Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Not-So-Simple life

Usually, I am not the one to complain against any kind of socializing. Online or otherwise. I see nothing wrong with keeping in touch with old friends, flames and seeing how they are doing occasionally. Its when we become celebrities due to this networking that it becomes a slight issue. For the ones who are slow or having a particularly taxing work day, I am talking about Facebook.

This voyeuristic networking website has caught everyone’s fancy. And aunt, uncle, Tommy and Pinky are logging on to socialize (even if aunt and uncle last stepped out of the house in the 40’s, Tommy cant get his underwear on right and Pinky is still wetting her bed with alarming regularity)Now, like I said lets not get judgmental. Basically, everyone enjoys the scenery while they take their ego trip.

Funny thing is, Facebook can also quickly send the ego hurtling down to the ankles. And have other socio-economic consequences. Let me explain with a list. Don’t shake your head, if you are reading this you know how fond I am of lists.

So, here goes:

Social ladder climbing front

So, everyone goes to everyone elses profile and furtively checks out how many friends they have. If they are friends and have more friends, jealousy pops its head and an immediate resolve is made to go out and socialize in the real world. If they are ex flames, you hope they dont have as many friends. A lot of gloating happens in the case you have some friends on your list who kept in touch with you and ignored your bitter half. If you don’t like them, and they have more friends, you murmur some expletives and wonder why people just add other people to their list when they have met for all of 3 mins in the urinal. Atleast that’s how you justify their popularity.

The war of the profile pics

They can be sexy, cute, naughty and disgusting. Some very cool people think putting up pics of the back of their head, their fingers or their nostrils or something as inane will improve their dismal social status. They are also mislead, by the schizophrenic voice in their head, that this will add some mystery to them and make them a chick magnet (or cock magnet, as the case may be). Personally, I think these guys attract more friend requests from barbers, cannibals and nose haircutting equipment salespeople. But, I could be wrong. Some people think the world needs to know their marital status and will put up pics of them, their family and grandparents and sometimes their neighbours (coz they could be the reason they have a family). Profile snaps with more than one person should be banned.

The status message scheming

So, everyone needs to know what you are doing at any time of the day. At work, eating, reading, pissing other people off with constant updates or whatever. Others, as is the case with blogs, will use big words, stupefying their friends and making a sentence that is completely incomprehensible. Others will put dots. Which I think is suppose to mean something. Others will say “is”. You would think you know that they exist, their updated facebook status evidence of that, but no, they will say it. Thanks, I guess, we were starting to think you “were”.

Celebrity pains

If you are on facebook, you might as well put up pics of yourself. Doing stuff. So, all your friends around the world know what you are upto, who you are hanging out with and how high your hemline was. Some unedited pics also reveal a lot more. But, that aside, I have realized pics on the website raise you to the status of semi-celebs. And while those guys have designers falling all over themselves to dress them, we have no one. Now, the pics are online, so everyone has seen us in some clothes. And no girl worth her fashion sense would wear the same clothes. Recession means we are all down to tattered panties, so buying new clothes isn’t an option. Whats a girl to do?

As anyone would do is such a fragile situation, I have found a solution to the issue. That would be to not put up pics.

I have obviously given this issue a lot of thought. And in the light of the options, I say we all go offline, into the real world and get a life.

Now, where was that sheep again?

2 comments:

Joe Pinto said...

My dear Mansi,

Stick to the real world. And pick the people you want to be with. FB is a convenience, no more no less that the post of old.

I've included your blog in the list of "Blogs I care about" on my blog. Have a look, I have included blogs by many other students from SIMC and other places where I teach in Pune.

Warm regards,
- Joe.
Warm regards,
- Joe.

kedarnath gupta said...

found the bit about profile pics really funny. it's so true, the my-friends-and-me snap. fb should try the indian way - 'affix passport size photo here'