Chronicles of my Facebook inbox
In 2012 when I accepted the Terms and Conditions without reading a single line of it, my joy knew no bounds- I could use the internet beyond Google search and I could go to the internet cafe regularly for school "assignments". I sent friend requests, accepted random requests, poked friends, stalked my crush, liked pages, mentioned that I watched Hannah Montana in my bio which I never watched except that I heard the rich kids of my class talked about it, I mentioned that I played basketball which I would later try for the first time in my second year in uni *laughs at myself hysterically*, I mentioned all the books and "classy" movies I read and watched at the time of signup, and I wrote all the quotes from my old diary to describe who I was. That was my painstaking pre-pubertal launch into the world of social media!
Few years later, there would be a debate on whether social media has done more harm than good to the society, this was when a class in my secondary school barely had seven people using Facebook, but obviously we had to join the wagon of the Chief speaker and his supporting speakers to know what harm this website of superiority could possibly pose.
The underlying reason for this post is to take you through my Facebook inbox, yet I feel it necessary to give a brief narration of my inbox metamorphosis.
Up until 2014, I would reply all messages because they were from my Facebook "friends", I would write "b4" instead of "before", throw out the "th" in "that" to replace with "d", and I, to a greater extent, encouraged the inventors of "gewd, tanks, hu, kk" etc that were supposed to mean "good, thanks, who, okay" respectively. Can I go back in time for a second to spank myself while trying to write those?? Would I really accept to go back to change these things? No! There would be nothing to make me laugh and cringe at myself while I scroll through old conversations.
Speaking of old conversations, the messages I exchanged with classmates and real-life friends and families alike make up only about 15% of my entire inbox, others are from these set of people:
1. First on the list are The Unfamiliar Hi'ers.
These people probably had you suggested to them as friends because of mutual friends, or might just, without connections, hit your inbox with a 'Hi'. Pre being my current self, I would reply, in part for courtesy (which is what I do now if I have about twenty strings of Hi's from one person. You can question me for that haha) or because I also wanted to do the "chatting thing". Despite hearing cases of people being harassed by random people they met on Facebook, my smartly-woven naive thoughts swung around the belief that I would never be allowed to go visit a known friend to my parents less of seeking permission to meet with someone whose real name I didn't know.
2. The OCD victims.
This group of people are secondary effects of the previous group. The manifestation of their OCD became fully apparent after my two words of reply. They are overly persistent, awkwardly amusing, unreasonably frustrating, and overwhelmingly non-empathetic towards my low-battery phone. It is a ritual they MUST perform at specified times. My introduction to this group was my post-pubertal launch to the world of incessant phone buzzing. What are the recommendations to deal with these people? Log in from your PC and mark all as 'Read'! Yes!, just what you were thinking...you've instigated them to act like the next group because you've created an assumption that you acknowledged their message... (maybe I played myself by doing that haha).
3. The Angry birds.
I think I can safely say that I pushed this group of people beyond their limits. From replying with a malnourished 'hello' to bringing the conversation to a close, and to "reading" subsequent messages without a reply! The aftermath could be insults, pleas, or lights fade
Despite all these, I tremble at the thought of a world without Facebook, because Mr Mark literally gave most of us 90s kids the perfect inauguration to social media. Before Twitter, Instagram or the very obsessive Snapchat, 95% started their experience with Facebook.
On a more personal note, I cannot imagine scrolling through my phone's screen without salivating at TASTY's mouth-watering cooking videos https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/, or getting inspired by Jay Shetty's motivational talks https://www.facebook.com/JayShettyIW/, or laughing out loud at every of STUDENTS' PROBLEMS' memes https://www.facebook.com/StudentProblems/, or BuzzFeed India's hilarious and educational posts , or even getting information from my uni.
https://www.facebook.com/BuzzFeed/
Every action of tags, likes, reactions, comments, shares, inbox can be controlled by you. With a click you can be as private as you want to be on this public platform, but don't say you don't like the laughs every scroll through Facebook gives you.
If there's anything I missed to add, let me know in the comment section, and don't forget to share with your friends!!!
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