Happy Facebook Year

                                                  

So as I sit with my coffee mug and try to enjoy the bitter Delhi winters, my phone breaks out singing “too close” by Alex Clare and a known name flashed on the screen, it was Baani. She couldn’t get her head around some new facebook settings and she flipped out. So I logged on to see what was bothering her and I realized that facebook had a ribbon on my timeline which said “2013 year review: Top twenty events.” I decided to click on it and find out my year’s review. It stated out some pretty major changes in my life in the current year. My recent travel stories and my freshman year of college were amongst the top events, followed by some posts which gained maximum likes and comments. So that’s how facebook summed up an entire year of my life.

So was that it? Was that how my year went? So are people really happy with an automated review of their year?  I realized that it had no traces of how this year turned me into a better person, the lessons I learnt from the mistakes I made and what were my achievements. So what facebook did was it gave me a review of my digital life with slight resemblance of a few events which I shared with the World Wide Web.  Many people would outline their year with a financial or a societal point of view, some may have changed their marital status, and some might have changed themselves.

 People all over the world are counting the days to a new year as it will turn a new leaf in their lives. And each year shines like a beacon of hope in a dark room for everyone, for some it’s a beginning to a new chapter of their lives while for some it’s an end of a journey. And every New Year we make our selves certain promises that we hope to keep throughout the year. So can facebook keep a track record of this promise I made to my self? Probably no.  facebook can’t describe the happiness I felt when I stepped into my college campus, it can’t describe the pride on my mother’s face when I won my first college event, most of all it can’t describe the changes that I have undergone, how I’m calmer, more reasonable and confident.

Facebook has affected our lives in ways we never expected; we have started existing but have forgotten how to live. Our emotions have turned to some emoticons and our need to connect on a person level is referred by the relationship status. 

We have digitized our lives to the extent where every intricacy of our lives are on facebook and we have opened our lives and ourselves to a world of strangers on the internet. Have humans sunk to a new level of ‘being personal’? these thoughts clouded my mind and the soufflé of clouds was broken by Baani, who repeatedly called out my name,  startled I replied promptly and helped her solve her issue and just as I was about to abort the call Baani asked me to check out facebook’s new year review app. I sat there chuckling to myself and told her I’ll check it out.

Tanya