Tweaking Facebook a Wee Bit

Cross your heart and answer these questions:

CASE 1: You are free. Not doing anything in particular. A random friend, who you have exactly two class photos with, in one of which you look like Ishaan Awasthi, comes up to you and says, “Hey, I am at the Mumbai Airport.”

Kill me if I am wrong about this, but wouldn’t your answer be, “Umm, ok. So?”

CASE 2: You are waiting for your cab, in a hurry to get somewhere. But you have time to kill simply because your cab is late. An acquaintance comes up to you and says, “Dude, I am feeling determined.”

Would you not give him a quizzical look and say, “And that’s helpful to me because…?”

CASE 3: Your acquaintance, a classmate from school, whom you haven’t met since that farewell day when you all wore over-sized blouses and saris and pretended to be adult-like, suddenly runs into you in, say a supermarket. And dishes out her wedding album and honeymoon album and starts showing you random pictures. This is me, this is my husband, this is my MIL, etc.

Would you not open the nearest ketchup bottle and pour it on her?

Then why on earth do we do this on Facebook? Why absorb these random pieces of information, forced down our throats? This is where I am fundamentally against Facebook. It makes us pretend and do things we wouldn’t do in real life.

As always, I have a ready solution for this. The Real Facebook.

In principle, it is the same as Facebook — a tool designed to addict the users to wasting time. The only difference is, this doesn’t make you lie. You be addicted to ogling at other’s lives, but you voice your true opinion.

Here’s what I recommend: Replace the Like button with a drop down:

The Like button be replaced by a drop-down, reflecting your true feelings. There’s a whole range of options given to you. You will never be forced to “like” anything.

In the long run, it is always better to be truthful. 

Just saying..