Return of Facebook: Is a storm coming?

‘You can’t possibly chew chicken bones while eating at a KFC restaurant. So the next day when you are having chicken for lunch at home, you crush and powder them,’ one of my teachers at Dhaka University gave this example while taking a class on Freudian layers of the psyche. ‘It’s the drive of the Id that catapults the suppressed desire of chewing chicken bones at a posh restaurant out of the consciousness,’ the professor went on, ‘and you become the bone-crusher at home.’ Well, he was right.

Your emotion is like an iron spring: the stronger you force it, the crazier it responds back. And I, as well as many other tech-psychoanalysts, believe the same thing will happen with Facebook too as soon as it is unblocked. The suppressed desire to hang out with our beloved social buddies surely turn ourselves into something what we are usually not. But there is a big trouble involved. You know why? It’s the status-photo-video-tsunami, I’m talking about.

Facebook, O, dear Facebook, you are gonna have real tough time in Bangladesh when you come back to us. There will be hundreds of thousands of profile picture changes and exhaustingly uncountable photo and video uploads within minutes. And not to mention the millions of status updates, most like ‘Missed you friends’ sort, that is feared to flood the news feed within seconds after the government lifts its ban on the social networking platforms.

The authorities blocked Facebook on 18 November citing security reasons reportedly to avoid untoward situations that might have occurred following the executions of two condemned war criminals this month.
The reactions of the people, who undoubtedly cheered at the executions, however, were not friendly to this Facebook-ban decision that isolated them from their hundreds of virtual friends. Some may call them Einstein’s idiotic generations, but that blue-and-white world of Facebook truly means a lot to them (and so to many non-idiots too).

So, when Facebook returns, there will be a mini Second-Coming, a mini-revolution, a victory of the suppressed emotion. Burning speeches will shake every corner of Bangladesh. University and college campuses (and of course schools and may even kindergartens), public transports, playgrounds, tea-stalls, the parliament- everything will be on fire, the Facebook fire, which, like wildfire, will drive many sane persons insane or vice versa. ‘Yes, yes, we are back again (blue thumps up sign everywhere)’
And my goodness, that chatting! I dread to imagine how the Internet volume vendors will have jackpots with a gargantuous amount of data being sold like water. The usual chatting time with a particular friend online will undoubtedly increase fivefold. Even the least talked with friend can be seen on the top of the chat bar.

A sudden boom in online shopping is also expected to occur as online businesses that have been terribly hungry so far for promoting their goods will literally raid your home page with an avalanche of promotional shares. Online news portal also will not be far behind. It will be a temporary chaos, an apocalypse! It will be…!!

Hold your breath, my friends! Nothing like any of this might happen. Perhaps it is just an apprehension of the writer, who himself, like many others, is so excited about and eagerly waiting for the return of Facebook amidst us. So, we wait and hope that we get our friends back as soon as possible.

 

 

[First published on NTV Online English Portal, Link: http://goo.gl/BWMvlc]