A letter to Facebook

Dear Facebook,

Thanks for making me so insecure. Thanks for making me believe that the number of likes estimates my self-worth. Thanks for making me so impatient that even a 1 min wait reply seemed like a fortnight. Thanks for making me another of your victims. Thanks for creating a rift between my real world and your virtual world. Thanks for making me indulge in imbecile FB wars on some random post. Thanks for taking me out from the fictional world of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and slamming my face down into this quagmire of virtuality and oblivion. The world full of memes, likes, reactions, comments, friend requests and suggestions has left me obliterated.

Glued to my phone screens most of the days I always felt that how could XYZ manage to have so many likes on the cover photo or how does she have so many followers. Just like English is a parameter to judge someone’s intelligence the number of followers you have judge your calibre in India. Just because I don’t have 1000 FB friends and I don’t talk to hundreds of people each day doesn’t mean I am an introvert. It’s just that I prefer making friends in real life to any random guy or girl 200 km away from me. It’s just that I am more concerned about preserving old friendships than building new ones. If I don’t have a blue tick o my account and I am not recognized under your terms and conditions doesn’t make me less lovable to the people “who really care for me”. You are responsible for estranging kids from their parents. You are the reason why the youth has become so self-conscious about their looks. We no longer discuss new TV shows or books during our lunch breaks anymore. A senior’s post with 500+ likes is what fantasizes us more these days. You have stolen our peace of mind. Even the silent nights are passed scrolling through a Holi picture of a guy living in some far-flung corner of the city or anxiously waiting for that one person to come online. Life has become monotonous. Now I hardly remember even my brother’s birthday. Gone are the days when I used to listen to my grandpa’s stories. Today I have basically shut myself inside in this cocoon.Secluded.Isolated.Desperately craving attention. Facebook you proved to be a drug worse than opium. You succeeded in transmuting the book-lover in me to a “Facebook addict”.

- Once a bookworm