Tagged : ‘Facebook’

Two years back, I heard an aunt complain about the state of her farm and cattle to her husband. It took me a while to realize that, propped up in a chair in Malaysia, she was ‘farming’on Facebook with her sisters and friends in India. The prospect of living abroad, far away from friends and family, somehow seemed to validate her interest in the game and in Facebook itself. I have since been watching (warily) all the uncles, aunties, the second third and fourth cousins, bosses, colleagues you avoid in real life, strangers, friends of friends of friends, all sending ‘friend requests’ on the site. There was little I could do about it. There was a social networking etiquette in place. In a virtual world where everybody knew everybody, refusing a friend request was bad manners.

Hundreds of friends (most of whom I didn’t know), pictures, and wall posts later, I was somewhat shocked to find my family discuss facebook pictures posted by some relatives last night. My father, who spends most of his retired life browsing the web these days, announced that there are new pictures to be viewed. My mother and aunt promptly followed, pouring over the computer.

The site is of course, many things to many people. It could be as personal as you want it to be or even use it to your professional advantage. Yet, I find the idea of facebook coming home deeply unsettling. It is as if an alien contagion has found it’s way home. There seems no more, a separation between your virtual and real-life persona. But more on that later…