For those of you who have been too busy with work to commune with the Internet or who are lucky enough to have a rich and fulfilling real (as opposed to virtual) social life, you might be unaware of the existence of Facebook, a social networking website that in the past year has been a global phenomenon that has kept students and grown up people glued to their computers for hours. It’s very easy to join. You just log in, add a bit of information about yourself and start finding friends and people that you know who are also members and add them as friends to your site.
Since I joined last year I am proud to say the number of ‘friends’ I have now on Facebook is in the thousands, which is quite a feat for someone whose natural inclination is more on the anti social and whose real life friends add up to less than the total sum of my fingers. As a matter of fact, last time I logged in, there are no less than 658 Facebook members who are ‘requesting’ to be added to my friends’ list – and none of them I’ve ever met or known in my life – and I still haven’t had the time to deal with them.
Usually faced with this request the choice is to press the ‘confirm’ button, which then asks you how you know each other (former school friends, work colleagues, family members, ex roommates, casual acquaintance etc.) or ignore the request if you don’t know the person – which would be the sensible and normal thing to do in real life, but somehow it feels unnecessarily mean on the Net, especially if the person looks vaguely interesting (you can post a photo on your ‘profile’ page). In any case the more friends there are on your list, the more popular you feel, especially since like me, I’m not generally a good one at making friends.
The other side of the coin is you can search for friends you yourself want to collect, such as celebrities, so you can claim to have them as your ‘friends’. (In my ‘hot friends’ list I have Angelina Jolie). Moreover, I can with confidence know what my ‘friends’ are up to or what mood they are in (or what crazy parties you’ve missed) as there are regular news feeds that keep you updated on what everybody is doing and posting on line.
Once you are ‘friends’ then there are endless things you can do to each other and the hundreds of other Facebook friends that you’ve collected over the months – all without having to ever speak to them or interact with them in three dimensions. Other than the regular email feature, here are some of the activities you can engage with your FB friends that are guaranteed to keep you amused and a lot more creative than you could ever be on a face-to-face level. You can send gifts that range from the ordinary (flowers, chocolate, beer, cup cakes, teddy bears) to the exclusive (vodkas, martinis, diamond rings, shoes, designer handbags, tiaras) the spiritual (angels, blessings, good karma), the affectionate (love, kisses, hugs) and the hot stuff (booty slaps, sexy kisses, caresses, Marilyn Monroe and eggs that hatch into celebrities).
If you feel particularly aggressive you can always punch, kick and throw sheep at your friends as well as poke them from time to time. And there are also endless games you can play with your friends that you might never do in real life unless you own vampires, werewolves, slayers as well as the more mundane racing cars and pet animals. Talking about pets you can also ‘buy’ people on Facebook or become a human pet to some virtual animal. You can also join all sorts of groups, buy and sell things, promote your creations and prevent global warming by cultivating your own garden patch and grow fruits and vegetables in it.
However, for me at least, the real joy of Facebook I truly only experienced recently. Up till then, after the initial curiosity of checking out other people’s profiles and list of friends as well as the fun of playing inane games for hours, being poked or sent growing plants ceased to have the same excitement after the thousandth requests, while quizzes to measure how sexy, how smart, popular or hot you are, left me quite cold. It came in the form of an email I received in my FB Inbox a few days ago. It was from one Maria Elena Lopez Oquenda and it read like this:
‘Hello Dessi, My name is María. I don`t know if you remember me, We were best friends when we were little girls in London. Neither of us spoke English but you managed to tell me a lot of things about your mother language and we were very good friends. Now I live in Venezuela, I am a doctor, have three kids aged 16,15 and 13, and I would be very happy to hear from you. Kind Regards.’
Indeed Maria Lopez was my first best friend in London when I was eleven and started my Junior High School lonely, friendless and couldn’t speak English. We were inseparable for almost a year when her parents took her back to Venezuela and I never saw or heard from her ever again since: at least until last week when she found me on FB over thirty years later. And this for me is the true wonder and real purpose of Facebook and for this I have FB founder Mark Zuckerberg to thank for.
(Desi Anwar, Tempo English)
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Yuda Sri Bagus A
said:
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... Yup.... aq juga ngalamin hal yang kurang lebih serupa. Karena harus merantau jauh ke luar pulau jadi jarang bertemu teman2x waktu smp dan sma dulu. Sudah 6 tahun kira......  And guest what. Aq bisa bertemu di FB also in FS and Keep conact with them.  Yang paling asik....selain bisa nge-Add Katon Bagaskara juga bisa minta kenalan mBak Desi. Jika dipikir tujuh kelilingpun kemungkinannya kecil terjadi di dunia nyata. Hak3x. disitu letak "Ajaib"-nya.  |
king
said:
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... Hi Desi, I' am a fulltime housewife who is enjoying her free time using FB to keep me connected with some friends and yes just like many other FB users I have claimed some well known figures as friend  and you are one of them . Thank you to click that confirm button and adding me even though you don’t know me at all and now in enjoying the daily avocado you serves. Cheers king |
MC
said:
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... yesshhhhhhhhh facebook is amazing.... i was reunited with some of my long lost friends too, considering the gypsy life i have been living for the past 12 yrs of my life... though i am curious... what's next after facebook??? can't wait for another genius to invent the next big thing! |
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