need to give special mention to the horrendous typo brigade or to those who torture us with the ‘nyce / gurl / kool’ language. I mean how retarded is that? These so-called ‘cool’ spellings don’t even reduce the number of alphabets, if your excuse is convenience. Any other excuse is strictly disregarded. But the ones I despise the most, are the ones who don’t really think twice about lifting a quote over the Internet and using it as their own. Now, if Oscar Wilde or Williams Wordsworth were alive, apart from their love for writing, they would have a lot more in common. Being in Coma for instance.

And then there are those people, who really don’t know when to press the ‘like’ button. Imagine someone, hitting the ‘like’ button on your message that reads, ‘Rickshaw drivers are sick. One of them just killed a dog before my eyes’. My response to that, keeping all that fake politeness this social networking site expects us to follow would be, ‘Can I kill you, Sir, please?’

Oh, and also the ones who will post something and ‘like’ it themselves. I mean, why would you even post something that you don’t like?

And what do I have to say about the guys who love flooding my wall with Farmville, Fishville, Café World and some other crap that I don’t give a damn about? Well, how I wish, I could just run a bull-dozer over all their crops, fry those fish and have it for lunch or just burn down their café. Stop bugging me with those requests now, will you?

So well, yeah, Facebook is that one common ground where the self-obsessed, the sympathy craving, the show-offs, the depressed and the gender benders, all live happily ever after. Happy Facebooking.

Advertisement