Suresh Menon: the rise of the anti-social network
Just because I went to school with you, why should I get excited over your new pair of glasses?
Sometime this morning, some 50 (or 60 or 100) ‘friends’ I was at school with would have woken up to read the shattering news: ‘Suresh is no longer part of the group.’ I suspect this will get a bigger reaction than a newspaper headline that might state I died in my sleep last night.
Let me explain.
Until last night, I was part of a social media group (WhatsApp, since I have no secrets from you, dear reader) that comprised guys I went to school with. Suddenly, I caught up with classmates I hadn’t seen or thought of since our respective milk teeth fell out. It was fun for a while. Around 23 minutes, to be exact.
But it got worse by the day, by the hour, by the minute. “My daughter is a brilliant dancer. We are often mistaken for brother and sister,” wrote one ‘friend’. Oh, you poor deluded thing, I wrote back. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror recently?
Ah well. One Christmas card fewer this year. And another, and another, and another, as I burst the bubble of ‘friends’ who had been living in a fantasy world full of wonderful children, exciting jobs, perfect noses and non-balding pates. Why should I write to you now, I asked someone, when I couldn’t stand you all those years ago? What has changed?
There is something pathetic about social groups based on school connections. The urge to show off to those who thought you would amount to nothing is as strong as the urge to tell those who thought you would become the president of the country that selling encyclopedias door-to-door is a better thing.
Social media is a fantasy league where everybody wins.
I would wake up to a couple of hundred messages every morning. Ranging from the banal to the boring. Does anyone really care if a chappie you couldn’t bear the sight of in geography class married someone else whose name you can’t remember?
Then there are the photo fanatics: “my wife, my children, my dogs, my curtains, my new teeth, my old sofa covers”. Just because I went to school with you (purely by chance, of course), why should I get excited over your new pair of glasses?
Initially I refused to get involved in the ‘my-car/house/wife/mango tree/-is bigger-than-yours’ game by the simple expedient of not responding. Then I responded, in an attempt to bring some sobriety to the proceedings. And then stage three: the pull out.
I had made a statement. I was feeling good, until just a while ago. Someone had responded on a friend’s phone: ‘Who is this Suresh’?
