Que 01: “Are you sure
you want to deactivate your account?”
Ans: “Yes.”
Que 02: “These friends will miss you. Would you like to send them a
message before you deactivate your account?”
Ans: “Enough!!!! Arghhhh…. I am not dying!!!!”
Well, that was me talking to my
FB account a year ago. Yes… you guessed it right… it was the
‘I-deactivated-my-account’ stage of my life. One year… quite wonderful! First
of all I would like to declare that I MADE IT!!! Yeay!! This is for those who
think that one cannot live without FB – Well, c’mon! I just did! Before you
start making any presumptions, let me clear that no one challenged me to do
that. And I won’t even say that I did it because of ‘personal reasons’ coz that
would be too lame! I’ve got reasons which actually helped me keeping myself
‘free’ for real important things in life, like eating, sleeping.. etc. But
eventually I realized that there are drawbacks of it too, for instance, you
cannot react to your friend who tells you the latest joke from the “Trolled”
series… Well… all the mathematics is been done below!
So, after being in
‘social-networking-solitary-confinement’ for one year, I bring to you the
five-points that helped me live my life while ‘Being Deactivated…’
[DISCLAIMER: I do not have any personal grudges with Mark Zuckerberg
and his product. Neither do I promote the ‘Deactivate your account’ function of
FB.]
[WARNING: Deactivating your FB account can cause serious complications
in your personal and professional life. It doesn’t make you ‘Cool’]
You Get Life!
Picture this! You are on for a
morning walk (with your DSLR). You saw fresh dew on leaves. You capture that
with your ‘instrument’. You come home. ‘Upload done’. By the next morning you’ll be flooded with hundreds of
likes and thousands of comments! Many of them don’t even matter to you and most
of the people who liked the pic do not even belong to you directly or in worst
cases have never met you!
Now, imagine yourself without an
FB account and picture the scene again! You go for the walk – WITHOUT the DSLR
because you know that your account is not there! You end up gazing the dew and
capturing them with your ‘natural’ lenses and return back home! Story ends!
Now only YOU ‘Liked’ it and am
sure you’ll love that.
And those who just felt that they
used to do this, stop sharing your ‘photography’ talent with amateurs on FB,
instead move on to some ‘real’ photography websites looking for good
photographers.
You get social – well, with your family!
How many times you missed that
call from Dad? Or How many times you just forgot to respond to your Mum when
she was calling you for the dinner? And why? Coz you were busy making someone
on the ‘chat’ happy…? Right? This IS social networking, I agree but what about
the ‘family time’ that you used to have with your family?
Well, if this is sounding a bit
‘lecture’ types then, when was the last time you met your ‘chat-wali’ friend,
the same for whom you kept your mom waiting? You might have been chatting daily
but then is that doing any good to your relationship rather than making your
English worse than ever and letting you use :) instead of getting a smile on
your face? Think about it…
Know ‘MY’ location
No. This is not the name of any function
on FB (actually, I don’t know, maybe by the time I post this on Blog, its
there) But, this is what you offer to your friends for free.. “ABC is at Bus
stop feeling waiting”, “XYZ is at Panwala feeling red”, etc. etc. I mean… Why?
Why do you want people to know where the hell you are and even if you want to
share with someone in particular, god dam it, call him/her! Why to put it on
your Wall???
It is addictive... I guess!
Let’s start the cycle. You start
your laptop with some purpose, most probably, some important work in mind. You
open your browser window and you start doing your work, say, checking your
mail. You think again and before entering your email id you ‘feel-like’ signing
into your FB account. Now its working on the other Tab. You turn to the first
tab and check your mail. Suddenly you realize that when you signed into FB
there were 10 notifications. You leave the mail tab.
 |
| The FB-Cycle |
You open up the notifications,
check them one by one. Like the pictures of your friends, comment on the other
ones. Then you get like from someone on the comment you just made, and then the
person on whose profile you commented replies back. You like his comment and
suddenly someone likes your profile pic, you check all the likes you got till
date and finds that the person you wanted to like the pic didn’t like it yet.
You wait for it for a while and then you “poke” that person and that person
knowing that you seek something never replies or sends a message but pokes you
back! And finally you start waiting for the pokes also…
And the cycle moves on! The email
Tab… well you forget about that!
Brings back your fundamental Rights and Duties!
I don’t know how many of you
would agree with me on this one but being deactivated from FB made me realize
and thus follow my fundamental rights and duties. The duties which I was
supposed to do myself, in person, but started taking help from this ‘extremely
intelligent’ piece of technology. For instance, birthday wishes, attending
family functions and ceremonies, extending my regards to someone or even proposing
a girl!!! (Well, the last one’s been added to raise the TRP only)
Just ask yourself – how would you
like if someone sends you a gift or a greeting and you come to know that its
been already shared with thousands of people? I mean, FB does that openly! Your
best friend shares a pic telling you that you are his/her best friend and if
you see to its bottom right, its written that its already been shared some 2344….
Times! I mean where is the innovation in emotions nowadays? If you really think
that person is worth knowing that fact then tell him/her in person! Same
happens on Mother’s day, Father’s day, Puppy’s day and on all those days!
DIY dude! Do It Yourself… Bring
back the ‘real’ compassion and love…
The story would have ended if it
was all about leaving FB… but no! In the course of one year I also realized why
you need it.
It keeps you updated about everything!
Be it educational, professional, commercial, political, or anything, it keeps
you up-to-date! It is to ‘connect’ with people of course and you can just stay
connected and get updates of friends you never met in last decade. It helps you
promote things; ask me and my fellow authors, we are promoting PT! (Wink) It
helps your business progress! In times of adversities, of course, these
websites turn out to be a great help! It is a great platform for sharing
important stuff, especially when websites around the world are connected to it.
At last, it helps you resolve distances, it brings people closer and speaking
technically – it IS a very good medium to store your memories as it provides
lots of ‘cloud’ space.
Deactivating from FB didn’t take the Author any closer to the ‘Cool’ tag. The fact is even if you deactivate there are very few who
would appreciate that and it will not be termed as ‘Cool’ rather they’ll call
that strange! Returning to FB proves that it is not ‘leave-able’ but the Author
would advise you to use the technology in a way that your Life still remains ‘livable’.
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