It is 2024. It has been for a while. Pardon me for stating the obvious, but I have a thing for “no shit, sherlock moments.” They make for great lines. And me and my articles? We are all about the lines. Cheese, lots of it, is my bread and butter.
I did have a point, always do. The reason I am reminding you of a calendar, is that not a very long time ago, the world underwent a revolution. Someone perhaps more fond of cheesy lines than I am wrote “Virodh se hi Vidroh hota hai”. To translate for my national language challenged friends, “rebellion brings revolution”. The world was in agony. So someone gifted it a present to top all presents – porn, just a click away! And thus was born, *drumrolls please*, the internet!
Okay fine, that isn’t entirely true. But I am sure it was one of the reasons why they invented the internet. How could it not be? Free porn? asked the inventors. Hell yes! said the world. And so Sunny Leone lived happily ever after.
Moving on, a few years of dial up connection later, something equally addictive was born. It is called social networking – promising lots of socialisation and barely any networking. A young man in an Ivy League school with pretty young things around was very generous. So he gave the world ‘Facebook’ the holy grail of stalkers, exes with grudges, nosy neighbours and vainglorious narcissists. Not to be outdone, someone else decided chirping is the new sexy, and a few characters later, we tweet to impress, not to express.
And it never stopped.
Here are 75 reasons why we hate to love the internet.
1. Social media, making stalking easy since early 2000s. You are welcome.
2. Social networking is to us what WikiLeaks is to the USA. The only difference is we do it willingly. Atleast we think we do.
3. Verbal vomit? It’s the elixir of social media. Keep ’em coming folks!
4. People wish us on our birthday. We wish them on theirs. And it is free.
5. Big brother is watching? Tag him someone!
6. Privacy? RIP.
7. We have seen more selfies than Kim Kardashian has posted them.
8. Selfies have taught us our self worth. Nothing like a ‘You look adorbs’ to feel adorable!
9. Selfies – not a psychological disorder or anything. What do those scientists know?
10. Exploiting your best asset for a few hundred likes? You, ruthless you!
11. Looking at beaches from the window between your feet? Makes our day!
12. Body parts you wish were bigger or smaller? Not the gym, you need a camera. And twisting your body in ways the human body wasn’t meant to. Suck in that tummy peeps, more attractive parts will stick out.
13. The belfie is a personal favourite.
14. Friends shouldn’t let friends take bathroom selfies. Unless they are X-rated.
15. Met a celebrity? Selfie to banti hai. Not.
16. Posting a gym selfie? Make sure a firmer specimen of muscle isn’t lurking around in the background.
17. Pouting and duckfaces are what nightmares are made of. Abort! Abort!
18. Criminals take time out of their busy schedule of doing illegal things to take photos of themselves doing illegal things. The police is watching. Scrap that selfie.
19. Fishing for compliments has never been easier.
20. Or bragging.
21. And sexting.
22. And trolling.
23. A cute kid does wonders for your picture. Take the selfie when the baby isn’t looking like your arms are the last place it wants to be seen in, though.
24. Swear. Makes you look like a badass. You wish.
25. If you don’t wanna talk about it, a cryptic status about the burden of the world on your pretty frail shoulders is perhaps not the best of ideas.
26. Privacy settings are your messiah. Use them well. Save. That. Job.
27. It will also prevent your extended family from hating you and dancing all over your personal business. Win-win.
28. Accidentally looking at a friend’s friend in the friend’s picture. Hello love at first sight!
29. A happy drunk or a sad one? Social media will tell. Drunken posts are the mirror into your soul. Really.
30. Have problems? A status is all you need to get some free advice. Shrinks, your days are numbered.
31. The password for your wifi, you guard it with your life. *You shall not pass!*
32. A haircut deserves its own post. So does a pimple. And a broken nail. And PMS. And irregular bowel movement. And chocolate. You get the gist.
33. Get on the bandwagon, everybody wants to see a picture of you peeping from behind a DSLR. Very sexy. And holding a guitar like you were born with it. And from the rearview mirror. And of your shoes. And the human chain. And on the staircase. Keep going.
34. Nothing like the safety of a laptop screen to grow a pair.
35. Anonymity, not truth sets you free.
36. You can now bully, fight and enforce your opinion on unsuspecting innocents like there is no tomorrow. Live and let live, what in the world is that?
37. Social networking is sexist. Boys your pictures deserve some likes too! Where is the dharna?
38. Post that funny video. Popularity is just a share away.
39. Hugs and kisses in a post give you that extra edge. Give the bitch a ‘muahh’, ladies. You can scratch her eyes out when you meet her in person.
40. Plastic surgery has been obliterated. Well, almost. Hail photoshop.
41. We wake up to pictures of people we have never met.
42. Also to pictures of people we never want to meet again.
43. Forever alone is now acceptable. It’s the meme I tell you. Way too cute to be alone though.
44. Yes we know you love your special someone to the moon and back. But the sugary nickname filled PDA gives us diabetes. Cuddlyboo? We just vomited in our mouth.
45. We don’t bat an eyelid at creepy inbox messages asking us for sexual favours. Things the internet gets us used to!
46. No one, in the history of universe has begged as much as people do for candy crush and farmville. Someone get them a life, no pun intended.
47. Boys now want to talk about emotions. Feeling meh. Only reasonable explanation – the aliens have invaded the planet and must be munching on brain cells. Yummy. Seen any green beings walking around lately?
48. Watermarked pictures now(t) a photographer make. Amateurs, I tell you.
49. Hate to break this, but sharing the colour of your bra will not cure breast cancer. Really wish it did though. Got some wacky colours in my closet.
50. Unless you have Ranbir Kapoor’s genes, cheating is now an impossible task. Your girlfriend need only drag you to the suspect chick’s house. If your phones catches the wifi, don’t let her catch you.
51. Attention seekers have found their nirvana. It’s social media.
52. Are you lost? Google maps will help more than a WhatsApp story. Just saying.
53. People who put up ‘share this if you love your mother’ posts, the world would have been a happier place if your mother didn’t love your father, if you know what I mean.
54. People who make fake profiles, propose on datipages, abuse the capslock key, don’t like the full stop key, have made enemies out of punctuations and t@lk l!ke th!$- Janta maaf nahi karegi!
55. Food is captured by the lens of your camera before it makes it to Instagram. Sorrynotsorry tummy.
56. A battle between copyrights and social media? Guess who won. Plagiarism, you are doing it right.
57. So much stupid clogs your bandwidth you wonder how many IQ points you are left with after every session.
58. Hashtags. People use it more than they use tissue papers.
59. You never get over a breakup. The ex shall always pop up on your newsfeed.
60. Doing things he/she never did with you.
61. Or doing someone else.
62. There there, Karma likes social media as much as you do. What to do?
63. You can always hope your ex’s new squeeze is uglier than you.
64. Unless they block you.
65. In that case you’ll have to resort to borrowing a friend’s account so you can curse, and drool and moon over what could have been. Hindsight, the ever knowing, omnipresent bitch!
66. Pictures you upload and pictures you are tagged in will make you look like two different people. Miracles do happen.
67. Foot in the mouth disease is now an epidemic.
68. A deep, philosophical quote you don’t understand but post as a status to appease your craving to sound intellectual? Someone with perverted tendencies is having the last laugh. Obscene is what obscene does.
69. Stupidity will never be erasable now. In the dark corners of the internet, a picture or video showing exactly how stupid you are shall lay dormant till it comes back to bite you in the ass at a very opportune moment. Be very afraid.
70. You either become a grammar nazi, or you make a grammar nazi pull out their hair in frustration. Know your (you’re) shit.
71. You wonder how you ever became friends with a certain someone.
72. Or they wonder the same about you.
73. Ever find yourself added into groups that can embarrass Rakhi Sawant? We have too.
74. You make a startling discovery. Brains and beauty can be mutually exclusive.
75. Egos inflate and deflate with alarming frequency. All you need is one right post.
