Tu kaun hai Bae?

Yesterday on my timeline
I missed a guy who seemed quite fine
He seemed fine again today
I wish, I wish he'd give me a 'hey'

When I logged in last night at three
The guy was posting pics of his bee
But when I sent him emojis and all
He didn't respond to me at all

Haha. That was a little poem, based on the rhythm of Hughes Mearns' Antigonish.
Seems familiar? On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Hike, Snapchat and fuck-knows-what. Our 'friends'. Our BFFS. Our 'mates' who we 'hang' with. Share pics with and trade posts with. Who we challenge with random dares like pouring ice cold water on one's head to getting all arty with black and white phone photos.

Social media has done so much to our lives in the last 5 to 10 years. I remember, about 10 years back I was in Bali and 'hanging' with a bunch of 'it' dudes and divas who were on the edge of tech and all things digicool. It was then that I heard the term 'Facebook' for the first time. Today, as I was kicking FB off my phone it felt like I was marrying off my daughter to a tribal king who stays on the moon. In 10 years, other people's collective actions (and other associated BS) have become closer to me than my mother. Before I had to get my head checked, I therefore took the call to say ciao to FB on the phone.

But this is not about my mother. This is about loneliness. The architecture of loneliness hasn't changed since society was invented. It is just that today, the ersatz meds that claim to cure it are completely adopted as the solution to it. Much like hugging a pillow that smells of your dead lover and believing it is it. "Believing" is the key here. If you believe, anything is possible. Anything. Including virtual friends who shed copious amounts of comical emoji tears when you break up, or give you yellow thumbs ups when you score. Belt out song links from youtube with 'stuck to my head' kind of posts or 'call' you for meetups that they are 'planning' to go for. From virtual hugs to virtual solace, virtual pepperoni to virtual memories, everything that was once floating on the vagaries of the real can be now pinned on the planned plane of the analytical app.

This is not some old fucker's rant against social media. In fact, I fully believe that my epitaph has already been written by an app that some enterprising dude has secured funding for. I quite look forward to it actually - it will save me time. I am just wondering about the term 'social' in social media. In a funny way, social media has pretty much made us all more anti-social. More islands unto ourselves. Real people with real faces and real expressions, real words and real, unplanned reactions to what we say or do in front of them are tedious to manage. They can fly off the handle, break wind, be impossible, throw tantrums, suddenly say 'I love you' and we can't log out and pretend we haven't heard. These are REAL problems that don't exist in a VIRTUAL world.

Think about it. All of us are becoming emotional Robinson Crusoes surrounded by a sea of chatter and good cheer. And most of us don't even have a dog.