Why are we so Infatuated with Facebook

My friend asked me casually last week whether I have a face book. For a moment I was dumbfounded. I thought he was referring to my face being a book worm. Being naive as I was, I thanked him and asked what does he mean by that? What makes him think I am a book worm? He then looked at me perplexed and confused. The smile on my face quickly changed from that of pure delight to that of 'Oops I have said something wrong" I looked around at my friends who were all looking at me waiting for an explanation of what I had just said earlier. They were as confused as I am.

Not wanting to look stupid, though for that moment in time, I felt like the biggest idiot alive, I burst into a self made laughter and blurted out loud I am kidding. My conversation with my friend for the next few minutes was skillfully designed to solicit information on what face book is all about till I know what he meant was an online profile website.

I am not ashamed to admit that when it comes to technology, I am the last person to actually jump into the bandwagon of technology and immerse myself in the hype and rhythm of things. The rest of the evening with my friends thankfully went on without ever discussing about face book. Most probably my promise that I will add them in the face book closed the chapter solidly.

The same evening that I got home, I sat behind my computer with a hot cup of cocoa and log myself in to the internet. Goggling as I do, I type 'face book" and instantly was transported to the website. I followed the painless step of registering myself and opening up an account. Five minutes and a few clicks of the mouse later, 'presto' I am a member of the face book community.

To my surprise, being a newbie in the online community, I am instantly flooded with several requests to add me into my friend's face book accounts. Less than 15 minutes later I was connected to friends now and then and some that I do not even remember that I was acquainted with. But nevertheless they are still my online friends now. It now explains why I have been receiving several emails from unidentified sender informing me that I have a friend request. Those emails are actually from face book.

Two weeks into the face book community, I have been frantically hooking up with friends. Some I must say was of characters that I won’t even spend a minute talking to but yet we are online friends nevertheless. It makes me wonder what our infatuation with face book is.

We spent countless of hours behind the computer talking to each other and commenting on each other's walls but when it comes to actual conversation we could not last any more than a few minutes. Why are we so comfortable talking to each other behind the computer screen but when being faced to face words seems the hardest thing to come out?

Though I do appreciate the merits of face book accounts, I do not share my friends' sentiments that it connects us on a different level. It makes us reacquainted with our long lost friends and to catch up with the old times. Whatever happened to the good old method of picking up the phone and arranging for a meet?

Call me a traditionalists or a sucker to the nostalgia, I have always preferred to meet and reacquainted rather than getting to know people online. To me the problem with online community is that you do not really know who the person that you called friends are? So what if you see their online profiles and pictures? But does that really make you closer to them?

We are so engrossed in having more friends’ counts in the face book but we do not really care much about them. Our pursuit is to seek out but never to hook up. So is that the measure of friendship. Is the face book account a measure of how popular you are and by the number of friends that you are connected to? Is that the measure of how well connected you are?

I would think that the true measure of friends would be the number of people that you are always in touch with, those friends that you call regularly and meet up for a cup of coffee or tea, the friends that you share your secrets, joys, sorrows and doubts.

However, as the adage says, the only constant thing in life is change, I supposed then that we have to live with the facts that as we become more and more globalised so are our friends and the only way to keep in touch with each other are through the screen of your computer monitors.