Facebook Dire-Rear

Facebook, in the few years of its existence, has almost become an essential aspect of most people’s lives. There are many uninitiated and uninterested people who today are converts and now well within the folds of Facebook and thus help increase its popularity even further. Infact, I read somewhere that, Facebook has sufficient members to be declared as a country!

On an earlier occasion I wrote about an emerging phenomenon called, Facebook Celebrity and the repercussions of being or not being one! Today I wanted to explore another such emerging phenomenon. I prefer to call this phenomenon Facebook Diarrhea. Pardon me for a slightly corny name to this phenomenon; I think no other name would have suited this behavior better. Diarrhea, as we all know, has symptoms of having three or more liquid bowel movements per day. Undoubtedly a serious condition and could be fatal as well.

Ofcourse the word Diarrhea, apart from being used to describe a medical condition, has been used in more occasions than one to describe similar liquid movements of things other than just the bowel. For example a terminology used often to describe people who demonstrate symptoms of uncontrollable nonstop nonsense is, Verbal Diarrhea. Needless to say, the people at receiving end don’t consider it to be a compliment and often take offense to it.  Obviously I am fully aware that while describing a certain behavior and naming it Facebook diarrhea, I will be rubbing few people the wrong way and also be at the receiving end of their wrath. Nonetheless describe I will.

So, what is Facebook Diarrhea? A person suffering from this phenomenon demonstrates the following symptom: comes online (usually 3 or 4 times a day) and is in the grip of, a perpetual and uncontrollable, need to share and post on Facebook. So the person doesn’t share just a single post, but shares a series of related or unrelated content (possibly timed by a stopwatch). I am sure, most of us have experienced this. When we login to our Facebook page, the Facebook wall is full of an almost never ending list of pictures, videos, posters and quotes shared by this individual. There is a liquid hand movement to hit the like and share button at whatever appears in sight. Unable to comprehend what makes such people stop I conclude that this behavior is stopwatched to a down count. I don’t think an anti-dote has been found yet for Facebook Diarrhea.

One might ask why I don’t pick Twitter. Twitter, if one observes, is all about diarrhea and it is the rule not the exception. So Twitter diarrhea cannot be described as a special phenomenon. There is many more such phenomenon waiting to be discovered on Facebook. Till I discover another one- so long.