We all check Facebook - we all check it very often. Once in a while I come across a nice link on Facebook that I read and share, or a picture that I truly feel is good and appreciate it, or a witty comment. But 99% of the time I find stuff that if I take too much interest in, then I will be causing myself some unwanted sadness.
Its not bad things that make me sad, its too much happiness.
People have become so addicted to Facebook and social networking that they put up every small moment of their life into it - XYZ is at ABC with PQR, XYZ is feeling lazy, XYZ visits The-best-place-on-earth. Pardon me for being so damn rude, but sometimes I don't want to see all these happy events in your life - I just want to live in my own shell!
I know what you are saying - if you don't like it then get out of there! Yes I will - the day I truly fall sick. But before that, let me put across my point.
Back in the old days before all these websites, my cousins lived in Singapore. Obviously they visited a lot of places, were happy, had fun and took pictures and videos. I heard about all this, but never actually saw the pictures instantaneously. Being good in GK, I knew about Singapore and had an idea about the place in my head. Once in a year when these guys came to India, I would look forward to meeting them and then seeing the pictures or videos or whatever it was. There was some fun in that. Then came digital cameras and all the photo sharing and emailing - even then, there was a delay - so I saw their happy faces a week later as opposed to an year later.
In both these cases, I saw the pictures of the happy moments when I was in a peaceful state of mind. Not when I was pissed off.
Cut to today - almost all of us have a high pressure job. Everybody has tensions - real or imagined - and we are all trying to live a fast life. We have a moments attention span on anything. Inspite of all this, because of peer pressure we all check Facebook daily. Or Google+. This peer pressure is something that we refuse to acknowledge as real - it has become so much woven into our life. We do not even know that we are under peer pressure. We feel it is but natural that we should feel the urge and check these sites everyday, if you have a smart phone then even more often, and update statuses.
We will not go to a place, enjoy the place, come back, relax and write a nice paragraph - we will get into the car, tweet, post status, talk about the car, get into a conversation, reach the place and again tweet or post about it, tweet or post about the hot chick or hunk you saw, food , loo, tired, return journey and then that you are falling asleep dead tired.
Excuse me - did anyone else feel that there was more fun in writing a relaxed account rather than all these updates?
Imagine looking at your timeline and seeing all these updates - you feel people are doing a lot while you are doing nothing; Do the same thing while or after you had a bad day at work or after you spent the whole day alone; Or after you did not shop and are feeling bad. Does it hurt? What if you are the easily influenced kind? It hurts more then.
And once you are hurt, you hurt those around you with unwanted unhappiness.
The twist in the tale is that you and if you hurt someone then they too will post about the sadness which leads to a few more comments and even more sadness!!!!!
So - while we are supposed to get to know what the other person was doing, we don't stop there. Most of us don't - very few can stay aloof of all this.
And that's why I hate these platforms.