You have been there. That faithful day your mom sent you
a Facebook request. You stared at the request for minutes, or may be hours depending
on how much of your life was online. Of course, you did not get to stare at it for
days because you got a call from your mom the same day asking if you got her friend
request and if yes, why you hadn’t accepted it when all your cousins had. You
explained to your mom that you were not a loser like your cousins who spent
24x7 on Facebook and did not know the existence of the term ‘work ethics.’ You
reminded her that you were a vital part of a multibillion dollar company and
every minute you spent doing anything other than work, your company’s share price
dropped by few cents. You asked her, not without tinge of sarcasm, if these
cousins knew how many zeros were there in a billion. (Sorry, I digress. But
these cousins, I tell you!). In any case, you did an Alt+Tab after the call and
grudgingly accepted the request. Within the next 10 minutes, your mom wrote on
your wall for the first time:'
Hi sweetie!
Just saw all your updates for the day. Daddy and I wonder what the closing
share price of your company is. Love, Mom.
Mommy – 1. You – 0.
The next day your friend called you to inform you that
he had gotten your mom’s “Friend Request” and he thought it was incredibly cool
to have a tech-savvy mommy. You could hear him smirking over the phone. In the next
few days, your news feed was full of:
@YourMommy
just became friends with @YetAnotherFriend
You realized where this was heading. Those teenage
years when she phoned the moms of every one of your friends if you were late by
five minutes to reach home came rushing back to your memory. Followed closely
by those horrific college years when she SMSed all your friends asking about
your whereabouts if you failed to answer your phone couple of times. And now,
Facebook! God, she always found a way! You couldn’t just sit back and wave
good-bye to your privacy. So you called her and told her that you were an adult
and it was not a good idea she was befriending everyone on your friend’s list.
Your mom was capable of being melodramatic at very
short notice. “It is ok, dear. You have always been like this. You always wanted
to keep your life away from your own
mother who gave birth to you. I just thought you would be proud of me. It
is fine – I will stay away from Facebook.”
Your dad called you in the evening. “Your mom is very
hurt. You know how much she loves you. You know she means only well. Why do you
have to hurt her this way? Do you know how much she had to sacrifice to bring
you up? For instance, once when you were 2…”
“No, no dad. I was in a bad mood before. Tell her I am
absolutely fine with whatever she does on Facebook! In fact all my friends are
jealous my mom is so cool.” You got another FB update seconds after you
disconnected your dad’s call, which made you wonder if all your dad told your
mom was “Issue solved, now get me my tea.”
Oh my
sweetie pie. You know I love you always. Love, your ‘cool’ mom.
Mommy – 2. You – 0.
You then knew that it was real. You immediately set to
clean up your act. You untagged yourselves from pictures that suggested (1) alcoholism,
(2) promiscuity and (3) absolute insanity. You then deleted all the posts were
you shared ‘inappropriate’ jokes. You also ensured that your relationship
status was set to whatever your mom thought it was. Now at least you won’t be
disowned, or more importantly, stricken off the will.
The next day your news feed was covered with photos
from your FB albums as your mom religiously liked every single picture you ever
uploaded. Every. Single. Picture. You were fairly happy you cleaned up your act
on time. But you became very upset when a friend posted a message:
Guess whose
mommy just joined Facebook!!! ROFL!!!
57 liked the message in 3 minutes. The world was full
of Judases.
You called your mother and told her that you were
overwhelmed by her never ending love for you and you were touched by the fact
that she was liking all your pictures, BUT STOP IT ALREADY! Your mom stayed
away for few days and just as you started to rest in the illusionary cloud of
the virtual realm:
@YourMommy has uploaded a picture of you. Look
sweetie what I found as I was going through the old album yesterday. You look
sooooo cute dressed up as a monkey.
@You:
Really, mom? Really?
@YourMommy:
I am so happy you asked me to stay off Facebook for few days. @YourCousin
taught me how to scan old pictures. Now I have so many cute pictures of you to
upload. Love, Mom
Mommy – 3. You – (-1). Cousin – dead.
Your and your mom’s Facebook journey continued almost
uneventful for a while. Which was to say you uploaded nothing, shared nothing,
commented on nothing and untagged yourself from new pictures that risked
disownment. You watched in horror as she shared humongous number of idiotic
things every day – from five-headed snakes to the Lord’s image in clouds that
you had to re-share within 10 minutes (else very very bad things would happen
to you). You rubbed your arms in evil delight as your friends’ moms started
joining Facebook.
And just as you
thought your life could not get worse, you got an email saying:
@YourDad
just joined Facebook.
@YourDad sent
you a Friend Request. Accept or Decline
Now you felt complete. Your whole family was on
Facebook. Your distant uncles and aunts were sending you Farmville and Candy
Crush requests. Your neighbors were commenting “Cute” on your pictures. All
kind of relatives whom you probably met last as a child when they were pulling
your cheeks were complaining to your mom that you were not accepting their
friend requests.
You searched for the ‘Deactivate’ button on the
screen. If you wanted to be amidst all these wonderful people, you would have
stayed home, wouldn’t you?
You will perhaps get back to Facebook the day you feel
the need for that warm fuzzy feeling only
family can give you. Which will be
never.
We don’t
need to look far to figure out what would cause the eventual downfall of
Facebook.
