The great hackeroo

Ellen Degeneres, said recently about her 1000th show, “It’s kinda overwhelming. We started in 2003, and that was a whole different world. For one, there was no Facebook. So if you had to poke someone, you had to do it the old-fashioned way.”

It got me wondering about my Facebook dependence and the ‘friends’ I had acquired through it. I do find it useful, at least right now, to chronicle my infant’s movements, post photos and status messages (literally). I realise documentation is important, as sometimes you can totally lose track of time and then wonder where the baby days have gone (I have no evidence of mine except three photos). And then one day, you realise he has an account too, and has sent you a friend request (it has happened to my friends).

Of course, to make me feel like a non-junkie, I routinely go through the exercise of deleting
 a) Those who I don’t really know (and funnily enough, there are several of those)
b) Those who have nothing to say to me, for then, I wonder if they are just being voyeuristic about my life
 c) Those who I have a strict work-relationship with, for I wonder what they are doing popping up in my leisure zone.

Otherwise, I am no cyber vulture, and I still send hand-written notes to people once in a while, so may be I am just in the wrong era (there are several other reasons why I feel thus, but we will go into that some other time). But what totally flabbergasted me was a recent text message I received from a random (who, incidentally had made it to my ‘friends’ list by some quirk of fate). The message read:

“A really mean and vicious hacker got into my Facebook account and deleted it. He (I don’t know why women always get the benefit of doubt) has deleted my personal email accounts also. So when you see my name is not on your friends list, you know why. I can’t make any new accounts until the Mumbai police cyber crime cell doesn’t arrest him. Please inform any common friends on my Facebook disappearence. I am feeling really, really sad and violated and I request you to avoid such a thing happening to your loved ones.”

A few days later, I got this one:

“While the hacker hasn’t been nabbed yet, I got my Facebook back!

It gets better. Another contact was allegedly ‘reported’ for having too many Facebook IDs, and her account was closed. She was shattered, to say the least, and went about several attempts to get her account (and her social life) back. She actually made desperate calls to California (yes!) to get it reactivated, and they finally complied. “Imagine, all my friends, my pets, my albums are there. What will I do?,” she cried.

Poke! Poke!

Cat out of the bag

“Tell me all about Wriggly,” ordered Pooja as she hugged me. “Where did you meet, how does he look, how long have you been together, tell me all….now!”

I was a little taken aback. I was meeting her after three years, so I assumed all questions would be about me. “Okay, I’ll show you his picture,” I resigned, and beamed her the display on my mobile…

Stunned silence…. “A cat…..!!!!”

“Yes, what did you think?”

“I thought Wriggly was your boyfriend…, “ she said, despondent.

“You think I would date a guy named Wriggly?” I was chuckling by now, about my cat being out of the bag.

‘So what? You have a name like Lalli…that’s silly enough…”

It all came together. Pooja had been following my Facebook status updates, where Wriggly featured as the latest love of my life. He incidentally is a rambunctious kitten, recently adopted by my best friend and has turned our collective lives upside down. Yes, I am guilty of status messages like “Lalita is wondering what to wear to her date with Wriggly tonite” or “Lalita is unable to stop thinking about Wriggly” or “Lalita is distraced by Wriggly” or “Lalita is wondering when she can squeeze Wriggly again…

Surely, she couldn’t be thinking I was writing about my beau! I mean, what kind of person would put their love lives on Facebook?

Turns out, it is not as implausible it seems to be. Because, weirder things happen on this superficially effervescent networking site. A friend’s boyfriend who has never made any conversation with me in real life, inundates my wall, my super wall, my funwall and god knows what else, with random messages all the time. Some randoms want me to take the ‘sex appeal quiz’ and the stalker quiz and ‘how alike we are’ quiz and the ‘likeness unrated’ (find your inner criminal) quiz. Others want me to answer their questions and share movie tastes or share their garden or hatch their eggs or something equally absurd. I have been guilty of succumbing to a few of these advances, before I realised how silly and distracting it all was.

I feel like saying, dudes and dudelets, I don’t know how you made it here, but I don’t really ‘know’ you, so I have no reason to know how like or unlike we are, or to evaluate which one of us has more sex appeal. I am very confident in that department, thank you!
Yes, but I am guilty of adopting a pet, playing scrabble and learning my chess moves, because I think, might as well use the services of people who can teach you some skills. And why not?

As for the rest who are oh-so-random or just oh-so-inactive, I just want to know, if I delete them quietly, will they receive a notification that they have been deleted? Because that might be a tad rude, even for a superficial medium like Facebook. Someone please let me know. I am clearing the clutter, and yes, that is my current status update.


.

Facebooked out!

It will perhaps go down in my book as the most short-lived, yet the most intense relationship I ever had. Facebook and I are almost over, and all it took was less than two weeks.

Let me begin at the beginning. To be fair, I had my doubts, when the beau sold it to me as 'a fun way to stay in touch with so many friends at the same time' when I was leaving for the States. He said, "Even if you are not thinking about them, you know that they are thinking about you..." Wait a minute...I asked myself... Is there anyone you want to be in touch with that you are not already in touch with? The answer was no. Do you really care about those you are not in touch with? The answer was no. Are you seriously 'looking' for new friends? The answer was still no.

I guess I am at that point in my life when I have reached just the optimum level of friends that I could handle. I Secondly, I was the type who never really succumbed to the collective seductions of ICQ, IM, Orkut and other such networking delights. So I wondered how different this could be.

Yet, I yielded. It's funny what just two days out of a daily 32-page newspaper rut and endless stretches of time and good weather can do to you. And before I knew it, I was Facebooked out of my mind.

I registered and filled in my details. I sent out invitations to friends, some randoms and some not-so-randoms, I added photos, I filled up activities, interests, books, music and other trivia that 'define me'. To add a dash of social consciousness, I also added causes that define me.
Then suddenly, my cousin threw an omelette at me. And then a dear friend threw a sheep. The beau's words came back to me.."They are thinking about you even when you are not thinking about them...." Hmmmm..this is how...
I decided that since I am not a lurker, I had to go all the way. I did, and made it my full-time occupation. I wrote on people's walls, sent them beers, cocktails, joined food fights, stroked and fed their pets, got bitten and turned into a zombie, got bitten and turned into a vampire, threw tomatoes, pancakes and ketchup at others, and had shrimp, and pickles thrown at me, And before I knew it, my cup had runneth over, and my friend list was burgeoning.

I have sent people pigs and teapots, Porsches and even Johhny Depp as presents.
I have shared my thoughts, moods, pictures.... I have peeped into other's thoughts, moods, pictures.
After ten days of poking, hugging, tickling, spanking, kickboxing, karatechopping, biting people, tagging them in photos, asking them to join my causes, and sending them free beers and cocktails, writing on their walls and even getting into food fights with them, I am utterly and completely bored,
I have been poked by strangers and bitten by people I barely know. I have unearthed cousins and bamboozled dear friends to get on it. I even managed to convince the brother, who has suddenly turned into a 'private person' after being one of the crusaders of icq at a certain point.
What was I thinking?

The good thing is that unlike a real relationship, it is so undemanding and open ended that you don't even have to break up..you can stay ambivalent all your life and no one will know any better because they are busy throwing sheep and sucker punching each other.
To those who have managed to resist the urge--may the force be with you. To those who are still addicted, well, may be there will soon be Facebookaholics Anonymous, and I will be there to help you zone out...