Face Book Effect

Since my recent post, The Art of Choosing to Copy, I am seriously as shit scared as Amrish Puri in Barood when an avenging Akshay Kumar wants to burn him to death (Yes I watched that movie 3 times over!), as I seem to have got into this nasty habit of stealing titles of popular books for my own blog posts. And with yet another ripped-off book title used for this post, I am certain, that I will be inflicting myself with nightmarish dreams in which I am summoned by the court for infringing copyrights and eventually made to buy luxury cars for authors and build amusement parks for their kids.

But since I love my blog readers and have pledged to give them the most apt content, I am prepared to allow my utterly pleasurable dreams of having candle-light dinner with Salma Hayek to be replaced by a rather intimidating lawyer having a grubby moustache and yelling right into my ear drums.

So what is this Facebook Effect? It is the torment that I have invariably put myself to ever since I created my profile on Facebook. I accept that my only intention of joining Facebook, after I got back to blogging, was to pimp my blog and fill walls of friends with graffiti containing my blog’s links. But the plan simply couldn’t take off as I was stumped by a usurious number of available features and FB applications just waiting for me to click and convey exactly the unintended message. So while I thought to “poke” was to vent out my long suppressed grudges against my ex-girlfriends’ new boyfriends, they thought I was g@#! It made me feel as if I was from the oldie orkut generation unable to adapt to FB, the same way my dad was befuddled handling my new hi-tech mobile while I shamelessly laughed at him. Life does come back a full circle.

Also, it’s of much concern that my rather disturbing comments on my ex-girlfriend’s picture with her new boyfriend, could pop up in my friend’s mom’s FB account. And this is exactly why I feel FB is a hell of a scary place. Now its no difficult for my boss to know that I wasn’t on leave because of gastroenteritis but because I was vacationing in Matheran, pics of which my so very dear friends have pushed up the Top News feature with their countless “Likes”.

I was also shocked to see a Facebook App offering people, my concern… girls, opportunities to answer rather disturbing and appalling personal questions about me. I have received responses on whether I could do 20 pushups (a suspicion on my masculinity), whether I have smelly feet, something about yellow mellow and whether I would ever like to have kids someday and eat them for dinner. Ok the eating kids part isnt true. But I hope you get the drift. The most useless part of the questionnaire though was a question that asked whether I was smarter than George Bush. But after having read this, I am convinced that George Bush has an IQ of that of a Cheese Burger and hence receiving an affirmative answer to the aforementioned question does not impart any sense of accomplishment to me.

As if all this wasn’t enough, I also had to attend to a friend request from a girl who claimed to be my classmate in my first grade. First Grade! I can’t remember even the face of my grumpy headmaster, whom I so often imitated. And here is a girl, who, with only a name and a profile picture at her disposal, recognized me 20 years later! Failing to remember her, for a brief moment I was suspicious that I might have been suffering from an early attack of Alzheimer’s. But she soon confessed that her remembering me was not just akin to the super-cop-like-memory she possessed, but that she actually had a crush on me back in my 1st grade. And that she still remembers the teensy-weensy me who hopped onto the backseat of my dad’s yellow bajaj chetak scooter, oscillating like a pendulum while my dad rode away. She also evoked some of my dark memories, reminding me that back then I was a shy kid who would run away and hide behind a tree if a girl tried to talk to me. This has further strengthened my belief that FB is a scary place and such chance encounters with people you meet after 20 full years could bring back agonizing memories of your childhood.

Apart from all the above issues, I also have to now deal with a friend who is upset because I didn’t accept his invitation to add myself as his neighbour in some silly online game called Farm Ville where you grow tomatoes and pumpkins all day.

So in conclusion, my advent on Facebook hasn’t been very peaceful and I am seriously considering looking back into my offline life rather than prying on FB profiles of my school toppers only to find out that they are still doing better than me…!

EDITED LATER: If you liked the blog post, you might also want to check out its video translation that I have put up here: Shocking Salma Hayek Video.