This erratic changeableness in his behavior felt way out of his character; for all I knew, he was the guy who was not liable to any sudden unpredictable change. But now he's changed like weather. Put it another way: he's shown his true colors. How can anyone guess that behind his black-rimmed glasses were two uppity and brash and immodest eyes of a city-born? Two shining, arrogant eyes of a domestic cat purring in a concrete jungle. However, I don't lay my blame on him anymore. He was just the tip of an iceberg; a mere façade of a building. What was the inner core, then? Well, the social media.Social media is the root of all misunderstandings. The kind of misunderstandings which we will never be able to laugh about. These petty little mistakes transform themselves into real time animosities that will rack and ruin the hell out of your lives. Small incidents in social media take form of bigger scandals and make everything go viral. On the other hand, people have begun taking things so seriously that I wonder even if the real life was ever so serious.
Post a normal photo or a status, and out of some couple of thousand friends only a handful of them will 'Like' or bother to 'Comment.' But post something daring, something out of the box, something offensive, and something that kicks people hard in their faces, then the comments will come flooding in. The battle rages. Narcissism shuts out everything else. People die and resurrect in every other comments. Your closed ones become your real enemies. Your enemies love you for what you have posted. The plethora of comments marks the end of an era of civilization; also indicates a beginning of dying and decaying age. You comment, you counter-comment, you scream and you shout, insisting that your almost schizophrenic behavior is a by-product of your sophistication. It feels like you have 'been everywhere and done everything.' Stumbling from one topic to another, beginning with scorn towards your life and ending with hysterical proclamation that you are an insufferable know-it-all. Seems like the best example of Freudian Defense Mechanism in the modern world.
The close friends you have change into real villains in a blink of an eye. They 'unfriend' and block you—just like that. Like cracking one's knuckles. And the ones who have been loathing you since your birth become your bosom friend. Isn't it wonderful? All this that is opening up in front of your eyes like an insect killer Sungava flower?
And the anti-climax of this story is: only a few days ago the friend, who called me 'urchin', and I have become close friends again. Talking to each other, pouring our hearts out, going way back in nostalgia and sharing our childhood memories. Memories that only remain loosely attached to my mind in the hook of borrowed narrations. Just like an old, torn, rugged coat. Now that I am not an 'urchin' anymore and that we have become so very close, I wonder what kind of friendship we are sharing through this trash of a social media called Facebook. Gone are the days when the pious friendship was holier-than-thou. Now we are stuck in the mud of fakeness. Well, let us now think, where are we actually going with our souls caked in fickleness?
Bibek is an undergraduate student of Civil Engineering at the Institute of Engineering, Thapathali Campus in Kathmandu.
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