Thanks for the Scams

Social media doesn't determine my worth. It doesn't determine yours either. It's literally the most superficial, shallow thing to ever exist. Even so, I've always loved social media, from back before Facebook and even Orkut. All the way back to a little something called Hi5. 

It all started when I overheard a bunch of kids I definitely didn't think were cool discussing Hi5. It was a social networking site, and if even they were on it, then I was definitely missing something. 

To my great chagrin, the government of UAE banned Hi5 a couple of days after I first heard of it. In fact, when I tried to search for the website and found the prohibitory banner, I rather wondered if I'd somehow precipitated this by wanting to be cooler. 

Then came Orkut, where the girl I'd been steadily crushing on since I was 9 wrote me a glowing "recommendation." To be honest, booking it out of Orkut as soon as Facebook became widely available was something we were all very relieved about. 

I didn't upload a picture onto Facebook for the longest time, because my dad warned me against it. It was A Dangerous Thing to do, because as everyone knows, the internet is where creepy strangers like to prey on kids. 

But then I did. And then another, and another. I took pictures of the city I loved so much, of all my favourite haunts, with my digital camera and made the effort to upload them into an album. My pictures of the deserted highway can still be found someplace on my profile. (The roads had been closed off for President Bush's visit.) 

I wrote poems and saved them in Notes. I threw cows at my friends, and poked strangers back. I even defenestrated people, albeit rather unwillingly, because I wasn't sure anyone deserved whatever it was. I'm proud to say I was part of the vampires' war against the werewolves, and stood with the werewolves against the zombies. 

Expressing myself on social media was something I never thought twice about. I didn't understand why anyone would feel differently, at least, not at the time. 

But with time comes wisdom. With time I realized that only one's best, most curated content goes on social media. And then with even more time, I unlearned that all over again. It was like Social Media 1.0, but without the terrible SMS slang. 

Social media doesn't determine my worth. It doesn't determine yours either. It's literally the most superficial, shallow thing to ever exist. This was something else I learned - that truly cool people use social media only grudgingly. That you aren't allowed to take selfies if you want to be taken seriously. That you don't check in on Facebook, or upload too often on Instagram, or tag your friends in anything but ironic memes that they are free to ignore. 

And when I thought about it, it made sense. Social media was a front. What really mattered was what happened behind the scenes. And I already knew how important I was to the people in my life. I didn't need to be tagged when someone checked in at the little French place in Khar to understand I was loved. Even though they'd tag everybody else they went out with. That didn't really matter. 

I didn't need to be mentioned in the post about rainbow cake, even though I'd practically had to dig my heels in to pick that particular cake. I didn't need to be in pictures. I didn't need to be mentioned anywhere public, because after all, people that are truly important aren't insecure enough to demand such things. 

I didn't need to be acknowledged in public, because I was the be all and the end all in private. 

Until one day somebody used my public invisibility to argue that I didn't exist at all, that I never had.