*Of Love & Facebook* I was introduced to the concept of real & virtual when I was Std 7 by the lesson titled Introduction to Optics with mirrors producing real & virtual images. Since then I was puzzled with the concept of virtual & real, often pondering over what truly differentiated them from each other. With such musings hovering over my head during my late teens I entered the arena of social networking through the long forgotten Orkut. Virtual had a whole new meaning for me. I realized that I could have a virtual existence as well. In fact everyone on Orkut had a virtual life, with fancy display pictures, fancier self descriptions & the the revolutionary option of Relationship status. For some it was Single, for some it was committed and for some like me, it was blank. Then came the God of social networks, Facebook. Like my friends, I too joined Facebook with starry eyes.At a lightning speed however, Facebook metamorphosed into a social periscope. As time passed by, people fell in love & happily declared it by going from Single to In A Relationship on Facebook. With a sense of joy, the friends & well wishers of the person liked it & poured their best wishes & through comments. On the other side, when the person went from In A Relationship to Single, there were and What happened??? in the comments with two individuals silently unfriending each other during the cacophony, #hearbreaking for the ex lovers as well as the world. Then there was the notion of FDA (Facebook Display of Affection ) which was synonymous to PDA ( Public Display of Affection ) in the real world.The golden rule of FDA states that if you are in love, then you must flaunt it #BIGTIME on Facebook. The love could range from photographs to songs to ohhh sweetu, i love u baby!! on the beloveds wall with the entire world liking it & filling in comments like Awww!! , So cute, God bless you guys #HowSweet Then there were the underdogs, the kind of people who kept a low profile, who were in love but were uncomfortable with FDA.They had blank Relationship status.They were sneered at, by the crusaders of FDA. Comments like Your love is true only if you keep posting cute things on your beloveds wall & If you guys are not keeping your relationship status as In a Relationship, then you are not sure about the Relationship in the first place were hurled on to the underdogs & they were mocked at.#TrueLoveIsProportionalToFDA. The there were transitions like In A Relationship to Its Complicated, Single To In An Open Relationship , Its Complicated to Single. Wide mouthed, the world gaped as the love between two people rose & sank like the sine wave in the tides of heated arguments on Facebook walls to exuberant displays of passion with cuddled pics & well, lets not go there. #TidesOfLove Then came the really nice feature by which we could not only know the Relationship status but also the profile of the person with whom one was Married/Engaged/In a Relationship with. #SomeSeriousStalking. I recently read in a book that The Greatest compliment one can give oneself is to declare I am open book. The same can be applied to Facebook with a slight modification that goes The Greatest compliment one can give oneself is to declare My relationship with XYZ is an open book . Years after Std 7 , I am still confused about what is real & what is virtual. To express ones love for someone can be the greatest gift , one can get. Yet categorizing love , letting the world know what you sweetly whisper in your beloveds ears, constantly being in the apprehension of where ones relationship is heading in the social media sphere & then letting the whole world comment ,like and share it. The real getting in the way of the virtual or the other way around? The problem of merging real & virtual is that it is a one way process.Once it is merged, distinguishing the real & virtual will be impossible & one will be lost somewhere in middle. #Lost&Clueless ~Sarba PS : True love is that strange , uncontrollable and lingering feeling which two individuals share irrespective of what the whole world feels about it. It is beyond the concept of likes, comments and shares, it is amazing that way.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 09:30:00 +0000
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