Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim
@muhsin234
After exchanging greetings, a boy of about 17 to 19 years asked me, “You are Mal. Mubarak’s younger brother, huh?” I answered in the affirmative. “Greet him for me”. I said okay and called it a day. Unbeknownst to me, that was only the beginning; he kept asking me to deliver the same message until one day I had had enough and warned him off. The lad is my brother’s student in college, as he told me. He likely meets with him every day, while I have not seen him for over a year, as I have been outside Nigeria
Many others will ask you to be friends and, upon acceptance, leave you a thankful message on your timeline or in your inbox. Forget the mostly disquieting English used for the message; I am against linguistic imperialism, though murdering a simple grammar reveals lots about a person. Those sending private messages tend to be funnier. I have had several encounters with so many who asked where they knew me (and they befriended me?). Facebook makes it explicitly clear that it’s aimed to connect us with the people we know, or, I add, with the people we share some things in common. But not everyone!
The above are even more mature than other categories of Facebook friends who are, usually, girls with a sole mission to get a ‘lover’ or some ‘humanitarian cum financial assistance’. They repeatedly spam your inbox with alluring messages and promises to send you their placid pictures or a share of the money once the deal is sealed. Others use pseudonyms like Queen, Lover, Sexy, etc; fake names of renowned persons like Dangote, Malala, Ali Nuhu, etc; porn fans; ‘you-must-like/comment’ posters and numerous other tantrum-infested, good-for-nothing posts. I have had enough. While you sometimes accept friend requests at random and other times carefully, it doesn’t help much. Those trolls, as they are called in cyberspace discourse, still circumvent your filter. This is a sequel to my post a week or so ago on a similar topic.
In a rather special case, some friends are, of course, our friends, but their unique companionship on Facebook makes them nagging, nay, unwelcome friends. For instance, some will try to chat with you every day, typically about trivial topics, at any hour from early morning to midnight. I wonder how and what people take Facebook friendship, or generally, friendship, as. We, from time to time, naturally don’t feel like chatting, or don’t have any substantive subject to talk of, or are engaged in some activities much more important than spending time with another person and so on. But they care not to understand and reason. All they want is chit-chat…for what?!
Facebook is a social networking site, yes, but people are on it for different reasons. No doubt, as I have also mentioned elsewhere, the main raison d'être is Friendship, but I am, for instance, using it more for information/news than anything else. I now see what happens around every corner of the earth, sometimes before the news media breaks it. Now, people break stories to a great extent, unlike in the past. Besides, Facebook helps me a lot in reuniting with old friends and making new ones. It has also afforded me with unprecedented opportunities to interact with some big shots in many walks of life, among other things.
Facebook actually attracts and harbours everyone. There are, among others, self-promoters, armchair critics, haters, lovers, preachers, politicians, teachers, students (some of whom seldom ask you to solve their assignment questions), etc. Thus, we can’t, for it is impractical, be there for a single purpose. Neither can we all be behaving in the same way. Yet, it does not mean people should not be called to order. I am not ranting for nothing; the whole drama is just getting too darned exasperating. I will soon begin a Clean-Up Operation in which I will unfollow, unfriend and block many people currently on my friends’ list. Please do the same to me if you consider me one of such bothersome friends. No vexation; no worry; thank you.
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