Booking a face (Part 1)
.Aapeksha Aanand was a nervous wreck. Her fingers trembled uncontrollably as she hit the login button to her facebook account. The wait for the page to fill was so long that she could almost hear the 0's and 1's speak to each other as they arranged themselves into an xml code first, and then into visual pixels. The top blue bar loaded and her heart sank. There were no bright red alerts on any of the three pale watermarks that lurked between the site's logo and the oblong search box. No acceptance for friendship, no new mails nor had anyone commented on any of her frenetic activities from hours ago... Her fingers now had graduated to a twitch from the tremble, and tears were forming in her eyes.
She leaned back on her chair and stared at the page as it loaded... The various sections mocked her.
"What's on your mind?" one box teased..... "PAIN!!!!".... "REJECTION!!!!".... SORROW!!!" she wanted to fill the void of that box with all those words... It felt strange that one had to use words to describe what was on the mind. Could the mind not have pictures or wordless thoughts? Was it essential for the mind have something on it that could only be spelt out in sentences?
The "News Feed" left her heart hungrier, yet did manage to nourish her insecurities. .Aaakanksha's pics had yielded her 17 thumbs up/likes and got 12 comments. She clicked the "view all" and got slapped on the face by the praise heaped on the girl she so envied. She could not bear to read them, and regretted clicking the "view all" link. She refreshed the page, so that the extended list of .Aaakanksha's admirers would again fold into itself.
As the page reloaded, .Aapeksha wondered how it had all gone so horribly wrong? It all looked so promising, so wondrous, when her affair with her own ego had begun.
She was amongst the earliest converts to this exciting platform, which was almost like a private newspaper between friends. She'd connected with long lost pals - heck, she'd made new ones she'd never met in her life and chatted with them like they were across the table. (She'd even has sex with three strangers and joined a group called "I've fucked at least 3 people i met on facebook). She'd spent hours thinking of the wittiest "status updates", which later became "what's on your mind?". She'd figured out the glitch in the system and added a fool's stop before her name, so that it came up first on the pages of her "friends". She'd already added two a's for her name and surname - a sort of digital numerology that promised to enhance her virtual life. Like Ekta's had, in the satellite world. So KKKoool, it seemed, then. Yet, now....??
The little green dots showed who was online. 43 people. She clicked on the tab, and the list unfurled like Jack's beanstalk. 21 of those were active, the remaining 22 had a sleepy moon next to them. She wondered who she should accost for attention. Gautam? She remembered their night together.... and the formed tear, finally could hold back no longer. He was the one from those three...
She clicked on his name and the window popped up. He'd changed his profile picture again. "Bastard!" she thought. I'm sure he's busy chatting up another girl right now.... promising them sexual nirvana... and worse, delivering it. She clicked on his friends list and saw some sizzling additions to his ever expanding list. She closed the chat window, without reaching out for his help. The other 20 were the regular facebook addicts, trying to find their gratification from digital words, pictures and text. She sent out a "hello" to three of them, but it went unsolicited and unrequited. They must be in the midst of some serious hookin up, .Aapeksha realized.
She browsed, almost mechanically through the various pictures, videos and groups that her friends had posted on her Wall. All in all, we're just another click in the wall... One post that stirred her a little was a group called.... "I want to quit Facebook, but can't.... Till death do us part." She went to the page, and it had 6,473,299 fans.
She quickly clicked on her Profile page. It has 6 fortune cookies - all full of lies, about ten lines of whose links she'd commented on, a host of things that described what was on her mind at various stages of her loneliness, five uploads of inane pictures she'd clicked to show off her foreign travels and three profile picture changes. All were without a "like" or "comment".... .Aapeksha felt like a social reject. The beggar at a street corner whom everyone sees, but none notices... To have 760 friends who don't even see you? Surely, that must be a curse.....?
She went back to her home page, to find if filled with a bunch of news from her hyperactive friends. Despite having 760 friends, she felt utterly alone and meaningless. Four more friends had joined that group. She visited it again.
"7:00 am GMT, we part"... the latest posting said. Under it was a note.
"We have all become slaves to our own egotism. Our world now, is so shallow that only when people we don't even know accept our statuses and comment on one millionth of who we are, do we feel deep. Our mission now, is to furiously propagate ourself, and make our mundane activities seem monumental - almost uniquely historic. It is important that people who we don't even recognize, are aware and mindful of us. We need to book a face, and stake a name to it - so that we feel real. Is this what we wished to be? Is there no way we can go back to who we were? Real people, with real emotions and real friends? Some sense of privacy and the mystery that comes from not being an open book, a facebook? Some layers to discover in person and the heartache that comes when you're not noticed in a room? Perhaps, never - the threat of being left out, is as daunting as the challenge of staying alive on this digital blue page. Frankly, the only way to end this, is for all members of this group to come online tomorrow at 700 AM GMT, and commit mass suicide. Rest assured, more people will "like" this, than all your previous posts put together."
.Aapeksha clicked the join button. It was nearly 700AM GMT. She switched on her web-cam, tied a rope to the ceiling and proceeded to hang herself. Like another 6,473,299 people on that group.
As her legs stopped thrashing and the last breath went out of her broken windpipe, her spirit came out of the corpse. It floated to the computer and gave a thumbs up to .Aapeksha's last uploaded video.
Then, it logged out of the extinct profile and promptly created a new identity for itself by filling out a new page and then starting a new group. "Even death can't do us apart".
6,473,299 spirits, were doing just the same - waiting for some sign from the others to acknowledge that they were still alive, kicking and "liked"....
_________________________________xxxxxxxxxxx_____________________________________
Next: The story of .Aidentity Crisis - a person who cannot book either his face or name on FB, as both have been hijacked.
She leaned back on her chair and stared at the page as it loaded... The various sections mocked her.
"What's on your mind?" one box teased..... "PAIN!!!!".... "REJECTION!!!!".... SORROW!!!" she wanted to fill the void of that box with all those words... It felt strange that one had to use words to describe what was on the mind. Could the mind not have pictures or wordless thoughts? Was it essential for the mind have something on it that could only be spelt out in sentences?
The "News Feed" left her heart hungrier, yet did manage to nourish her insecurities. .Aaakanksha's pics had yielded her 17 thumbs up/likes and got 12 comments. She clicked the "view all" and got slapped on the face by the praise heaped on the girl she so envied. She could not bear to read them, and regretted clicking the "view all" link. She refreshed the page, so that the extended list of .Aaakanksha's admirers would again fold into itself.
As the page reloaded, .Aapeksha wondered how it had all gone so horribly wrong? It all looked so promising, so wondrous, when her affair with her own ego had begun.
She was amongst the earliest converts to this exciting platform, which was almost like a private newspaper between friends. She'd connected with long lost pals - heck, she'd made new ones she'd never met in her life and chatted with them like they were across the table. (She'd even has sex with three strangers and joined a group called "I've fucked at least 3 people i met on facebook). She'd spent hours thinking of the wittiest "status updates", which later became "what's on your mind?". She'd figured out the glitch in the system and added a fool's stop before her name, so that it came up first on the pages of her "friends". She'd already added two a's for her name and surname - a sort of digital numerology that promised to enhance her virtual life. Like Ekta's had, in the satellite world. So KKKoool, it seemed, then. Yet, now....??
The little green dots showed who was online. 43 people. She clicked on the tab, and the list unfurled like Jack's beanstalk. 21 of those were active, the remaining 22 had a sleepy moon next to them. She wondered who she should accost for attention. Gautam? She remembered their night together.... and the formed tear, finally could hold back no longer. He was the one from those three...
She clicked on his name and the window popped up. He'd changed his profile picture again. "Bastard!" she thought. I'm sure he's busy chatting up another girl right now.... promising them sexual nirvana... and worse, delivering it. She clicked on his friends list and saw some sizzling additions to his ever expanding list. She closed the chat window, without reaching out for his help. The other 20 were the regular facebook addicts, trying to find their gratification from digital words, pictures and text. She sent out a "hello" to three of them, but it went unsolicited and unrequited. They must be in the midst of some serious hookin up, .Aapeksha realized.
She browsed, almost mechanically through the various pictures, videos and groups that her friends had posted on her Wall. All in all, we're just another click in the wall... One post that stirred her a little was a group called.... "I want to quit Facebook, but can't.... Till death do us part." She went to the page, and it had 6,473,299 fans.
She quickly clicked on her Profile page. It has 6 fortune cookies - all full of lies, about ten lines of whose links she'd commented on, a host of things that described what was on her mind at various stages of her loneliness, five uploads of inane pictures she'd clicked to show off her foreign travels and three profile picture changes. All were without a "like" or "comment".... .Aapeksha felt like a social reject. The beggar at a street corner whom everyone sees, but none notices... To have 760 friends who don't even see you? Surely, that must be a curse.....?
She went back to her home page, to find if filled with a bunch of news from her hyperactive friends. Despite having 760 friends, she felt utterly alone and meaningless. Four more friends had joined that group. She visited it again.
"7:00 am GMT, we part"... the latest posting said. Under it was a note.
"We have all become slaves to our own egotism. Our world now, is so shallow that only when people we don't even know accept our statuses and comment on one millionth of who we are, do we feel deep. Our mission now, is to furiously propagate ourself, and make our mundane activities seem monumental - almost uniquely historic. It is important that people who we don't even recognize, are aware and mindful of us. We need to book a face, and stake a name to it - so that we feel real. Is this what we wished to be? Is there no way we can go back to who we were? Real people, with real emotions and real friends? Some sense of privacy and the mystery that comes from not being an open book, a facebook? Some layers to discover in person and the heartache that comes when you're not noticed in a room? Perhaps, never - the threat of being left out, is as daunting as the challenge of staying alive on this digital blue page. Frankly, the only way to end this, is for all members of this group to come online tomorrow at 700 AM GMT, and commit mass suicide. Rest assured, more people will "like" this, than all your previous posts put together."
.Aapeksha clicked the join button. It was nearly 700AM GMT. She switched on her web-cam, tied a rope to the ceiling and proceeded to hang herself. Like another 6,473,299 people on that group.
As her legs stopped thrashing and the last breath went out of her broken windpipe, her spirit came out of the corpse. It floated to the computer and gave a thumbs up to .Aapeksha's last uploaded video.
Then, it logged out of the extinct profile and promptly created a new identity for itself by filling out a new page and then starting a new group. "Even death can't do us apart".
6,473,299 spirits, were doing just the same - waiting for some sign from the others to acknowledge that they were still alive, kicking and "liked"....
_________________________________xxxxxxxxxxx_____________________________________
Next: The story of .Aidentity Crisis - a person who cannot book either his face or name on FB, as both have been hijacked.
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