I bought myself a Chanel 2.55… … on Facebook that is.

“wow... this is a surprise. someone who was so adamant to not have an account in social websites such as friendster and facebook, has finally decided to open an account on facebook.”

Yes, Facebook was finally detected on my radar screen. For someone who hates social networking sites like Friendster, MySpace, yada yada, I was surprised at myself when I jumped on the bandwagon about 10 days ago.

I was greeted with loads of “finally you are here”, “what a surprise”, “welcome aboard”, “what took you so long” and what nots by my friends (who must have secretly thought that I belong to the walkman era).

After all the auto adding of friends on my hotmail contacts, I was so excited that I sms-ed a bunch of good pals to add me.

I was quite surprised that there were still quite a number of my friends who are stuck on another planet with no Facebook. Some of them were like me before I signed up—refusing to have any social network account.

Feeling so suaku whenever friends knew so much about other frenz coz of Facebook… Feeling so backdated about friends’ lives while the whole world get their updates through Facebook… Missing gatherings because they were arranged on Facebook… I SERIOUSLY THOUGHT THE WHOLE WORLD WAS ON IT!

I was sad when I heard that one of my good pals cyn was not on it coz she is one friend whom I’ll always miss and it’s just soooooooo difficult for the both of us to meet up. She claimed she was too “auntie” to join.

Then, the next day, I saw her friend request and her message:

“Yes Jo! You have NO IDEA but YOU were the REASON why i joined!
Thought to myself that OMG if Jo is already there, what am i still doing outside! :p”

Boy was I touched.

My 2nd sis was one of the Project FB instigators. Due to the fact that she works at “some ulu place at the 'top' of the hill”, she is able to view the profiles of many local celebrities and their friends. Every night, she would be showing me interesting and funny stuff about these people. She would also constantly egg me on to join Facebook as she thought it was really boh liao fun.

The morning after I’ve created an account, she smirked at me and said, “I see you have finally decided to join but you so poor thing only got 14 friends.”

“Hmm… I registered just this morning at 3am so have 14 friends already considered very good mah.”

Exactly 24 hours after I’ve joined, I’ve “closed sales” at 50 friends.

The above sentences weren’t meant to brag. I’m merely poking fun at my sister who has yet to wipe the smirk off her face coz I’m still 2 friends behind her. If poking doesn’t work, I’ll have to throw a sheep at her. What’s up with all the poking and sheep throwing anyway? Real people don’t go round poking and throwing sheep.

Right now after a period of ten days, I have a humble pool of 89 friends. This is really incomparable to some people with a few hundreds friends or even a few thousands. I really wonder about these people. Their list of contacts ranges from the socialites in America to the man who looks like my grouchy neighbour residing on the third floor.

There are lots of people who make use of such social networking sites to boost their egos. I believe that they would add as their friends anyone who'd so much as boogied on the same dance floor with them at Zouk or are their colleague’s brother’s cousin’s neighour’s dog’s owner’s niece’s best friend, so that they could then brag about how they had forty thousand friends and were more popular than the Pope. After having added these "friends" and upping their friends count to fifty thousand, they would then ignore them completely, since they were just after the ego-padding.

There are pros and cons to such extensive social networking sites.

There is no privacy.

Oh purleeze… you want privacy then don’t sign up la.

What I am referring to would be all the mini feed and news feed.

Who in the right mind would wanna know that Jolene learned a new action on My Heroes Ability at 4.31pm, Jolene sent an Emo to their friends at 1.32pm, Jolene accepted a fun gift and so on?

A stalker would not even bother with such minute details.

Then comes the news feed which summarises all of your friends' recent activity -- Tom feels for Jerry’s loss, Dick joined the group Viagara No More, Harry posted a photo of his hairy balls, Bareman and Robbin are in a relationship and so on. Does anyone really give a hoot about all these?

My sister encountered one of this “invasion of privacy” incident when she amended her relationship status. When she signed up, she put her relationship status as “Single” because she was single… duh! Thereafter, she realised that her profile would be accessible in the “Single” network and hence removed that status. What appeared on every of her friends homepage at the news feed column was “Jxxxxx Lxx is no longer single”. She received floods of messages asking her if she had just gotten attached.

We really laughed our heads off at this.

There is an application which I particularly detest -- Friends for Sale. Basically, one could buy his or her friends as pets and to earn some virtual money when their pets are being bought by others. I was mad at the friend who started me on this by buying me. And then later I let loose a little and my friends went round buying each other. I also bought a couple of pets to keep. All my pets are friends who are close to me or those funny siao onz friends. I was also fine with decent owners since they are people I know. After 2 days of not logging in, I was shocked to find that my owner wasn’t my friend anymore but a complete stranger with a collection of 30 female pets.

Before I continue, I must clarify that my profile photo isn’t the least bit suggestive or revealing at all. I don’t think I look like a slutty bitch too.

Ok then after viewing the application’s history feed, I found out that I had exchanged hands many times as all the “owners” kept “buying” me from one another.

I got too expensive that the friend who kept buying me back apologised to me that she could not afford to buy me anymore as my price had gotten too high after too many exchanges. I felt so bad that she had to apologise when it wasn’t even her fault.

Those strangers who bought me are those with many female pets. I dunno if I’m a prude or whether I’m making a big fuss but I felt that they are merely buying female pets as trophies to show off. Some of the photos of these females were very suggestive and I felt so degraded to be placed alongside with them. I was really offended. Since when has this friend buying thing become a stranger buying thing?

I’m still trying to think of a witty reply to his message. It’s been 2 days and I’ve lost my wits.

Another thing I do not particularly fancy is random (male) strangers poking. I mean what the hell does poking mean? Isn't it weird to have male strangers poking you? Male poke female odd. Male poke male even more bizarre. Could they have wanted to poke so much in real life but could not such that they have to unleash all in the virtual world? If that is the case, I wonder if each poke is orgasmic for them.

I also dislike people requesting to add me as friends just coz they liked my photo or I’m their friend’s friend’s friend or they came across my profile page or I belong to this group or just because they want to have me as a Facebook friend. It’s so superficial. Most of the time, I just decline politely and they were also cordial about it.

Superficial aside, I’ve found a few lost friends— People whom you always hang out with at some point of time or people whom you get along very well but have touch with them etc. It was heart warming to read the wall messages as well as inbox messages from friends whom I never thought I would see them again. It was great to catch up with friends whom I have not talked to for months coz of my lack of msn.

Nonetheless, amidst all the friend-finding, I’ve grown to accept the fact that sometimes it is no use seeking lost friendships. Some people may have been my really close friends at some points in my life but the friendship now and the friendship in the past are poles apart. We might have stood up a lot for one another in the past. We might have shared many hugs and cries. We might have gone through difficult phases in our lives together. However try as I might, the friendship would never be the same again. Time do drifts people apart. What we should do is to treasure the beautiful memories.

I’m still trying to find the time for it. Facebooking is absolutely time consuming with all the pet petting and feeding, using of heroes power, returning gifts, adding applications, replying to messages, writing on walls, requesting to be friends, accepting friends and all the countless boh liao things one could do.

With as many as 70 emails a day, opening my email during the first few days of joining warranted a series of heart attacks that I had to leave my laptop on while doing my marking just to refresh the page every now and then.

Love this parody of Facebook. Check out the poke poke poke segment… Hahaha…



To any friends reading this, do add me if you have Facebook k?

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TAGS replies coming soon. Sorry for the delay.