It was a normal day in the peak of summer. It was blazing hot outside. The bright sunrays filtered in through the thick curtains casting a dull, amber glow on the tiles. The room was heated almost like a furnace and the entire house had become a pressure cooker of some sort. I was in my room, the computer making its slow, dull noise as I battered down on the keyboard. After some typing and fiddling around, I refresh the page to find myself with an all new list of scrapbook entries on my Orkut profile.
Arjun Samaddar says he’s back from Nagpur.
Snehalata Suresh has woken up and replied to a scrapbook message I wrote to her in my previous incarnation.
Arjun Samaddar remembered to tell me that he wants to watch a movie the coming weekend.
Then Arjun remembers that he hasn’t asked me, "Is that ok with you?" in any of his previous messages.
Neha Patil writes telling me that she feels very bored in life and needs to add some spice to it and so is joining a class where she would learn special techniques of knitting.(Unknown to her, I burst out laughing at the prospect of "spicing things up" by learning how to knit).
And then there is a bloke, "Cool Guy 007", who has left a rather unique message in my scrapbook.
"I want to make friendship with you."
He has to be gay.
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It took me quite some time but I finally managed to track the way these guys work. There are some standard messages and their targets usually are girls. Their messages are cliched to the core.
"Hey, I’m a normal, fun-loving guy living in TimBukToo. Will you be my friend?"
"Hey, hi, how you doing? I am not good in making friends with girls so please understand. Friends?"
But these messages portray at least a rudimentary understanding of English grammar. There are some that bend rules beyond break point.
"I wanna make friendship with you."
"Give me your friendship, I give you mine."
"Can I have some of your friendship?"
I spent quite some time operating a fake ID on Orkut, under the name of a woman(that profile is deleted now), just to see how true the claim is that anybody that is female gets these kind of "requests". In the fourteen days for which I kept the profile operating, I got some half a dozen friend requests. I was a member of only one community- "Alternative Economics".
So that kind of reminds me of what Jerry Seinfeild says in one of his shows. He goes: "You know how much women complain about having to do things to attract mail attention- the high heels, the pantyhose and all that? But when you’re a man, it’s even harder to attract female attention because you don’t know what to do! Why do you think we build bridges or airplanes or explore unchartered territory? It is really that hard! I bet every time one of them austronauts comes back from a dangerous mission, he’ll go to a pub, walk up to a girl and say- So, did you see me up there?"
It’s a desperate world.
Meanwhile, the same guy who left a scrapbook message on my authentic profile, the guy whom I called gay, left me a second message some days later. It read, "Friends are forever. Let us be friends."
I wonder why he’s trying that hard!
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I have myself quite a set of Internet friends and I find each one of them quite interesting and amusing. In certain ways, I sometimes feel that they use the Internet as a way to be what they otherwise can’t be. It’s a very natural thing, not something to feel ashamed of. Real life is a bi*ch in some sense and you can’t always be everything that you want to be. So then you can lead your Internet friends to think that you’re that "person" and pretend to be that perfect creature that you always wanted to be.
Another thing that I’ve found in some of my Internet friends is that in them there is always a desire to provoke the other person into an intellectual debate about a particular subject. So they will provoke you enough to make a statement on some sensitive issue so that you can have a sensational debate.
All this is good, this is what Internet friendship is all about. It gives you a chance to be someone whom you’re necessarily not, without the responsiblity for the other person’s sentiments being upon your shoulders.(Imagine if a real life friend finds out that you’re not what you say you are-he’s most likely to ignore you later on!). Secondly, you can get yourself quite interesting conversations.
But I’ve learnt one thing that is very important. Beyond these two things, Internet friends are best kept at the other side of the computer terminal. I know it sounds kind of harsh but that is true. I really don’t want my Internet friends to find out who I really am.(I’m not spectacularly different but in some ways, I do pretend-play!). I really don’t want any of them to come bursting into a cafe and shaking hands because it would be very awkward. I can’t then pretend to be laughing at their non-jokes with the unobtrusive "LOL" any more! I have to actually "hehehehe" out and that isn’t always easy.
All right that was too rude a taunt. I’m sorry!
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By the way, just as an update.
That "Cool Guy 007" wrote me a Portugese testimonial.
Who the hell are these guys? I really want to throw them a party. After all. Buffoons are really important to modern soceity where stress levels are really high!