Facebook Blues

I am neither a regular nor a constant user of Facebook (FB), though I was an early adopter. I like to keep in touch with new technologies and emerging trends. However I have had only sporadic success with FB, and more often than not have had serious gaffes.

Like last week I wanted to wish a friend on his birthday, and since it is now de rigueur’ to use FB, I logged in to do the same. There were a host of greetings on his wall already, so I just typed in my comment and pressed enter. However I landed up posting the wish on another friends ‘wall’! Both of these friends share a common first name, and somehow FB posted ‘my’ greeting on the incorrect friend's wall. Of course he came back to thank me and politely pointed out that he prefers to celebrates his birthday on the anniversary of the day that he was born, which was a few months ago. I could only imagine his friends on FB wondering who this twit was to post wishes on the wrong day, especially in this day and age when technology takes care of all this stuff.

Then again, as some of you might know, I decided to post my previous blog on FB, and after doing so realised that I had inadvertently included a friend’s comment with it. This made the blog come across like an advert for a book or a movie, with critics comments appended. (Siskel and Ebert give this blog 2 thumbs-up!!) This was the last thing I wanted. I was anyway quite embarrassed about imposing my blog on friends through FB. But after this faux pas, I was a shattered man, as my fevered mind construed up images of my friends shaking their heads in annoyance, as they felt impelled to not only read my blog, but now leave comments as well.

Frequently I have ‘posted’ incomplete responses to other friend’s status updates, or even worse have posted the same response twice or sometimes even thrice. I press 'Enter' after typing my comment and nothing happens. I wait a while and press enter again, and then (in frustration) again, and suddenly my comment appears on the wall as many times as I pressed enter!!

FB is just such a public place for such mistakes. It is not like the time years ago, when a close friend had mistakenly inserted his love letter to his fiancé in an envelope addressed to me and vice versa a missive to me in an envelope addressed to her. His girlfriend had come running frantically to correct the mistake, and nobody was the wiser.

To compound these problems, over the last few years we now have the ability to log in from a multitude of mobile devices like IPhones, BB, IPads, etc. And me being me, I have downloaded applications on to each of these. Hence every time I log in I get a different menu and screen structure. It used to be so simple. I would go into friends if I wanted to see what was happening with a particular friend. Today every time I try and look up a friend, I get a list of people who I might know and should connect with! What happened to my list of contacts?

So now I stick to the “Like” button with the thumbs-up sign, to respond to updates. It is safe and foolproof. The worst that can happen is I 'Like' something that I should not - like a friend posting some bad news and I respond with a big thumbs-up!

Anyway despite the above issues and frustrations, I do log in infrequently to see updates.

And that is when my real misery starts.

I look at the status and picture updates and what strikes me, like a slap on the face, is that everyone I know is having a better life than me. There are pictures of shiny happy beautiful people, at parties, on the beach, at concerts, on holidays etc. To me it looks as if that is all everyone I know is doing. People are busy on vacation, partying, getting pets, attending seminars in exotic places, getting awards and winning trophies. There are status updates from concerts, airports, stadiums, beaches, movies and even airplanes!! My friends are pictured in group hugs, or holding up glasses full of bubbly, or jiving away in the funnest parties on Earth. They all seem to be visiting the places I want to see, eating stuff that I want to eat, and basically leading the life I want to lead.

Every time I log in or get a status update, I get depressed at the festivities and largesse in my "friends" lives, and the banality and drudging routine of my own. None of them ever seem to have to work, get stressed, have annoying kids or demanding bosses, or just seem to be having a bad day. OK forget a bad day! What about just a normal day? You know the one where you get up in the morning, and the next thing you know it is nighttime and you are in bed wondering where the day went and what you achieved. I have never seen an update like “@ work and twiddling my thumbs out of boredom”!!

All of my FB friends have thousands of other friends with exotic names living in as many Countries. They all seem to be in regular touch and living the way "Friends" the TV series depicted life. If they happen to have any babies or children, they are either not in evidence or all seem to be the cherubic, pleasant and self-cleansing ones, rather than the screaming, annoying and irritating infants that need nappy changes at the most inopportune time. Obviously, for a lot of them having children has not had the slightest impact on their lives, nor has it impacted their high living quotidian rhythms.

It is almost enough to make a balanced individual like myself desperate. I wonder how many winter suicides FB is responsible for. I can only imagine someone who is already having a bad day, logging into FB, seeing all these pictures of friends frolicking around, and maybe his ex-girlfriend smiling as she shares a romantic dinner with another guy, and deciding to walk to his bathtub and (literally) drown his sorrows.

To top it off, I read status updates from everyone that are so deeply philosophical and wise, that it makes me feel like an ignoramus and a simpleton. Everyone seems to have the perfect idiom for every occasion, while I struggle to think of something to say about my own mundane day. Snappy comebacks and witty answers abound in the FB world, making me shake my head in wonder at the intellect on display.

However I am thankful for some small mercies. I do not know how or why, but I have stopped receiving those innumerable updates from "Farmville", "Dogville" or whatever, with requests for milk, tractors, seeds and petrol.

I do realise of course, that Facebook is just a one-dimensional portal into our lives. It is a reflection of the way we each want our lives to be seen. Facebook is just the host of a global party, and all us guests are spruced up and putting our best foot (and face) forward. It shows only our external manifestation, made up and dressed in finery, and hides the disheveled us (warts and all) from the public eye. It is our way of sticking our tongue out to the world, giving others their come-uppance, by letting them know of what is best in our lives.

In the Facebook world it is definitely not enough (and quite boring actually) to just have a loving family, close friends and a healthy life. One needs to have a menagerie, travel to exotic locales around the world, and have hundreds (if not thousands) of friends. My friends' photo galleries are full of these and other pictures of parties and events attended. No wonder then that my wife decided to remove all our boring photographs from Facebook.

I do know what I want now and what to wish for. In my next life, I want to come back as my Facebook friend and live a Facebook life!