A Desperate Letter......

Not-so-dear social networking sites,

I am not in the brightest of my mood...or anywhere close either.

Let me start by saying that there have been times when I have loved someone. Sometimes, I have a reason to fall in love, sometimes I don’t. For you, I feel otherwise. And I have tons of reasons for my feelings. Could you wait for a minute while I arrange the reasons as per its priority? No? A minute is enough for a system overload and for your system to crash and not function? Oh ok, I will try to get it done in less than a minute.

But don’t count on me. I am not a computer. I am a human.

First off, there are just too many of you. Bigadda, Flickr, Hi5, MouthShut, MySpace, Twitter and WAYN – what are you all upto? When are you going to realise that you have hardly a thing or two different from the other? And that humans are not foolish enough to register on all the sites just because you are marketing the one unique factor that you have? Orkut, you were one of the first babies, but clearly, you are becoming old and outdated with your siblings running past you. You need to step out of the race. Facebook and Twitter are the undisputed rulers right now. We, being humans, understood that. How come, you didn’t?

Wait a minute. Humans ARE registering on all of the sites. Silly me. My apologies.

Twitter. Awesome concept of 160 characters short messages online. Whoever thought of this must be a real bored fellow. No offense, but I really do mean it. All great ideas are results of boredom. Thanks to you twitter, I now know when my ‘follower’ in Russia broke up with her boyfriend. I also know why Abhishek Bachchan had a bad day at his shoot. My neighbour just updated me that she had her bath. Oh, and now I know that my blood brother (who lives in the same house as me) had an awesome time in Goa.

One of my classmates said, on the phone, that she hadn’t started her project. 15 minutes later, when I log in to my Twitter, she announced she was half way through. Twitter, thanks for helping me catch my two-faced friends.

Facebook. What a wonder you are. I will probably not be astonished when I see a yellow crow. But you...you amaze me every single time. No, I am not kidding. I am totally hooked on to you. And I am just one among the zillion others who love you, adore you, worship you.

My mornings start with you. My nights end with you. Whenever I click photographs, I keep you in mind. After all, they need to be good enough to be uploaded on you. I sometimes even fall asleep on the keyboard. Whatever happened to boyfriend’s shoulders or mother’s lap! Well, they are passé.

I have even learnt to use my left hand for different purposes. Before you imagine, let me specify – I can write, eat, sms and flip the channels on TV with the remote control. Because my right hand is moving the mouse and typing on the keyboard na.

All ambidextrous and multi-tasking folks, let's have a round of applause to Facebook and the gang.

I have a good 500 to 800 friends on my friends list. I am this super-intelligent personality who loves reading only the top novels in the world. Also, I have great political views. I hate hypocrisy and liars. I watch the best of shows on television most of which are English (some of which I copied from my friends’ profiles). You have given me a new personality, Facebook. Thanks. For with the personality that I really have, nobody would have given me a second look.

You are also kind enough to tell the world when I am single and ready to mingle. Thanks for making me a hot number on the dating scene.

But yes, you are responsible for a few fights too.

One of my friends in the real world hasn’t added me as his friend in the virtual world. He is afraid I will see his pictures and his chats with his other friends. Another shouted at me the other day because I hadn’t commented on her status update. Mind you, we were on the phone that time. I had called her to say that I missed her as it was a week that we last spoke. Before you were born, she appreciated my calls. Now....alas : (

Another friend - he said that he was very busy with his work. When I was harmlessly surfing my account, I checked out his profile and there were pictures of him....in a disc...partying! Yet another, someone who has a soft corner for me, blasted on me because apparently I have more guy friends on my list than girl friends (dude, aren’t you happy, I am straight?!) and then there is this one, whom I have a soft corner for, chats day in and day out with all his virtual friends but doesn’t have the time to call me for a minute in the day. He says he is busy. Well, yeah! Certainly, he is!

You also bring out this weird behaviour in people. Friends, who generally never hug me or kiss me in public when we meet, send me hugs and kisses online! It is flattering, ya, but what am I supposed to do now?

I know you want to make life easy. I know your intentions are good. But for me, it’s turning complex.

I want to 'talk' to my loved ones. I want to guess whether they have a cold or no by hearing their voices. I want them to 'sing' a song for me before going to sleep when I need pampering. I want them to come to my house and give me an invitation card. I want to be a part of their lives. I want to cuddle up with a ‘real’ puppy.

I don’t want to know when they are going to pee. I don’t want them to dedicate songs to me on the World Wide Web. I don’t want them to be so busy building up a network of strangers and in the process forget friends. I don’t want to feed my virtual cow.

I am grateful to you, because now people do not drop in to my house at any random hour. They would rather say a ‘hi’ on any of your sites.

I am not technologically challenged. Nor do I have anything against you personally.

However, I want a simple, primitive life where people used to be in contact either on telephone or in person.

Help us. Don’t rule us.

Solve our problems. Don’t create new ones.

Yours,
Starved for human contact