“Wow! 34 likes and 20 comments on my latest pic. I should log out now and will check it afterwards.” This was my last thought of yesterday's night and, at the same time, first thought of today when I opened my eyes at 9.30 a.m. After morning tea, I saw my husband with the Facebook screen on ipod and going towards the bathroom. I was surprised to see such mornings and these real, yet funny incidents pushed me to think and write about what Facebook has done to our life.
Starting FB was limited to its basic characteristic of connecting people with friends and others who live around them but with the ongoing decoration via attractive features like games, events, exciting applications and sharing our life story via Timeline, etc., FB has attained a big role in our life. Nowadays, almost every teen is the proud owner of an FB account; moreover, even kids and older generation follow FB; people connect to it and forget to get disconnected.
FB is a multipurpose tool now. Apparently, an alarm clock for me today! People tend to forget dear ones, memorable dates, but don't worry. FB is here to remind you of special events such as birthdays and anniversaries. Forget telephone or letters, FB is preferred for speedy spread of information — be it on marriage, travel abroad, new addition to the family or details of health, location change in service, mood swings, revealing personal relationships (or even news of getting fired). FB profiles along with photo albums have replaced old-fashioned matrimonial biodata hard copies.
FB has the power to state our value in social world. In today's quick-paced life, everybody tries to manage his/her time so that he/she can devote enough time to facebooking; thereafter, unable to give time to any other critical task. Like one does not have time to call his family members and discuss their plans, but surely has time to post the options on FB and go with the majority; no time to write a letter to the elders back in the village, but has time to upload the latest pictures clicked in their living room ‘randomly.' Updating status with each and every affair of life, irrespective of its necessity, chatting with a person with whom you have never talked and changing the profile picture on a routine basis have become a symbol of one's existence in the network world. And an ever increasing number of friends, comments on ANY post and links (though most of the times meaningless and baseless) add flavour to one's market value in this network world. Here are some crazy FB statuses:
1) Unwanted data like ‘Still wet from the shower'
2) Expressing moods via ‘grrrrrrrrrr..' ‘?????'
3) Illogical Questions like ‘Is it 5:00 yet?'
4) PDA for no good reason ‘OMG he is so chwweett..love you most honey!'
All this addiction to the FB has reached a height urging us to hit the FB link as soon as the computer boots up, despite knowing that the system was opened for some other work. Seeing this magnetised behaviour of the educated masses, cellphone companies have also started to provide a ‘button' on the mobile screen to be pressed only to get connected, i.e., no chance to get unplugged from FB. Also, we see almost every other sited visited daily is also linked to FB. In other words, FB is omnipresent.
(priya.engg03@gmail.com)
