I’m not a fan of social networking sites.  Having said that,  I still have accounts on orkut and facebook, though I rarely use them.  While I feel the former is rather juvenile,  I find the latter pretty intimidating.. A dozen views, a feature called ‘Wall’ that I found so hard to understand that I had to admit that it was aptly named.  Several times in the past,  I have logged in to either facebook or orkut,  checked the updates only to see a few messages from people complaining that I never respond.  I usually dash off a ‘I don’t use blah blah much at all, so don’t take it personally’  message/reply/scrap/whatever you want to call it and think about the futility of even having these accounts.  I have thought about deleting these accounts several times but then, I invariably happen to find a long since out-of-touch friend or two and end up getting intrigued and staying back.

Just the other night,  a friend texted me on the mobile asking whether she could add me on as a friend on facebook.   The message went on to say that she knew I used facebook very rarely but wondered if she could add me on anyway!  I told her that she could indeed add me on.  I made the mandatory visit to facebook to accept the friend invite and then started thinking again about the futility of it all.  I remembered that in the past, I’d discovered several old friends on facebook but then again,  I just needed to think for a second and I realized that I was not in touch with any of the people that I had supposedly rediscovered.  You see, it was just a different level of staying out of touch.  Out there in the real world,  so many things change and many things seem to change in the online avataars of these people too.  Profile pictures, status messages, the dreaded Wall posts. .. So many things would have changed since the last time I’d have seen it..  I realized wistfully that the mere action of adding a person on as a friend hardly means that there will be communication between the two (or more) friends, just as surely as sending forwarded emails is no way to show that you are thinking about a person.  Oh well,  take me to the fields and shoot me.  I’m done.

PS: Those of you who were expecting a post giving more details on my relationship front,  I’m sorry for I don’t have glad tidings. I believed I’d found ‘The lady of my life’ but apparently I’m yet to meet her.  It certainly hurts,  the way things ended,  but I’m really fortunate to have great friends who really care and don’t think for a minute to go that extra mile for me or  to stay up that extra hour to hear me out.  I’m smarting now,  but I know I’ll be fine.  That’s all for now.