“THE FACEBOOK GIRL AND HER VIRTUAL LOVER”
“There is always a difference between the reality and perception”
We live in a digital age when individuals are closer to those who are digitally close but not to those sitting next to them. This is a sad circumstance, but we all need to make time for those we care about by putting down our digital devices for a moment. She spent her life on Facebook. She documented every little detail of her personal life in Facebook status updates. Even her personal interest was related to Facebook.
For the past five years, the Facebook Girl has been maintaining a gorgeous virtual aquarium on Facebook. She’d heard Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, mention somewhere that his phoney plants perished because he didn’t pretend to water them. The Facebook Girl used tremendous caution and care. She fed her artificial fish on a regular basis and met almost all of her virtual fish’s needs. Nothing she felt was more lovely than seeing your fish develop and learn new skills.
She adored all of her fish, but her favourite was the small blue fish. The Facebook Girl would sit for hours, mesmerized and enthralled, staring at the small blue artificial fish doing antics in the false water of that imaginary aquarium. She waited for the day when this small blue fish would mature and produce tiny lovely fish.
The Facebook Girl was distraught for a week after discovering this small blue fish dead in the middle of the night. She was terribly distraught at the moment, and no one consoled her. When she discovered her small blue fish had died, she updated her Facebook status: “I announce with overwhelming grief and sorrow the sudden death of my tiny blue virtual fish.” I’m saddened and can’t find comfort in chanting “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
She changed this status, expecting a flood of condolence responses. Her anguish was exacerbated when the swarm of condolence notes never arrived. Her Facebook friends’ attitudes perplexed and disappointed her.
This Facebook Girl was so kind and polite that she liked all of her friends’ status posts on Facebook. Her buddies were so harsh that they refused to like her status updates. She then addressed the sage lad:
“I like status updates of all my friends. They are so mean that they don’t like back my status updates. I am so heart broken and wished to unfriend them all”.
“Thou shalt only like the status update of thy friends if thy status is liked first”.
The sage lad smiled and shared with this heartbroken girl his Facebook commandment.
“Thou shalt only like the status update of thy friends if thy status is liked first”.
The Facebook Girl typed his commandment on her status update through her tablet and left to act upon it.
The social historian who later dedicated himself to painstakingly researching how the sage lad’s words of wisdom altered the lives of the recipients tells us how his guidance transformed her entire life.
This girl carried out the sage lad’s rule in both letter and spirit. She stopped enjoying the status updates of her rude and harsh pals. We are told that one morning, she realized that someone had liked her status. She was quite curious to see this. She magnified the image of her virtual acquaintance and noticed great sympathy in his eyes. She waited with bated breath for his status update. She would update her Facebook page every second. Her eyes brightened as she noticed his status post. She accomplished two things at once. She loved his status update and simultaneously changed her own status. The friend loved it again, this time with genuine sympathy in his eyes.
The social historian explains in a chapter titled ‘The Virtual Love and the Transcendental Issues of Time and place’ how their virtual love overcame physical restrictions of time and place. The Facebook Girl’s life changed the day she received her first virtual ‘poke’ from a friend. This completely puzzled her. ‘Was this just a harmless virtual poke, or did he mean anything else’? Her cursor was fixated on the ‘poke back’ link, and her eyes blinked at the same time for 10 minutes, leaving her unsure what to do. Finally, very gingerly, she poked him back and received an immediate poke, which filled her with pure ecstasy. Over the following hour, they jabbed each other 1440 times.
The Facebook Girl understood it was time to elevate their connection from friendship to love. The next day, he gave her the most gorgeous virtual flowers she’d ever seen on Facebook, along with a message proclaiming his undying love for her. She was overcome with emotion. What occurred next is history, as they say.
The Facebook community was buzzing over the frequency of their virtual pokes, the choosing of the most beautiful virtual flowers, tagging each other in images, and like each other’s status posts. These virtual lovers were inseparable, and they were frequently observed organizing ‘events’ on Facebook and participating in debates in various groups.
The fact that it grew too hot for Facebook administrators to handle demonstrates the depth of their virtual love. Mark Zuckerberg had to personally intervene and implement new privacy settings so that these virtual Facebook lovers could adore one other without the prying eyes of their virtual pals. As a consequence, they were able to enjoy private moments away from the overwhelming audience on Facebook.
Despite being separated by the Atlantic Ocean, the man with great compassion in his eyes adored her with boundless devotion. She could often feel her virtual lover’s love pouring and ebbing in her body and spirit. Her heart was frequently overflowing with joy and satisfaction, but one reoccurring thought filled her with pain and despair. Her artificial and virtual fish had produced lovely children in the months that followed, but the Facebook Girl always recalled her small blue virtual fish with sadness.
“Credit to Mr Zahid Abdullah”
