Sunday, September 25, 2011

Fakebook

In the beginning there was Fakebook.

And Fakebook became a rage and made its dwelling on every PC, Laptop and other such devices. Everyone saw its glory, the glory of the one and only, who came after Orkut, MySpace, Friendster and other such discardees.

The village idiots around the world rejoiced and then joined … en masse.

Then the village idiots began to clamor for privacy.

Fakebook gave them the option to block their wall.

The village idiots rejoiced. Now no one will be able to read what they were never reading anyway.

After some time the village idiots began to clamor for hiding their friends list. God forbid if someone saw their friend’s names. Nothing would happen! Horrors!

And Fakebook gave them the option to hide their friends list.

The village idiots rejoiced.

Then the village idiots realized that their friend’s friends could see their wall and photos. They gnashed their teeth and wailed in despair till Fakebook applied cotton to their ears and gave them the option to block their friend’s friends from seeing their status updates and photos.

The village idiots rejoiced… for some time. Then they began to clamor for more control over their accounts and Fakebook despaired. Their social networking tool was now a virtual network of tightly guarded fortress. It made them cry a little bit. But not for long as the wail of the village idiots were getting louder and louder for more privacy controls.

This time around, Fakebook gave them an additional option under their profile edit page. It was called “Deactivate account” and hoped for the best.

Alas! Their hopes were dashed. The village idiot’s never got the message.

They grumbled and gnashed their teeth in despair and created hate statuses against Fakebook and clicked “like” on others ‘Hate Fakebook’ statuses.

Then they realized no one could read their hate statuses so they created Hate Pages. Then they realized that no one reads their hate pages and made it ‘public’.

Then they realized that they needed to show the people who all were showing solidarity to their “cause” and enabled for the world to see their friends, supporters , affiliate pages and nearly everything else.

And then the village idiots sat back in contentment. Something was missing. But they were not able to put their finger to it. And as long as they could not put a finger to it, they couldn’t ask Fakebook for such an option. Somewhere in Palo Alto, Bark Pucker Berg sighed in relief.

He realized that the monsters he had created had only one way to be assuaged. Give them the privacy to feel safe and the freedom to make idiots of themselves in public.

And after that, he rested... for some time.