I once updated my FB status with this - "Gmail.com and Facebook.com - that sums up the internet for me!". An honest confession liked by 2 and commented by 1 on the lines of "same here". And after all the social networking frenzy has mellowed down, the statement I made is just a mirror to the stark reality. Sure you have many options to engage online, but at the end of the day it comes down to just one person - you.
Its a desperate measure to break out of the monotonous, boring lives we lead nowadays. We want to escape this life and get into a virtual one which is equally pretentious. How many of us would put things onto their profiles that they really mean? Are we really the person we say we are? The very basis of our "online" friendships starts with a lie. How far do you expect it to take you?
When I first created my FB profile, I was unsure about what I'd put on it. Just some basic info to start with, and then later I added my likes/dislikes, what I read, what I watch etc. But that was quite a while back. My choices have changed over time and I no longer care to update my profile either. So if you sent me a friend request after going through my profile, sorry my not-yet-a-friend, its a different me now!
For a while it was good to get in touch with old friends and lost contacts, make new ones, strike some interesting conversation et al. The "status" updates made it convenient to let everyone know what you were up to. But it irks me now when I see all the updates. No I don't want to know what you are having for breakfast, I don't want to know what good time you are having on the weekend nor how boring was your work the week before that. I need a dialog to keep in touch with my friends and not become a FM receiver for your chatter. And when you run out of status updates of your own, you borrow URLs, bit.ly them, put them up on your profiles and irk me even more!
I'd like a have an "Unlike" button please. Coz that little "Like" button is probably the most abused thing on FB. I put up an update, someone 'likes' it and puts in his comments. Someone else 'likes' my status and the commented message as well! Is it like a popularity meter? The more hits on "like", the more popular you are in the FB fraternity. I swear I have seen this as well .... "sob! sob! my goldfish died!" followed by 3 likes!! That poor fish did manage to make some enemies in its tiny lifespan. I suspect the culprit is one of these three people.
Gaming soon took social networking to a whole new level. There would hardly be a soul who hasn't heard of Farmville. It got me hooked onto it too soon and for too long. I was addicted to this crazy virtual farming game. I would spend hours buying grains, ploughing my fields, growing crops and vegetables in my quirky little avatar which I must admit looked much like me. It ought to, because I had spent endless hours, fiddling with its looks to near perfection. It hit me one day, that I was spending too much of my time and energy on Farmville, when I had planted seeds that bore fruit in two hours, which then would sell for a profitable amount. I would literally log in in every two hours, carry out my chores, make the money and let the new crop flourish for the next two hours, until I log in again! And it wasn't just me. All my virtual neighbors were doing just the same!! Since then, I have given up my career in virtual farming and trying to return to a normal life, which was an uphill task since now I was faced with a dilemma - whether to tend to my new zoo or make myself a fish aquarium!!! For all that its worth, it was fun while it lasted.
I was once a faithful Orkut user. But then FB came along. Everyone jumped onto the FB bandwagon, and so did I. Pretty soon it was R.I.P Orkut. Tomorrow some new killer social networking site will come into being and send FB into oblivion. People will blindly follow suit. Recreate their profiles and start from scratch in a new "exciting" virtual world which will be the in-thing at the time. You might look at new requests on that site and wonder "Hey don't I know this guy from facebook? He was on my friends list, but we never really got to know each other." You would want to decline the friendship because it never really meant anything. But then say "what the heck!"... and click "Accept". Rejoice. Your "network" just got larger.
