Bad Bad Fervour...

Act 1, Scene 1. Setting: A class of thirty students.

Amit: Mere ek-sau-tees friends ho gaye orkut mein
Nishant: Bas! mera to 287 pahunch gaya! dhikchik dhikchik!
Rajiv: Ha! tum to pata nahi kis-kis ko add kar lete ho apne list mein.
Nishant: Tu to bol hi mat. Abhi bhi saala tees pe atka hai.
Amit: Abbey maine ek IIT-Roorkee waale ka profile dekha kal. Fodu banda hai yaar. Uske communities dekhke paagal ho gaya yaar! Quantum Cryptography aur pata nahi kya kya.
Sheetal: Arre suno sab log, mera community join karo "I love chocolate ice-cream"
Amit: Pehle tum mera testi likho aur mujhe teen heart do.
Sheetal: Rehne do. Rajiv join karega. Tum sab gande bachche ho.
Rajiv: Arre yaar, koi to mera fan bano.
Nishant: Cold drink pila, raat tak ban jaaoonga.
Shilpa: Chhee! bechaara! mein tumhaari fan ban jaaoongi, theeke.
Nishant: Aahaannn. Koi kisi ka fan banne jaa rahe hai. Lage raho beta.
Sheetal: Tum logon ne "I love my mother" community dekha kya? Itne cute-se messages thhe unme. Itne pyaare.
Sahil: Sheetal, tumhe mera Happy Friendship Day message mila? Nahi! Sorry yaar, belated wishes bhej deta hoon.
Amit: Hey Shilpa, photo mein tum bahut sweet lag rahi ho.
Rajiv: Haan yaar, bahut pyaara photo hai.
Shilpa: Thanks, kal hi upload kiya thha.
Nishant(whispering to Shilpa): hata do usko

This is what the standard of conversations has come to post www.orkut.com-familiarisation. A novel concept of community- and network-building introduced in its Beta version by Google has been reduced to a forum of nearly jobless students whose chests swell when they get more friends on their list than others do. I must admit that at first, I too had fallen victim to orkut.com’s allure. Though most people do extract a tad of its potential, it is negligible when compared to the inordinate amount of time spent in adding hostel mates to buddy lists, scribbling Independence Day and Friendship Day greetings in the scrapbooks of friends living two rooms away, writing hypocritical testimonials, and indiscriminately joining communities.

When I asked my friend why he invited me to join his friend list, he said it would help us keep in touch in future. This, at a time when Yahoo Messenger has comprehensively pervaded the student community, is an implausible explanation. It is undeniable that people check their emails much more frequently than their orkut scrapbooks. As far as chancing on old friends is concerned, orkut helps in obtaining their email ids or phone numbers. Period. In fact, most people, including I, hardly follow up on our old friends’ messages or bother relaying more communication than the initial "Hey….long time no see….howz life….me in itbhu….where r u? keep in tch. Cya" Old friends with whom we are very keen to keep contact are added, as if by default, onto Messenger lists or mobile phone memories. And by the way, the number of friends in your buddy-list depends on the number friends you have and not vice versa.

"Friend karma" allows you to rate your friends as cool, trustworthy, and attractive. You can also become their fan. A friend will continue to call you a fool if he is in the practice of calling you one, even if you have 40 fans and have exhausted your quota of smileys, ice cubes, and hearts. Strangers too, hardly get influenced by these ratings, because the practice of bribing-for-rating is prevalent in all places.(Of course, the only difference being samosas might be replaced by subways and Pepsis by beers)

Another feature that attracts most people to orkut is the testimonial section. My classmates, who I have been living with since July 2003, and whose interpretations of my nature are evident by their attitude towards me, write a 1024-character opinion about me, generally hypocritical. Some of the following lines can be found in an alarming number of testimonials:
Ø He/She is very supporting, caring and helpful.
Ø He/She is very determined.
Ø All the best for ur future.
Ø I hope we always remain friends.

Perhaps the clinching yet most misused feature of orkut is the Communities section- clinching because people form study forums, word-game communities, old-boys associations, etc. and most misused because of communities like "Pink Floyd fans", "I hate Ekta Kapoor", "I love my mother", etc. Most communities are just fads and activity in them lasts a lifetime (of a housefly). I created pointless communities like "I Hate Veer-Zaara" and "Scrabble" and found people flocking to it in the first week, and then scarcely remembering its name. It’s not their memory but the futility of the community that deserves blame. An idle mind is orkut's workshop.

I’ve wasted a number of hours adding friends, inviting them, hunting for old buddies, scribbling scraps and messages, joining communities, and writing testimonials; and have seen a number of friends do the same. But the worst thing about wasting time is that when time is being wasted, you think it is the best way to spend that time.You thus always realise that time had been wasted and never that time is being wasted. Orkut’s popularity though, like the Stock Exchange, will experience a downward correction sooner or later, because students and their priorities come of age.

Moral of the story: An idle mind is orkut's workshop.