The Facebook Bug

Long long ago, I was a facebook fan. Now I hardly use it, for in my opinion, it has failed to serve its purpose for me. Not that I really had a direction and purpose, and aim and all that when I signed up for it.But generally speaking, on the whole, it bores me to death. I don’t have anything to say to people I hardly ever talk to, no photos to upload, no funny comments to pass, and don’t find the incessant need to let every Tom, Dick and Harry in the world know what I’m doing every minute of my day.
So, I pondered long and hard, and studied the users- namely my friends, and the friends of friends on my list, and realized I could neatly categorise them. Of course, there will be resemblance to living characters in this categorization, and it isn’t coincidental. But I mean it in good humor, rather wry, I should say. So request it to be read in a similar tone.

Well, the first category of people include the newly weds, the newly engaged, and the to be couples. They’d look and appear normal to the naked eye, but then suddenly there would appear a change in the relationship status to “ is single” , followed by “in a relationship” , to prove that nothing was going on before he/she met her/him. Yeah right, like we don’t know. And then there would be atleast 30-40 comments depending on his/her popularity showering with compliments/comments and the likes. Soon to appear would be “ is engaged”, with the photos of the beaming couple. And again, the same people would say the same things, in slightly different ways- “Congrats! You guys look so cute!”.The only difference being in the differential placement of commas and fullstops.And not to mention, the winkey smileys. ;) The flowchart repeats itself a month or two later after the wedding. And the honeymoon snaps. So, I have two pertinent questions here.
1. I don’t have much experience personally, but my cousins have got married, so I’ve seen weddings in close quarters. How in the world do you find time to update the fb status during the wedding or the preceding/following days?
2. As a friend, and well wisher, am I required to wish/congratulate on very status change- from ‘is single to ‘is honeymooning’? What is the norm, here? How many times is normal, and when does it become jobless/stalking?

Moving on to the second category, are the newly emigrated desis in the US of A, and other cleaner neighbourhoods of Mother Earth. They simply cant get enough of the cleanliness there, I presume, because all we are made to see is pictures of them stating- “Me in front of the tower”, “Me at some waterfall”. I suppose you get my drift. Sometimes, there are empty pictures of valleys, and flowers and rivers. By empty- I mean bereft of people. Even the titles of the albums are predictable. Everyone has an album called “fun times” or fun tymes”, “random” etc.

The third, the most irritating category is the ones who play Farmsville. I get nightmares because of Farmsville. “ A dolphin has been found abandoned, do you want to adopt it?”
Really now. That ranks priority one on my task list for the day. Adopting a virtual dolphin that some other virtual member abandoned on a virtual universe. Perfect start. I am sure there are other equally irritating games, but I’m quoting the most obvious.
Other nauseating tools include the ‘virtual poke’ that has been used, misused and abused so much that its like chalk on the blackboard. They have died down, a lot, though since the conception. But some people still stick to it. I don’t know why.
Posting Youtube videos is another fad. Especially of babies doing weird things. The video of some baby doing a dance for “hips don’t lie” is still doing the rounds. And the absolutely unimaginative, predictable clichéd ‘Awww’ that follows soon after!

The fourth is the ones afflicted with a serious disease/affliction. The ones who update their status every other minute. Everything they do, remotely funny, or interesting is up in a jiffy!Ever since I saw a Criminal Minds episode that dealt with a virtual stalker who used fb status updates to murder women, I cringe at every seemingly useless piece of information that is unwittingly put up. Like they say- “the internet never forgets”.

There is another set that deserves special mention. Posting extremely obvious statements on someone’s wall, and pretending to be the only ones who understand the ‘secret’. People aren’t dumb, you know. Besides, when all the girls suddenly say ‘red’ or ‘blue’ or some other color, its pretty obvious what you’re talking about/or what you want the other person to think of it. I can almost hear the giggles when I read such threads. There would be a discussion of a rather private matter on a public domain, a lot would have been said, and then suddenly one party would realize and say- “sent you a mail!”. Duuh. Couldn’t you guys have done that before? Heard of Chat engines? Gtalk/YM etc?

Well, since I unknowingly chose to be a medical graduate, and decided to stay in India, it follows that I do not fall under any of the aforementioned categories. So I really don’t know what to do on facebook. So I open the page everyday, look at some colours, and sign out.