Face-Off the Book

Every person I meet asks me the same question. They want to know if I am on facebook and if I am then would I accept their friend request. Yes! I will but only after I know them cause facebook, like my little private world, is dotted by the friends I trust.

Facebook had made our world into a narrow space where we get each day connected with our friends, visiting their thoughts on their walls, seeing their pictures, reading their notes, exploring their private space. Did you say private? What private? Who wants privacy? It is more fun to be open about your views. That’s the reason why we are so choosy in the first place and confirm only those friends whom we know.

Sometimes I think about my life during those pre-facebook days. Oh! I did many different things then. Read books, painted in oils, made many handicraft items, made stuff toys, knitted, crocheted, cooked and visited my relatives without any reason, I led a very busy life until this facebook ruined me.

Three years ago, during a private meeting, I heard two of my friends discuss Facebook and they spoke about the fun they were having at this network. I had received many invitations/tags from different people asking me to join this network, but I was reluctant to join yet another social network. I was quite active on Ryze and would read my people’s work on the forums and the extra time that I had, I would spend it surfing the net and maintaining my blogs. I didn’t feel the need to join any more of those social networks. But after listening to my friends discuss their Facebook activities, I was tempted to give it a try. As soon as I logged in, I was surprised to see so many friends lined up, all welcoming me, it was like I was entering a party zone.

During those earlier days, I would visit various groups and read discussions on their board and play many virtual games. I had even written a poem for one of the contests on FB during those days, where we had to start a poem with word ‘Face’ and end it with the word ‘Book’. I had written about my experience on FB then…

Face is potholed by too many pokes
Of friends and families in every nook
Vampires fights, somersaulting werewolf
Frightening shadows of their crazy look


Playing Scrabulous, and other virtual games,
Enjoying cold coffee by the brook
Many summers ago, on a rainy day like this
All I would do, was to just gape at a book

I had attempted six short poems, my favorite was

Face above sand
caught in a blizzard
unprotected, helpless
trapped like a lizard
A joke turned sour
his friends, all gone
if by miracle , he survives
he may write a book

Of course I did not win then, because I couldn’t compete with the talented poets who wrote such beautiful lines.

The first prize for this contest had gone to Tolu Ogunlesi from (Nigeria) for his winning entry called
Instructions


Face the future.
Pick the moon off
the dark, cold floor
of night. Slot it gently
into the earth, and wait.
Nothing might happen.
Just like in an empty book.

I was quite fascinated with different groups and would take part in many such discussions where there would be different interactive word games. I remember making a story with my set of six friends by adding just three words. Each one of us would write just three words in one turn and a long story thus created was really good.

I got addicted to facebook

For many months after that I interacted with my friends (On FB, I had very few friends, I could count them on my fingers and toes) and would envy those who had 700 friend. “700 friends?” I had asked my friend when I saw his friends’ list on Facebook, “Do you really have 700 friends?” and he boasted that all those 700 friends were not mere numbers, they were all real friend. It’s been three years now but I still have not managed to collect 700 friends.

Over the years the popularity of this network has grown. As reported in HT -

If Facebook were a country, it would have a larger population than, say South Africa. This week, the social networking site crossed 500 million users. This means that one out of every 14 people on earth is on Facebook. India’s share is 12 million users, three times the population of Hyderabad, the city where Facebook will open its first Asia office soon.

Who would have thought in 2004, when it was first launched, that it would become so popular? When Mark Zuckerberg started this social network, it was just to share notes with his friends and other students. He and his roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes founded this website whose membership was limited to few students but was later expanded to other colleges in Boston.

The original concept for Facebook was borrowed from a product produced by Zuckerberg's prep school Phillips Exeter Academy, which for decades published and distributed a printed manual of all students and faculty, unofficially called the "face book". (source-Wiki)

Facebook has travelled a long way so have I.

I have more friends now with whom I can communicate and share my notes and my travel albums. I like the comments that are made regularly on my wall and like to interact with everybody. In the real world too, I have become friendlier, although of course, I am still shy of strangers and still never make the first move, I never start a dialogue with strangers. I never talk to my co-passenger while travelling, preferring to read my book, generally, I don’t make friends easily. I talk to only those who will talk to me, and am reserved by nature, but with those whom I have become friendly on FB, I seem to have fun.

Many of my offline friends still remain away from Facebook unless they are writers. Some of them have refused to learn. They wean me away from the internet, insist on meeting me regularly, want to go for long walks with me by the sea-shore or watch a movie, sit together at a coffee shop and have good time. They don’t understand my addiction on net and think I am wasting my time reading the personal views and making unnecessary friendship with people whom I may never meet.

I too am not sure if I will ever meet those online friends.

What does it matter? It’s the happiness that counts and if an unknown face can give us happiness by their expression of their sweet words, we have nothing to lose.

On a rainy day like this, none of my offline friend will visit me. I am stranded in my house in the self imposed curfew, I cook for a me a nice meal, and even enjoy a hot cup of coffee but cooped up in my dingy room only a FB friend can cheer me.

I am participating in the WeBlog's Sleepy Sunday contest! You may read other participating posts HERE

Go Away! I am Busy!!!!!!

Darn! This doorbell…why must this ring? I hate answering doorbells, especially if it is vegetable seller, fruit seller, sweeper, Phone Company or some stupid courier service. I think I prefer snail mails (although they are extinct now-a-days), What I liked about sanil mail was that they would just drop the letters in my letterbox and I would pick it up whenever I feel like it, but with these couriers that are frequent, I have to get up forcibly, wean myself from this huge screen and attend to this courier fellow, take the post, sign a form and take my unimportant mail that is announcing some silly sale, somewhere in the town. (I must remember not to give my address to these boutiques henceforth) why do I need new clothes? I hardly ever go out. Most of my friends are there on the FB. And they don’t care what I wear, I could be wearing just underclothes for that matter…..…who cares!...arrgh… I get very angry when I am on computer playing word twirl or lexulous, trying so hard to think up of a seven letter word and this stupid door bell rings. Or sometimes I am chatting with my friend on Face book, the conversation that I have on face book (with the person whom I have never met) seems to be more important than the phone call that I receive from a family member. I so badly want to end the conversation on the phone to continue talking with my fingers with a friend on other other end of this cable contact. And today, when I was chatting with one of my FB friend, the doorbell rang again…now I am having very interesting conversation, my friend finds me very friendly and jovial and here the door bell is wacking my brain, and I run to my door to answer before her next chat continues, there is this fisherwoman at the door. She sells the best fish in my building and saves me the trip of going to that stinking fish market, but I am afraid that my FB friend will go offline if I take too long in answering her, so even though I so badly need the fish, I tell her bluntly that I don’t eat fish anymore…and run back to my computer. That conversation with the fisherwoman must have taken me only two minutes (just nodding and repeating “no, no, I really don’t want” just five times) but my friend is already offline! I go back to my door to see if I can buy the fish intead, and she has gone too….darn! I will have to go to fish market or skip the fish meal… This internet illness is really eating off my brains. My pots and pans are getting blacker by day, because I remember to keep tea/veggies on the gas for cooking but forget to take it off when it ready and am reminded only when I can feel the disaster through my nose (my maid suggests that I use pressure cooker, now how do I make tea in pressure cooker?) Everyday I promise myself that I will chop off my habit on the net, but hardly an hour goes by with that promise and I am itching to see the red blinker on FB, and like a zombie I am back on this compu chair, Suddenly this red dot (on the FB) has started haunting me, (some times even in my dreams) I so badly want to see those compliments on my FB walls which I secretly hope that my 200+ friends are also reading and forming a good impression about me… i have lately started feeling very proud of myself, posting notes, tagging people and sending virtual gifts with tight squeaky hugs. I m getting to be popular, but I think I am cut off from my real world. I have not seen nor met my neighbor for more that 15 days, I am thinking of inviting my next door neighbor to the face book, that way I will be able to communicate with her, specially when I m short of one onion or potato and I need to borrow in emergency. my virtual friends will not help me there… See what I mean?????