Facebook: What Activates Your ‘Deactivate’ Urge...!

In the olden ages Facebook was a manageable affair. Your indulgence time in this fascinating book had to be found, because you could either do it on your desktop or on your laptop and everywhere it was not convenient to do so. The moment the smart phones inundated the eager hands of users things changed completely—for the better or for the worst is yet to be ascertained. Facebook indulgence became an anytime or rather a full time activity, to such an extent that if one picks up the mobile for doing a specific thing one inadvertently gets distracted to FB notifications, and finally forgets about what s/he picked up the mobile for. Its use stopped to be location-specific—it began to haunt users everywhere including travel time, in public transport and in public places apart from very private encounters.  

As a corollary to the above users started getting restless thinking about the time being devoted to this indulgence, if the time devoted or wasted is too much, if the things one is doing there are of any earthy meaning or significance, if one is mentally disturbed over this indulgence and so on. Therefore, people who had suffered intensively owing to the above have started thinking of ‘deactivating’ their accounts or have done so temporarily, and the ‘to be or not to be on FB’ became arguably the biggest existential dilemma for the existing users. Here we are going to put the light on some situations that may propel you to ‘deactivation’ of your Facebook account, and these situations are eked out on the basis of a cross-section of users’ sentiments/compulsions/disillusionment. In this essentially egregious analysis one must, of course, possess the unique ability or rather ‘humility’ to distinguish ‘celebrities’ from ‘lesser mortals’.

Uselessness: Most of the users think it’s useless and a sheer waste of time to indulge in this most vibrant form of social media. After devoting hours, days and months to it standing sitting sleeping or waking up they find nothing lastingly viable at the end and decide all their time has been wasted. They also complain that most of the so-called viral posts or videos are absolutely undeserving or fake in nature, and the moment they inadvertently click on a particular video an ocean of videos surge up making it unviable for them to go any farther.

Irritation: When you take 10 hours to generate 10 responses or more aptly ‘likes’ and witness others generating 100 in less than 10 minutes. You realise the utter meaninglessness of your user-existence, forced to ponder that making a century in cricket is somewhat easier.  

Anger: When you get caught in some posts unawares and withstand the 20+ selfies uploaded by a particular user whose photogenic presence is also immensely questionable. Why the hell should I go on watching the unimaginable angles to the same faces, again... again... and again?

Infertility: When you find yourself suddenly pregnant with some fertile or timely thoughts and think impulsively of putting it down on your timeline. Emboldened by the sizeable number of friends you do possess you post it with great expectations and wait with bated breath for responses or more preferably ‘comments’ since you have already devoted the time for an uplifting interaction. And, nothing comes in for an unbearable length of time.

Much Ado About the Obvious: When you witness ‘friends’ or ‘friends of friends’ or ‘friends friends...’, whatever, posting their faces in the acts of cooking, eating, sleeping, partying or travelling you ask yourself a profound question—why should I bother about what they are cooking or eating, where they are eating and why, where they are travelling to and why, what company they are keeping and why and why they are converting this public forum to a mere family album! Also, you start pitying the endless number of users responding to such posts and liking.

Futility: Finally one realises the futility of the whole experience with not more than 10% of one’s friends responding most of the times, with most of one’s fertile or newsy thoughts getting utterly ignored and even the occasional ‘faces’ of one not generating positive traction.

Facebook: Most often the ‘horse’ itself kicks you up again and again—prompting you to write endlessly, disturbing you with ‘memories’ you’d want to forget, informing you brazenly that someone has tagged you along with 100 others without any valid reason, circling your ‘face’ in some uncouth photograph and asking you to tag yourself, notifying you with ‘friend’ requests of some who are already your friends and so on so forth.

The impulses generated under any or all of the above situations most often drive you to ‘deactivation’. However, mind you, such ‘deactivation’ deeds are almost always temporary in nature, and in actual practice you ‘activate’ to ‘deactivate’ again, and again..!

(Note:The current status of this writer’s Facebook account is ‘Deactivated’! It is not at all clear if one or more of the situations listed above are responsible for this dastardly decision!)

A Festive Thought...!

The ‘festive’ thought as mentioned above could be interpreted as controversial after the words that follow are swallowed up, and therefore I clarify at the outset that there is no malicious intention behind this thought. There is only the spirit of celebration.

The Indian festive season starts around September every year with various non-religious, religious and intra-religious festivals taking place almost every week. Since all such events of worship or otherwise are now called ‘festivals’, these get naturally opened up for everybody to participate. Like the quintessential slogan given in West Bengal by the Chief Minister during the Durga Puja ‘festival’, ‘Religion is mine, religion is yours; festival is for all’. For example, in this year’s Christmas ‘festival’ on the streets of Kolkata you would hardly find a ‘religious’ being among the thousands of intense merrymakers. So then, everyone waits for the occasion from September to New Year Day to participate which translates into roaming around, extensive use of public transport and a lot of eating.

Business enthralls on every Indian street with quick-bite stalls, fast food joints and the usual restaurants each of which gets literally surrounded by ‘celebrating’ revellers. It becomes ‘binge eating’ in the truest sense of the term. And, it is not at all a joke to indulge in this over a reasonably long period of 3 to 4 months.

While it is definitely a positive development of religious occasions transcending all barriers and allowing all across all religions to take part wholeheartedly, there is a bit of a concern, at least for this nondescript writer.    

You see, after continuous ‘binge eating’ bellies around are sure to grow faster. In fact, the human observatory data as revealed to this writer indicate this very phenomenon. As you know, in India public transport is very crowded, particularly during the festival season. Nowadays while travelling in a public mode you need to be on your constant guard to counter the pushes and pinning by the backpacks. Even non-celebrating normal commuters carry the omnipresent slinging backpacks. And, they bulldoze through to create a space for themselves, maybe just to indulge in the inevitable mobile surfing. Now, after bellies start growing faster you’ll have the added misery of countering the front-packs too. No alternatives. At least till the New Year pledges which may or may not contribute to a bit flattening bellies...

About Watching Movies...!

Movie watching has always been a passion with us, particularly anywhere in India, ever since the discovery of motion pictures. This passion has always been independent of the conditions of the movie theaters or the environment of viewing. All of the cinema halls in India were single screen till about two decades back when multiplexes and malls came up in the major cities. In the small towns cinema halls or movie theaters were abysmal—people smoked and spat inside; they talked and roared with laughter anytime; seats were congested and there was an acute problem of craning necks; there was no air-conditioning and the wall or ceiling fans made it all the more noisier; no lounges outside, only holes around and most of the theaters looked like warehouses. However, we never complained about the lack of such amenities, mostly because we had no access to better environment to compare with. Of course, in the metros or in the major cities the theaters were much better, and once in a while we enjoyed a day out in the nearby big city watching a movie. Further, the ticket rates were damn cheap even after considering the value of money those days. Black marketing of tickets for super hit movies was also rampant. On many an occasion we got obsessed with certain Bollywood (read Hindi) movies, and failing to watch those caused us great distress.

Such scenario still exists in the semi-urban and the rural belt of India where better amenities cannot normally come about because of the fact that local people never want to pay more for watching their favorite movies. Single screen theaters exist also in the metros and major cities even after the conversion of most of them to shopping malls.

We remember the quintessential cycle rickshaw armed with a loudspeaker and fully covered with colorful posters moving around the roads and lanes of the small town advertising the release of a movie every Friday in the sole cinema hall there. 

Once in a semi-urban area in a state of India the first ever cinema hall was to have its first show. As it happened we went for that very show. A huge crowd with tickets waited eagerly for the main door of the theater to open. The moment it was opened people rushed towards it trying to enter falling over each other. The knowing ones like us smiled thinking, ‘Why rush, pals! All of you have genuine tickets and you have the right to watch the movie!’ Such was the spirit of going for a film.

The ticket counters were normally all concrete affairs with a hole to push in your hand and another hole above to communicate. In the first few days after the release of a blockbuster there used to be huge queues. Sometimes not willing to wait longer we joined the queues. Black marketers of tickets used to climb over us on the side railings and push in their hands forcibly for bulk tickets. Everybody took that as normal and maybe the counter managers were in league with them. Because of their steals most of the times we failed to get tickets, and still not willing to say quits we followed them around to bargain out a reasonable deal. Advance booking queues were even worse and that too for a very short time. Some cinema halls allowed ladies to come by the side and push in their hands alternately with the queuing males. Once I pushed my hand in through the hole when it was actually the turn of the ladies. The counter manage was indeed very smart—he was able to recognize even my much younger  hand and roughly pushed it out!

Whatever be the conditions, those days it was immensely enjoyable to take maximum pains to watch a movie. Besides, that time there were not many choices for entertainment with no television or cable channels, and therefore, going out for the movie theater was always a special and yet the usual occasion. Whenever guests came to stay with us we the children always tried to persuade them to take us to the movies. And, more often they obliged!

The scenario has changed a lot over the last few years in the metros or the big cities and in some smaller towns too. Movie going nowadays is more of a consumer activity. The advantage of the multiplexes or the super malls is that even the most affluent classes now come to the theatres to watch movies along with consuming a whole lot of packaged eatables. It has also become a costly affair that needs careful planning for normal viewers. As we mentioned earlier movie fans in various towns and cities of India still resist the changeover and prefer to flock to the existing single screen halls to enjoy at much cheaper ticket prices.

The charms of movie-going in the olden days linger on still...!