Why I want to hate Facebook

You are connected - this appears to have become the punchline of the present of our digital world. And the talisman behind this very renewed idea of connecting a single person (or in digital language 'user') to the entire pool of information in the world filled up by other singular reflective beings of the society, was the internet. the idea was simple - you will get plugged into this world. or this is a world which can only be when plugged in. you will enter, watch, learn, take and after a point give. the idea was simple - combine the economical idea of the ancient business idea of give and take with the Marxist notions of equality, individuality, supreme power to the individual. And the internet talked about doing just that - we would have search engines replace encyclopedias, online blogs replacing newspapers, you could argue if you want on an idea in this, and more so give an idea to the other - at no cost, be it economical or personal. And this did win - this had to win, the past twenty odd years witnessed the rise of the internet, which I would like to call as the modern age revolution. This was the world where absolutely everything worked on to get perfect. Whilst the world may be losing resources one one end - this was a brave new world resourceful and methodical in every sense ( be it tech, science, sex, movies, etc. etc.).

All this was what I got to see about 5-6 years ago. Internet - the figure of the modern world. You open up to a world invisible to your own. The sad part is five years later - it has become your world. And the proprietor is probably the entity which resides to be the most used tab of almost every person reading this - Facebook. You walk facebook, you talk facebook. Going online has become a form of a ritual today,  but when you do there are probably a very few sites you would care to visit. Internally, almost every person has a want of making his world as simple as possible. But when you do, Facebook is probably the first website a person is deemed to visit. Read my definition of the term 'target audience' as mainly the college goers and high school grads who 'faced - off' with the ever changing face of social networking during the past decade or so ( myspace to orkut to facebook or twitter). And this target audience grew to expand in a much more draconian way than any epidemic. The thing was - this 'virus' had to spread. Here the host wanted the virus itself.

 The need - exploited
The tragedy is that an idea, which transgressed the basic philosophy of the innovation called internet - a platform where you could get information, (as in every case of internet) - but about people in your lives or people you meet up or people whom you may have forgot in your past; delved deep into the insight of the sensitive side of the humane nature of the 'user'. This was the side which made you want things in life- unmaterialistic ( you would say friendship or love, but I argue it is something far more trivial). This is a desire which is the root cause of probably all relationships that a person makes in life. To be considered a person of a society. To have people in your life who would be affected by  what you say or think or do. You want others to see what you see in life - this can be related to an evolutionary characteristic of show casing superiority about your self. About your life. Maybe our lives give us little chance of doing that. And then there was Facebook.


The False image
We love lying about what we really are. Here was a source so deeply established in the internet world that we would forget we are lying about ourselves. And so was with the facebook 'profiles' or the new 'timeline' dubbed as 'the story of your life' (the comparison of a single page to something more far fetched). So we showed off here in ways we wanted the world to see us. Our beautiful selves showed off on a webpage. Your mind would always get a tinge of tasteful happiness when you would see a 'like' or an awe ridden 'comment'.  There was a new level unopposed competition with these - 'Abey tune mera pic like nai kiya!'.  This made us sink in. We could satisfy ourselves to others - the need to connect. And this made us become hazardous to a dangerous addiction.

For it becomes difficult to come back to our real worlds when we are in a fantasy. And Facebook helped us create a fantasy world - our very own. You would unconsciously compare a person's social presence by the staggering number in his friend list. You can find people posting every single shit crossing their minds as their 'status'. You yourself love to post that shit. You want everyone to see your shit.

The wrong connection
With the new time of cult favorite mobile phones, of high megapixel cameras, of the tool, which has now come to have a language of its own, was Facebook. It was a spiritual connection, convened much before their existences, culminating into establishing a new face of the society. You would go online to see what a person is doing, to talk with that person, to establish a connection in this new faced society. The thing is, that connection happens to be virtual. You have new friendships being rejuvenated online.You have relations made and relations broken online. You have compassion being stewed online. Have we come to make all of these parts of human nature so artificial? Or was it all always such a joke?

You would remain online looking about what those people do whom you will probably never ever see in life. And you would come again and again. This was the digital portion of your life.
The question is not why Facebook came out to be this big, but rather is if we can make ourselves accept our real selves and perfect the imbecile bond between our real lives and our Facebook lives. Or if we even want to.
All of this makes me want to hate Facebook to its fullest. The trouble is : I'm addicted.