Facebook has about 900 million users today, I am one of them and have some hundreds out of these millions in my "friend list".
- Besotted wives and husbands (BH/BW) - These are the ones newly married or have new girlfriend/ boyfriend in their lives. There will be regular proclamation of love through status updates, conversation with each other praising their value in each other's lives and of-course hundreds of pictures with each other or of one another.
* So what could be the problem with so much love ? ...... its on my face !
- Besotted Moms (BM) - Close on the heels of BW/BH are the new moms. Of-course no other feeling can be remotely compared to being a mom of a cute little bundle of joy.
So you will not mind the regular baby updates...all cute details of their teething,talking,what toys they play,which new item song they like,what they eat and poop everything is worth knowing. And of-course moms regularly updating the status letting us know how much they love their bundle of joys lest we forget...
*How were the babies growing and What were the moms doing before FB .. really ?
-My life in pictures (MLP) - If these people form a new religion, their god will be the inventor of digital camera. These are the ones who upload thousands of picture of each and every event in their lives or of themselves, probably they have foreseen that world will run out of silicon soon.
*So if you are one of them, unless you are extremely good looking or I plan to stalk you or they are my own pics...I will not be looking at your 9024 pictures you have uploaded.
-Senior Users (SU) - These are the people who lived and worked their entire lives without touching a computer, but now have left some of their peers behind and joined the bandwagon presumably dominated by younger population.
So you will find them sometimes butting into their kids conversation or viewing some non-kid friendly videos not knowing it finds the way in news feed.
*They just need help.
- Young guns- misfired (YGM) - Most of our younger generation would like to believe that they are the beacon of hope for the future of this world ( real and virtual). They have been living their lives on FB since the time they were able to write grammatically correct sentences in English ( or still not! ).
They will typically have not less than 800 friends and will use all the special characters in the keyboard when communicating, they call their BFFs - biatch,slut ,m*&f*kr etc, will always post their wild and cool party pics with equally cool looking friends from their school .
You will regularly see words like izz, howzz,okiezz etc.It is cool to use at-least 8 expletives in a sentence with 10 words, it is not cool to write grammatically correct sentences with actual spellings.They have strong opinions and know their choices very early like iphones or samsung? pub or lounge? tommy hilfiger or not? girlfriend or boyfriend? sex now or later?
*Beacons of hope for the future. Oh yes they are beacons for sure...but of what again ?!!
- Greta Garbo Syndrome (GGS) - These are the ones who have created FB accounts, but still do not want to be a part of it. These people do not post anything,do not share anything, do not upload pictures,never have any conversation on wall not because they do not have time to log in but, they just want to be private and elusive.
*So why are you on FB ? Greta Garbo couldn't help much as publicity came with the choice of her profession....for you however, FB provides an option - Delete.
-Drama Queens (DQ) - Pretty easy to identify, whenever you see a particularly wild pictures of oneself posted frequently or posts about their bad or good mood today or how they are so mad at someone/something or what they are eating,watching, wearing etc and if nothing else works frequent threats to leave FB forever...they feel better and calm down with responses like "oh r u OK?", "wat happened :( ", "can i help", "wow u r great","Oo i feel jealous" etc
*Well you are the sole reason FB was not even slightly threatened by google+.
I have to say I haven't heard of people spending hours on say LinkedIn. All these people and others that are not in this list, are the ones that enable FB to rake in $2 billion and more.
Carry on the charades people, it makes the world (er internet) an interesting place !
I am sure lot has been discussed and analyzed about the phenomena of Facebook, an entity not even 10 years old as well as about the kind of people or users on Facebook...I am more interested in people. I believe we the 900+ million FB users are now an altogether a different race of people in the alternate world of internet and much like the real world, we can be categorized into groups based on our traits.
Must say its an amusing world out there...on Facebook of-course....almost as if, the real world wasn't enough...that we have created an alternate one to carry on our charades!
None of us are complaining though. FB makes it so much easier to show off an alternate personality or life of oneself, keep a tab on people you like and most importantly the ones you hate, be voyeuristic without guilt , boosts your ego with likes and mutual appraisals apart from other good things.
I couldn't help listing down what I think is the anatomy of some of the different types of users on FB.
- Self Improvement missionaries (SIM) - These are the ones who float around those beautiful inspirational quotes on FB with the intention of ....(I am not really sure!)
*I am yet to figure out, if the SIMs have achieved enlightenment and now are preaching other lesser mortals through FB or its their personal enlightenment process that we are witnessing ! How successful have they been in whatever they seek to achieve is not clear...but if we see less bombings in the world, we can safely give them all the credit.
- Perfect World Heroes (PWH) - These work closely with SIMs , but their project is alleviating the World's suffering and they do it with circulating gory pictures of distorted animals and humans. I would like to think their heart is at the right place, but no they are not helping anyone or anything.
* How and from where they find these pictures and who decides to put out pictures of suffering malnourished babies or ones with birth defects or mutilated dead animals and other such heart breaking photos.It is simply offensive to those very people/animals and to glorify their suffering when one doesn't know who and where they are and what anyone can do for them.
-Religion on my sleeve (ROMS) - As evident with the name, these are the people belting out religious quotes and sermons on regular basis including pictures and videos.
*I have yet to respond to "Jesus is calling" messages I keep getting from beyond...oh wait they are actually from FB. Anyways, Jesus is a good guy and I am sure he means no harm.
Must say its an amusing world out there...on Facebook of-course....almost as if, the real world wasn't enough...that we have created an alternate one to carry on our charades!
None of us are complaining though. FB makes it so much easier to show off an alternate personality or life of oneself, keep a tab on people you like and most importantly the ones you hate, be voyeuristic without guilt , boosts your ego with likes and mutual appraisals apart from other good things.
I couldn't help listing down what I think is the anatomy of some of the different types of users on FB.
- Self Improvement missionaries (SIM) - These are the ones who float around those beautiful inspirational quotes on FB with the intention of ....(I am not really sure!)
*I am yet to figure out, if the SIMs have achieved enlightenment and now are preaching other lesser mortals through FB or its their personal enlightenment process that we are witnessing ! How successful have they been in whatever they seek to achieve is not clear...but if we see less bombings in the world, we can safely give them all the credit.
- Perfect World Heroes (PWH) - These work closely with SIMs , but their project is alleviating the World's suffering and they do it with circulating gory pictures of distorted animals and humans. I would like to think their heart is at the right place, but no they are not helping anyone or anything.
* How and from where they find these pictures and who decides to put out pictures of suffering malnourished babies or ones with birth defects or mutilated dead animals and other such heart breaking photos.It is simply offensive to those very people/animals and to glorify their suffering when one doesn't know who and where they are and what anyone can do for them.
-Religion on my sleeve (ROMS) - As evident with the name, these are the people belting out religious quotes and sermons on regular basis including pictures and videos.
*I have yet to respond to "Jesus is calling" messages I keep getting from beyond...oh wait they are actually from FB. Anyways, Jesus is a good guy and I am sure he means no harm.
- Journal Keepers (JK) - These are the ones who have lost their good old diaries and fumbled on FB. Their statuses are regularly updated with events of their life, feelings, experiences sometimes with the aid of pictures.
*What catharsis JKs achieve by swapping their diaries with FB ? hmm I don't know, its their life...but wait its on my news feed !
*What catharsis JKs achieve by swapping their diaries with FB ? hmm I don't know, its their life...but wait its on my news feed !
- Besotted wives and husbands (BH/BW) - These are the ones newly married or have new girlfriend/ boyfriend in their lives. There will be regular proclamation of love through status updates, conversation with each other praising their value in each other's lives and of-course hundreds of pictures with each other or of one another.
* So what could be the problem with so much love ? ...... its on my face !
- Besotted Moms (BM) - Close on the heels of BW/BH are the new moms. Of-course no other feeling can be remotely compared to being a mom of a cute little bundle of joy.
So you will not mind the regular baby updates...all cute details of their teething,talking,what toys they play,which new item song they like,what they eat and poop everything is worth knowing. And of-course moms regularly updating the status letting us know how much they love their bundle of joys lest we forget...
*How were the babies growing and What were the moms doing before FB .. really ?
-My life in pictures (MLP) - If these people form a new religion, their god will be the inventor of digital camera. These are the ones who upload thousands of picture of each and every event in their lives or of themselves, probably they have foreseen that world will run out of silicon soon.
*So if you are one of them, unless you are extremely good looking or I plan to stalk you or they are my own pics...I will not be looking at your 9024 pictures you have uploaded.
-Senior Users (SU) - These are the people who lived and worked their entire lives without touching a computer, but now have left some of their peers behind and joined the bandwagon presumably dominated by younger population.
So you will find them sometimes butting into their kids conversation or viewing some non-kid friendly videos not knowing it finds the way in news feed.
*They just need help.
They will typically have not less than 800 friends and will use all the special characters in the keyboard when communicating, they call their BFFs - biatch,slut ,m*&f*kr etc, will always post their wild and cool party pics with equally cool looking friends from their school .
You will regularly see words like izz, howzz,okiezz etc.It is cool to use at-least 8 expletives in a sentence with 10 words, it is not cool to write grammatically correct sentences with actual spellings.They have strong opinions and know their choices very early like iphones or samsung? pub or lounge? tommy hilfiger or not? girlfriend or boyfriend? sex now or later?
*Beacons of hope for the future. Oh yes they are beacons for sure...but of what again ?!!
- Greta Garbo Syndrome (GGS) - These are the ones who have created FB accounts, but still do not want to be a part of it. These people do not post anything,do not share anything, do not upload pictures,never have any conversation on wall not because they do not have time to log in but, they just want to be private and elusive.
*So why are you on FB ? Greta Garbo couldn't help much as publicity came with the choice of her profession....for you however, FB provides an option - Delete.
-Drama Queens (DQ) - Pretty easy to identify, whenever you see a particularly wild pictures of oneself posted frequently or posts about their bad or good mood today or how they are so mad at someone/something or what they are eating,watching, wearing etc and if nothing else works frequent threats to leave FB forever...they feel better and calm down with responses like "oh r u OK?", "wat happened :( ", "can i help", "wow u r great","Oo i feel jealous" etc
*Well you are the sole reason FB was not even slightly threatened by google+.
I have to say I haven't heard of people spending hours on say LinkedIn. All these people and others that are not in this list, are the ones that enable FB to rake in $2 billion and more.
Carry on the charades people, it makes the world (er internet) an interesting place !
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