facebook’s made aunties out of you
I re
member being a terrified 15yr old who couldn’t wait to get away from the neighbourhood aunty whose only purpose in life (or so it seemed), was to ask me which college I was planning on going to. At the time I remember marveling at her cheek. As if planning to get into a college was all it took. I remember feeling stressed about my exam results not because I cared about which college would have me (I never ended up doing engg anyway) but because of what that aunty would say.
Cut to 2011 and the aunty hasn’t met me in over 8 yrs but it’s as if magically her spirit seems to have split 400 different ways and turned into my Facebook contacts. Suddenly I didn’t just have to answer to the aunty. Now I had to answer to the 400 people who I don’t even remember anymore, demanding I go to South Africa for a holiday because switzerland was made uncool by Yash Raj.
We were answerable to that aunty when we were kids, and we’re answerable now to our ‘friends’ who sit around the world staring at their phones/computers and judging us for what we do and don’t do.
While we may have escaped forced morality by breaking away from our extended family, we seem to have gladly acquired a new set of friend-like facebook profiles whose sole purpose in life is to praise us for our sexiness (yes, that’s about that new pouting FB profile picture you put up) or to judge us for not having had that phoren holiday or not putting up pictures of those colourful shots that are so crucial to down for an FB album.
These aunties forced us to compete. And these FB friends are doing that now.
And not unconsciously, mind you. Very willingly. licking-their-lips-waala consciously. Pushing others into an imagined life of un-happening-ness.
Did you enjoy the feeling of staring at the mountain top in Leh as much as you enjoyed the envious ‘Likes’ from your fellow friends?
Are you living your life to please your facebook aunties. Or are you living it because it makes sense to you?
Just asking.
