My Friend's Downward Spiral into Mainstream Social Media
I have a lot of friends, and as much as I hate to say this, I often take a look at these people whom I dearly love, and find one or two odd ones who have sold their souls to Virgin Radio Lebanon. I wonder where I went wrong in my mission to educate my friends and family on the dos and don'ts of social media.
I especially noticed one girl spiraling into the depths of Facebook brain-dead nirvana, and I just stared at the screen and cringed for days until I realised that there was nothing I could do about it. She had gone over to the other side and there was no coming back. As a public service to you, my dear readers, I thought of making a timeline of her gradual decline so that you can save your friends before they decide to become slaves to barely discernible Bangla fonts on random pictures.
Stage 1: This phase happened so quickly and inconspicuously that I barely even noticed the difference. It started with opening an Instagram account, which seems to be a mandatory act after acquiring a smartphone. It was all good until she started uploading pictures with useless underscored hashtags, and leopard print backgrounds, and reposting inspirational quotes about life, love and constipation.
Stage 2: The direst thing that can trigger one's inner heartbroken emo kid is their love life, or lack thereof. My friend was badly missing her boyfriend, and rightly so since they're in a long distance relationship. Instead of dealing with it like a sensible adult, she chose to share EVERY single I-miss-you-bae picture ever posted by Daniel Amos, Fortafy, and even RadioMunna.
Stage 3: This part of her transition isn't really in accordance with the other stages. This phase mainly consisted of her shamelessly striving for attention. She accepted friend requests from random guys from all over Bangladesh; guys who commented wink emoticons on all her pictures. She updated statuses like “Watching 50 Shades of Grey ;)” and captioned her pictures with Nicholas Sparks quotes which had nothing to do with the selfies or their 'kisses' background.
In all honesty, I had given up on trying to talk sense into her the moment she shared her first Laughing Colours picture. This girl is one of the nicest, most genuinely good people I know and it is so depressing to think of what she has become. I should've stopped her when I had the chance, instead of worrying that she will be offended. If ever your friends start showing signs that they're going over to the other side, it is your responsibility as their well-wisher to stop them while the disease is still in its preliminary stage. Take it from someone who has suffered.
Aanila Kishwar Tarannum started hating on everything the moment she realized why her parents put so many As in her name: because they knew her transcript would be devoid of any vowels. Find out about her relentless rants on facebook.com/Aanial
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