Call it the FB mania or FBism, the “in-thing” today. Every other person surely has an FB ID whether or not has a Pan ID, Voter ID, Smart Card ID or Passport ID. Be it teenagers, youngsters, the middle aged and now even senior citizens (out of compulsion to be in touch with their NRI children) are all falling into this culture called FB.
I believe what attracts them about Facebook are : F: free; A: advertising of oneself; C: campaigning for one's ideas, with E: entertainment on a B: big scale, giving O: opinions, O: opposing at times and K: knitting strangers.
Facebook provides the free opportunity to advertise oneself by uploading hundreds of photographs; I wonder if any friend would have the time and patience to see all these photos and comment on the same. The most common comments are, “How sweet”, “Awesome pic”, “Excellent pic”, “Soooo sweet” or “Lovely pics”, with hardly even 10 per cent of sincerity and truth in the comment. The sole intention is — I commented on yours, now you comment on mine.
Facebook allows campaigning for one's ideologies through posting uninvited, unsolicited comments, emphasising views and thoughts vehemently and ending up in a war of words between absolute strangers.
But what excites me is the daily status updates. Anything is posted in the name of updating status. Following are some of these: “feeling low today”, “I am having a running nose”, “had idly, vada, sambar and icecream yesterday”, “want to go for a movie”, “made potato curry today.”
Sometimes, the status updates have a picture as well, specially during festivals. A proud display of home made diwali sweets, krishna jayanti sweets and, at times, the daily cooked meals, sometimes accompanied with recipes. And the comments for these are, “I wish I could eat it now”, “looks delicious” (wonder what would happen if the friend really tasted it), “please send it across.”(so that they could skip cooking on that day.)
The most amazing one was the status update of a woman with the ultrasound scan picture of her foetus, posted as her profile picture.What a pity even the unborn is forced to be a part of the facebook!
Last but not the least, the number race for having the highest number of friends lures them into accepting and sending friend requests for and from aliens; however, they may avoid their own relatives fearing breach of privacy. Also, such people have trouble saying “hello” to their neighbours, but the irony is the same neighbours who live just a few yards away are the best of friends on facebook and are found commenting on each other's pictures and perhaps chatting.
God save these jerks! Not excluding myself — a victim of this FB fanaticism. Why this FB veri di?
(The writer's email id is: deepusekhu@gmail.com)
