“You haven’t liked my FB photo,” stabs the message of an acquaintance.
“Oh, I’ve had a tough, tough week – so busy, so –”
“I posted it on the weekend.”
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I scramble around for excuses, citing excruciating partial blindness, an inability to focus, and am reaching the point when I was wheeled into Casualty when my phone pings with, “But you liked Reba’s picture of her dog!”
Caught! Convicted! Hung! Social media crushes one under such unfair pressure. Surely, you’d have to invest half the morning scrolling through every friend’s holiday pictures, kid’s pictures, ‘view-from-my-window’ pictures. And then she posts one in the evening, and you miss it, and she never forgives you.
Having suffered the onslaught of many such unfair accusations, I have framed easy rules to become a social media emperor.
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1. Like everything. Everything. Scroll down the feed on Facebook, clicking every thumbs-up you come across. (I noticed, remarked a friend, that you liked my post, but loved Alyssa’s). Graduate ASAP to hitting the heart button, not the thumbs-up. (“You loved my post about being eve-teased; how could you?”)
2. Post pictures yourself as a serve-and-volley tactic. Post anything at all. Post what you ate for breakfast, the fly that sat on what you ate for breakfast, the lizard that snapped at the fly that sat on... et cetera. Make a list of those who do not like it instantly, and use this info to counter-assault them. “What, my lizard wasn’t good enough for you to like?”
3. Moving on to WhatsApp, which is even more unforgiving. Send a smiley whenever you enter. It doesn’t matter which forward has just sailed past. No one reads it any way. You just have to be seen appreciating the forward, or the person who sent the forward, or the lizard who snapped at the fly who sat on the breakfast of the person who sent the forward. (You’re getting the picture now, aren’t you?)
4. As soon as you spot a post on some group, cross-pollinate it on another. Start with rose-stuffed “Good Morning” messages, followed by laborious jokes and patriotic diatribes. Forward at least three TEDx talks about the future of our planet, or anything that shows how scintillatingly prescient you are. You’re practically standing on stage with Simon Sineck, scattering pearls of wisdom.
5. And now come the cardinal sins. What you must never ever do. Never exit a WhatsApp group – you’re leaving your back open to fire (“We are too common for her?” “Did you notice her love-handles?”) Don’t agree with Trump, don’t disagree with Modi. Don’t ever think freedom of expression means freedom of expression.
If this helps you, send it to 10 people who will be struck by lightning if they don’t forward it in the next hour.
Where Jane De Suza, the author of Happily Never After, talks about the week’s quirks, quacks and hacks.