THE FACEBOOK GENERATION...

...love them or loathe them but you cannot ignore them.

Hi ! Are you on FB ? Are you on FB ? Aren't you on FB ? What the heck, how LS :-( [short for low society]. That's how a youngster will greet you in today's times. And I am not fibbing if I tell you that I am thoroughly enjoying being part of the Facebook (FB) generation. For the uninitiated, Facebook is an extremely popular social networking website on the world wide web. It is my fifteen year old daughter who introduced me to the medium last year sometime in March, 2008…..and I considered myself to be very net savvy :-). As of now I find FB better suited to my tastes and sensibilities like its ever growing 200 million users around the world and more enjoyable than Twitter which is mainly a real time short messaging service akin to micro-blogging. Twitter, though is trying to catch up fast but is still laggards behind FB. Hence I am restricting my experiences mainly to FB though I have a twitter account too. FB is a great idea to stay connected with hundreds and thousands of friends and relatives all around the world ranging from children to adults to the young at heart and that too in real time without draining your pocket on international calls. But beware, your very own children will never want you as their friends on FB for reasons which would become obvious once you read further ;-).

I love and so does the entire FB generation, the way you can post all kinds of messages (except the ones hinting at profanity) on the walls (a space on each user’s profile) of your friends for them to see instantly and send them virtual gifts in the form of icons alongwith messages. Also the fact that whenever you log on to your home page on FB it highlights what your friends have been upto on FB alongwith the 'Top Stories' of the day. However, if you want to be a little private then you can send your friends an email, only for them to read. The best part is I can do most of this stuff from my iphone without ever logging on to my computer. The ‘Looking For’…dating or ...a relationship and the ‘Relationship Status’ are quite interesting aspects of each user's personal profile. The latter may range from 'single' to 'married' to 'in an open relationship with…….' or 'in a complicated relationship with…….' . This info pretty well generates a lot of curiosity among friends about the user’s intentions :-). Incidentally, you can chat too and upload your profile photo (what’s facebook without a user’s face), family photos and videos on your wall to share with your friends.The 'Poke' feature which is often referred to as Facebook flirting and a little controversial is something I would rather refrain from so as not to offend my friends of the opposite sex :-). After using the medium for over a year, I applaud the creators for initiating a great social networking tool which has brought me so very close to my cross-country friends and relatives. I have been able to locate my long lost school friends (through the extremely helpful friend finder tool in FB) whom I first knew as toddlers but had lost track of after passing out from school a good 25 years ago. It seems the entire world is on FB today. The connection with my school friends through FB has been extremely gratifying to say the least and pretty nostalgic too. Some of us even met over dinner at my house last Christmas. The friends you make later in life may be very good but nothing can beat the bonhomie and banter of friends who have grown up with you since kindergarten. I love and thank FB for that and we will soon be having a silver jubilee reunion of our class of '84 in December this year.

Another interesting but at times frustrating (when I don’t understand the acronym or emoticon) is the chat lingo or dialect the FB generation has created to interact with each other. It’s basically a mélange of acronyms, characters, emoticons and abbreviations. When I started, the concept was a little alien to me and I had to take classes from my daughter :D. I hope you get this :D sign right the next time you read it elsewhere as it symbolises that I am smiling big while writing this sentence. You have others like :P which means sticking out your tongue to tease, :S meaning the person is confused, :O signifying a shocked face, :@ signifying a very angry face and so on. And then there is my sister (she'll kill me for this) in the US who starts or ends almost every sentence on FB with LOL !, short for laughing out loud. Another very common acronym used is OMG!, short for Oh my God. Many users casually use acronyms specifying the F-word in a very blatant and unabashed fashion without a tad bit of remorse and definitely not for the prudish. Writing complete words and sentences is totally out of sync and uncool for this gen-next. Write complete words on FB and you are murdering their lingo. So Beware :-). Every word in the thesaurus has been abbreviated for sake of brevity and paucity of time to type. My daughter interestingly calls them and herself the "Phataphat Generation”. They are always in a hurry to do things. So my dear friends better catch up with this lingo if you want to survive the FB generation or be part of it and I pride in the fact that I have caught up with it sooner than later, though still gasping for breath. To be a cool parent, be as cool as your kid and speak their language and I bet they will love you for that. However, I still get infuriated at times though, of what have we made of the conservative Queen's English we were taught in our formative years. Particularly so when I see my daughter jotting down her notes in school in FB lingo, I get flustered. In my opinion, the parents should caution their kids to restrict this lingo only on the net and not carry it to their classrooms and examination halls. But you never know, maybe ten….twenty years from now this disease would have communicated and multiplied across generations, that I foresee even exams being written in this dialect. Also by that time, many out of this FB lot would have become teachers and examiners and be well equipped in handling their new mother tongue. Currently, the fall back of all this is that many people open a FB account out of curiousity but never come back again or their status updates are very intermittent. Now don’t tell me you’re soooo... overloaded with work to update your status.They don't or maybe can't even upload their profile photo. My due sympathies are with the lot. But alas this lot was never meant to be on FB in the first place.Or they rather pull up their socks like me:-)

Let's finally talk about the very hilarious ‘Status Updates’ which the users give on FB on a daily basis or any time they feel like. These are a way to convey to their friends, what they are upto or are feeling at that point of time or about their current whereabouts. On FB they ask you, “What’s on your mind ?" and on Twitter they ask you, “What are you doing ?“. I have one very interesting friend (no offence please) whose several status updates are mainly by way of Hindi poetry and lyrics written in English making his updates very philosophical. It’s so difficult to understand his state of mind. Then there are others who post updates as funny, nonsensical and cheesy as ‘I am in the loo’, ‘F*** my life’ or 'What the F***'. The way you can publicly advertise on your profile that you are a fan of some famous personality, celebrity, company, brand or something as uncanny as the 'smell of petrol' is not only incredible but maybe brings a sense of fulfillment to the user's wishes. FB has special pages dedicated to the famous. In a way, being a fan of something or somebody highlights one's characteristics and an insight of the user's personal profile to others. You will also find many social groups and networks who form a community to address any matter of public interest or voice a concern and accordingly any FB user can become its member if he feels for that cause. For example, the “Pink Chaddi” group ( 'Chaddi' being a term for undergarments) formed on FB to muster support for the freedom of women and retaliate against the beating up of young girls in a Mangalore pub by members of Sri Ram Sene in January this year. I see users being totally immersed in the numerous fun applications and quizzes on FB to whale away their free time and the quiz results once posted on their walls are really intriguing to say the least.

Though this generation has become so addicted to the Facebook way of life but when there was a recent poll amongst its users on whether they would like to pay to use FB, then millions of users came together to form a group venting their ire. FB was started as a free site and should remain one. What say guys 'n' gals ? Also when FB recently announced major changes in its terms and conditions of service there was a major hue and cry by its users and FB had to revert back to the previous terms. That’s the strength of this generation. This is also the same generation which is least hesitant to announce private matters like divorce or separation on their walls and many a times posts fake and multiple identities on these sites.You either hate them or love them or better still, be a part of them as you cannot ignore them. I decided the latter. For better or for worse....you decide. But it definitely keeps me vibrant and in sync with my kids ;-). However, a word of caution for the young girls and women on FB, Twitter & other sites would not be out of place : Never add strangers to your friend lists even if they pop up as mutual friends, as would be evident from a south delhi based rich and educated young man recently arrested for raping girls and videotaping the acts. He had lured his victims from social networking sites of FB and others only. But honestly my idea is not to frighten you away from FB and the like :-).