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Parting! To meet on facebook...

It's really weird that the posts most difficult for me to write are the ones that have a deep personal touch: they are the ones that reflect my own views, or relate to some experience I have had. Maybe you would think that these posts are the easiest to write, and that they should flow out of my fingertips onto my keyboard, and from there onto the internet.

But it is these posts that trouble me the most. I may write for lengths about DIY projects, or on why facebook sucks, or anything else; but when it comes to writing about something I really connect with, I have difficulty. As such, it is not difficult to explain this: Brecht's distancing works for me as an author as well as an observer, I write best when there is some distance between me and the object of my work.

Here, again, I find myself drifting into the realm of the objective. But that is not the purpose of this post. So, I drag myself back to writing what I have put off for over a week.

Recently, I met some wonderful friends, and had a marvellous time with them. But like all good things, it came to an end, and we had to say our goodbyes. But then, we all knew that we would meet on facebook.

This parting was in a stark contrast to my school farewell, when all we had to connect with others were addresses and phone numbers. If those precious pieces of paper were lost, then contact details were gone, perhaps forever. Moreover, when someone changed their phone number, unless they informed others, it was difficult, almost impossible to connect again.

Right now, social networking services integrate with the contact book on our mobiles. All the details we may want about someone are there, for us to avail. If they are changed, the changes are reflected almost immediately. So, in a way, is there any meaning to the phrase: We'll probably never meet again?

Almost after every such episode where that dreaded sentence figures out, I regress to full-time social networking. It's the time when I feel compelled to like every status update and picture that my friends upload, and to comment upon it. Soon, I know, I shall grow fed up of this, and they shall figure as just some of the 400 odd friends that I have on facebook, and perhaps, I shall go back to saying why I dislike facebook, and why we must all switch to Google+.

As always, I try to find humour everywhere; and to my mind, the workings of the human mind are perhaps most humorous of them all. Relationships keep changing, and all of a sudden, your best friend may become your arch enemy, and your arch enemy may become your best friend. The people that you consider extremely good friends may fade into just acquaintances or memories, or may fade away altogether. We meet people who take the place of those who have left our circles, but somewhere, the circles that we make today on Google+ still remain.

The social network is one big joke, but I don't think any of the programmers who make the social networks shall ever see the the biggest joke of them all.

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