Disclaimer: This article is not an attempt to project a condescending or rude attitude towards facebook but merely a sarcastic and rather funny observation on one of the most popular social networking sites.

One of the comments I read on a blog really caught my eye the other day. It said it’s such a relief Mark Zuckerberg has married long time lover Priscilla Chan because he will probably have less time to revamp facebook every one week now. The popularity of this sought after social networking site is not oblivious to anyone but the question is what do people do on facebook?

A lot of young people have created facebook as an alternate reality, a pseudo zone and what they do on facebook has given ‘wannabe-ism’ a new meaning all together . More than facebook it seems to be paving way to fakebook- I mean the rest of the world is really not interested in what you do every minute of your life courtesy status updates via the new blackberry messenger. The dire longing for social approval or belonging has manifested itself in forms that I can’t imagine even Zuckerberg coming up with. But well then you need to give creative credits (read plagiarism) to all those sappy and overtly romantic statuses that lovers manage to come up with for their ‘’baby (s)’’! Now that the founder has found marital bliss he could probably log into his own site and find something constructive to impress Chan thanks to the cheesy pick up lines guys and girls inflict on each other (inflict because if you do not read them with proper spellings and punctuations they neither make sense nor serve the purpose of actually impressing the other sex). Adding a thousand people on your profile for popularity is really not ‘’kewl’’ and neither is using Picasa/ Photoshop for your profile picture with a tagline that reads ‘’don’t dare to mess with MEH’’ (Trust me with a line like that nobody wants to).  Thinking that your cool does not really make you cool, all it makes you is an ‘oxymoron’!  The point here is that a lot of youngsters have created another self of themselves, the kind that is acceptable to others. Ironically the culmination of facebook is from face and book and the social networking site is used for exactly the contrary. For a face that is not yours, implying a created avatar of your individual self and steeping kids away from the literal books! And so while people log out from the site that is’’ free and always will be ’’ they are unable to logout from their constructed reality.

Then there is another set of people who have found a recluse from their boredom in the form of ‘Farmville’ or ‘Mafia wars’. It makes me wonder how serious these people must be about growing crops and feeding animals. Then there is another set who post regular updates about nationalistic causes (some genuine and others only bragging about associations with Anna Hazare), engagements with NGO’s, promoting brands, movies and the list goes on. While some are only at it for the sake of it, a lot of facebook users have found a perfect place for marketing and advertising. While some anti-social elements have found this as the perfect spot for their ulterior motives, there are some more, like me, who have genuinely found this as a way to re-connect with old folks and share views and pictures.

With a plethora of activities to indulge in on this virtual world, the ‘facebook blues’ seem to have stirred up quite a storm. Literally.

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Hansa Malhotra
www.creativaindia.com