Facebook ka Kamaal.

Has anyone come up yet with a word for Facebook addiction? Well there are some legitimate ones for other web addictions but not specifically for Facebook. This definitely needs its own name. How about faddiction? But what exactly was Zuckerberg thinking when he came up with this idea with his other buddies in their college dormitory? Did he check with people outside Harvard if they were interested in getting in touch with others after having turned themselves into something like sleeper-cells? It's just like the Harvard crowd to think everyone must be looking in the direction they were looking in. Perhaps some of us were deliberately hiding in various closets and the back boards. Maybe we didn't want to come out. Maybe we were ensconced in our own little world and were happy with the world flitting by. Perhaps we were blissfully ignorant and oblivious to the state of others and how they were doing. Maybe just maybe some of us were not interested in sharing and comparing ourselves to others and inducing self-destruction.  Perhaps we believed that Destiny had it all figured out for us and what could a web site with a name like Facebook do to foil our plans for this life and and after-life. This is a classic case of Zee chose not to see. On the other hand, few of us who would've died pining for people we never contacted, FB saved us from this trajectory.

The 26 year old Zuckie baby is the CEO of this great upheaval which woke people around the world enough to be damned forever on his social networking site. Zuckie rests easy in the 35th place on the list of 400 richest people in the USA. Thanks to us suffering fools, Z's wealth has grown 245% to $6.9 billion. He is one of those young entrepreneurs who has breathed the free air of America and allowed that to lift them anywhere they have wanted to go. Along with him are some more lifted dudes responsible for this global phenomenon called Facebook. There are hardly any humans on this planet that have remained un-touched by this social light. Even the hate mongers have been affected by the FB experience despite their unnecessary hatred for the Jewish race on a pure ontological basis. My advise - create something, build stuff, invent tracks of beauty not blow up paths of progress. For such pitiful beings and as one belonging to this race,  Zuckerberg may have single handedly shown better ways of communication and inflecting change. Aren't you on FB - is the new age question. It is with shock and horror when one hears that so and so refused to be a part of the madness or he or she threw this marvelous life line away. You wonder why. Ah well, they're not with the times and like it or not leave them alone and they'll find their way home to Facebook.


On FB, I find people and people find me without looking. I am led by this invisible force to check out Facebook every day. I hear stories about people who live on FB, in fact they are so much at home that Facebook has become the party state. These are people completely committed to the network. Unfortunately even devotion of this kind doesn't tempt Zee to share any of his wealth with any of the FB addicts. And why should he, it's all his after all. I have tried to mark my days as 'FB off' ones but so far the attempts have remained sadly unsuccessful. The genie is out and we are compelled to find out who is doing what and saying what to whom and why. FB has given rise to passions of a kind not seen in a while. Everybody has something to say; most have things to display; there is art, poetry, photography, prose, sightings, sighings and ruminations, and it's all here free on Facebook. The entire human race is discussing politics, economics, global warming or cooling depending on one's political leanings, philosophies, memories, births, deaths, and what not. Revolutions are being planned while protestors are being squashed and Facebook coming under strict scrutiny. While North Koreans may not be aware of FB, the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chinese are definitely looking into throwing a whole bunch of FB friends into prisons and labor camps for at least 10 to 20 years or maybe even a lifetime, that is if the poor souls survive the no-food-no-water-no-air captivity. 


Forget the friends-since-school saga. It is now FB friends time. I have a few friends who are pure FB material. Others I considered friends have been hastily un-unfriended on FB by just a click of this beautiful feature called 'delete'. I am not the only one to experience this strange high from a mere click. I see the 'numbers' of friends running into thousands. How is this possible I ask myself and others. No one knows. I think there may be a semblance to the rat-race occurrence. Could this be a keeping-with-the-jones syndrome on FB as well? All kinds of groups have taken birth on FB. Some exist merely to force others out. Then there are others who take root to flush the ones trying to flush others out. There are groups against humanity and then groups anti-against humanity. Some seriously threatening ones are quickly removed by Zee and his company only to re-surface under different names and threats. The blue logo is everywhere and nowhere is everywhere. This is the largest extended family where everyone knows someone connected to everyone and nobody truly knows anyone. Even junk mail has given up trying to compete with the volume of Facebook replies and mails.  And so the zuckerberg tree continues to grow and bear fruit some sweet and some bitter. However in all fairness, judging by its growth, Facebook is fast on its way to transform itself from a tree to a celestial planet and beyond. It may have to do with its ever evolving and revolving nature. 

Generation Minus TV Grows Up.

We are perhaps the last generation to boast of growing up with minimum TV - if one could ever boast of things like that. Our kids say oh you poor things, what a deprived lot. But are we really that or just lucky to have escaped the technological bombardment. TV during the 70s and especially in India was just beginning to peek its head over the horizon. It was tentative to the point of being miniscule. To make matters worse, India's media continued to be government controlled including the few hours of TV programs that were aired daily. Somehow the government missed out on this big opportunity of using TV for controlling the nation's population. This ingenuous thought of TV and population control completely escaped them.  Indian TV was so bad that had it not been a voluntary activity, the entire nation could have collapsed under the sheer weight of complete boredom and frustration with the lone TV channel. The government could have controlled its population with the silent killing technique of making Indian TV mandatory for all people - young and old, sick and healthy, farmers and doctors. It would have been way different from the very unpopular birth control methods brought on by India's now gone PM Indira Gandhi and her progeny. Like me, most of its other millions saved itself from dying of utter dreariness of TV by becoming cricket fanatics despite the fact that most matches lasted for 5 days with absolutely no outcome of any victory or defeat for either side. The public was happy, radio commentators were colorful in their analysis, and all life in the country would be successful in coming to a complete halt - not that the country needed any particular reasons or incentives to stop.


Far from entertainment, TV was full of discussions about seeds, manure, and monsoons. News covered different plans of the government - 3 year plan, 5 year plan, or 10 year plan. We the people were not sure which plan to choose or whether we should choose any plan at all. The worst was that few of us understood these plans but most of us had some vague inklings through books and of course boring discussions on TV. Personally it wouldn't have made a fig of a difference. I am in no way saying that we should have been  given the option of choosing different plans, because heaven forbid that may have aroused the nation to some sort of action. Dulling of senses through Indian TV was something Doordarshan producers and directors would have intended but the Indian public has always  been street wise and would've understood the wily nature of its government with ease.

I remember going with my mum to watch the Sunday movie on TV at her friend's house. A big chunk of  time was spent in fiddling around with the TV control buttons, the rest in pounding the TV to stop its characters from escaping from the top or bottom of the screen. A bit of the movie was enjoyed if the neighbor's crazy son didn't insist on standing in front of the screen with a pencil stuck up his nose. We were indeed lucky if he kept his clothes on for those couple of hours. Somehow we got a break from this choppy viewing when a neighbor acquired a brand new TV and an acute sense of business acumen which demanded a quarter from all the children who wanted to watch the Sunday movie. Sometime during this time, the much awaited color TV also began to rear its ugly head, and the quiet black and white rendition of the weekly Sunday night movie became too much to handle for the Indian public. Color TV meant putting up a screen that had a random distribution of bright colors - on top of the black and white TV screen. Contrary to making things nice and colorful, the event became quite gross and out of control. Firstly all people on TV including actors and actresses of the Sunday night movie fame turned into multi colored specimens with green faces, yellow necks and chests, blue hips and feet, and red in parts wherever the other colors failed. The TV host also wanted to experiment with colors every now and then mainly for special effects but I suspect it was just for evil purposes of control. Incidentally the viewing fee was also raised to two quarters. So generally one or two kids' evening used to be ruined because they had to stand holding the colored screen when it didn't fit perfectly onto the TV screen.


TV watching was indeed a family event. This was one box albeit an idiot box that most people looked forward to because it was such a novelty. It allowed one to settle in with perfect ennui that led many times to the person becoming one with the sofa as well. As years rolled by, the TV became almost like a permanent pet but one which never would've had to be taken care of or fed. Children continued to be born in the lights and sounds of TV, and many of the human race got addicted to sleeping with the mindless drone of TV. If you turned off the TV, they would immediately wake up, turn it back on, so they could fall asleep again! Slowly and steadily TV watching turned into an obsession from being merely a distraction and finally became an added limb of the human persona. While in school during the 70s, if I were lucky, I got about 3 hours of TV per week, which was the Sunday night movie. But most of the time I was grounded by the nuns so even this little pleasure remained just out of reach for me. I had to sit in an adjacent classroom while the TV blared in the school hall. If I had known the Kafka trick, perhaps I could have transformed myself into a fly on the wall and maybe even settled on one of the nun's sleeves to watch the Sunday night movie.


Now I have all the hours to watch TV but have ironically made strange rules for myself regarding this activity. Our household is regarded somewhat akin to being primitive because we have only one TV. It is also strange that one doesn't find it sitting in the living room, where it (the TV) was hoping to be made the center of attention. Till now we have been able to hold on to our stubborn ways of thinking that too many TVs in a house will take one away from reading and family time. So far, my reading is fine but the rest of the family has shifted its attention to the Internet, which I think has proven to be far more ruthless than what TV could've ever hoped to have become. Even more bizarre is the fact that the more technology reduces communication to the click of a button, the more we find it difficult to connect to ourselves and to others. I wonder if we might have lost our way in this morass of information and entertainment overload. Or perhaps we are headed to a place where each to his own would be the ultimate consciousness.