Practice what you post

After the Great Wall of China, the Facebook Wall is the most famous wall built by man, well, ok, by a boy. Had Madonna been born twenty years later, her famous song would have been Papa Don't Post. And perhaps the priest in the music video of her song Like a Prayer would have looked bored and lazy, just back from conducting Mark Zuckerberg's wedding vows: "You may now tag your bride." And then, adding as an afterthought, "You may now update your status." He then ends with his parting advice: "Practice what you post."

And that is exactly what is done. It is now the job of every good husband to wake up every morning and 'Like' every Facebook status of the wife. Otherwise, he runs the risk of being reported as spam. The exercise continues all day long. But, let's not forget that every spousal relationship follows the Law of Conservation of Attention – the sum of the attention paid in person and the attention paid in cyberspace is constant. So, many a wife complains that the hubby's fiddling with Facebook all day long results in his barely hearing, let alone comprehending, what she says.

Finally, she throws up her hands in exasperation: 

"Am I talking to a wall all day?"

"Yes honey, you are. Just as I'm talking to a wall all day." – that is, the Facebook wall…

So, post a status. See who likes it, how many 'Likes' you get, who comments, what they write in their comments, who 'Likes' the comments of those who comment against you (you can put those people in your un-friend queue). It is a great way to gauge your (un)popularity.

What if the popularity index really starts going south? That hurts. After all, many of us suffer from Facebook addiction – by now having already checked our Facebook statuses twenty three times. Of course, there are the stop gap methods to temporarily 'Boost' the ego, er, I mean the post – we can always 'Like' our own Facebook statuses, the social media equivalent of one predictably answering his own question: "Mirror, mirror, on the [Facebook] wall…"

But for the sake of conjugal bliss, it is fine to blindly 'Like' every spousal post. But it's a stretch when a Facebook 'Friend' sends a message to 'Like' and then 'Share' his post or page. Look, I need to first like to 'Like' what I have just been requested to 'Like' and if I REALLY like it then, and only then, will I 'Share' it and share the thought.

Sometimes I wonder if Zuckerberg got the idea of Facebook from Bangladesh where we go to a tea stall, drink tea for five minutes, but engage in rants for three hours that lead to nowhere.

That's still fine. Open the window, let the sun in and accept a few flies making it through. But what does matter is when anyone and everyone with a Facebook account home in like vultures on to cricketer Nasir's recent post of a selfie with his sister. Perhaps someone could have created a fake Facebook account with the name 'Nobody' and then 'Liked' every sick comment that was made. The world would know that 'Nobody' 'Likes' all those sick comments and the cowards hiding behind the safety of probably their own fake Facebook accounts. 

I sincerely hope that not a single one of all those who made derogatory comments on Nasir's post is on my 'Friends' list. Otherwise, even if Facebook says we are 'Friends', trust me, I wouldn't hesitate to punch him in the face. 

And the star cricketer Nasir, of all the people, to be subjected to this? Why am I surprised? After all, we live in a land where no good deed goes unpunished.

Now that I've said it, I wonder if I will start getting enemy requests. . . 

The writer is an engineer at Ford & Qualcomm USA and CEO of IBM & Nokia Siemens Networks Bangladesh turned comedian (by choice), the host of NTV's The Naveed Mahbub Show and the founder of Naveed's Comedy Club. 

E-mail: [email protected]