I'm Busy...

            DISCLAIMER: This article does not refer to those who are really busy working their asses off! :P  Yet, read on…

            The heroin is tied up at the chair. The villain stands next to her with a gun to her head and waits for the hero to arrive. A heroic rhythm follows the hero’s footsteps as he arrives and there’s a sudden sound “Pling”. And his next step and there’s another “Pling”… “What the??  Oh damn, facebook chat, again!” You pause the movie and glare into facebook. “Oh this guy eh?” You hate facebook chat for two things, it doesn’t have a ‘busy’ status (as far as I know) and it’s totally retarded sometimes. The blessed “X” at the right top corner is clicked and there facebook plummets away… You hastily go over to gtalk and put the status to “busy” avoiding further irritation…

It’s fashionable to open up facebook and gtalk the moment you jack into a pc connected to the net, though you are in just to edit a word file or watch some movie. And, it’s equally fashionable to put up the status sign “BUSY”  Reminds me of people wasting a ‘bit’ of the expensive food they buy when they go to big restaurants. It’s simply ‘fashionable’ not to finish the entire thing.

***

Ok ok… coming back… There is someone who argues “I don’t want to be pinged while I’m doing something” Yes, I could agree with him. But why not simply log off instead? The guy gets pissed, “It’s my wish!” 

***

A good old classmate goes “I’m busy” on his status and I believed I had enough freedom to ask what he was busy with, since I was pretty sure he was jobless at home. He doesn’t seem to reply. I bug him and bug him and he goes, “Hey @#$%^, can’t you see I’m busy?”  I swallowed the jibe and asked him what he was busy with, “Farmville” (For those who don’t know, it’s an online game on facebook).

***

“I waited all this while thought you would ping. What are you doing?” And there she goes, “Ooooooooohhhhhhh... I didn’t see you… Sorry” And for those who use your own pc, you have the excuse that gtalk loaded itself with its saved password. If you plan to lie to someone that you were busy and didn’t notice that gtalk (oh that lil devil!!!) went online, you should consider that he/she might have noticed your change from ‘Available’ to ‘Busy’… Well anyways it doesn’t matter coz you really don’t care.

***

“Hey” from a girl who has never seemed to be able to shift off the busy status and has never bothered to reply.  I take my time giving a ‘hi’ trying to give an impression that I was least interested. “Ummm.. Could you do me a favour?”  Yup, I knew that was coming and I ask what she wants. “There is this guy stalking me online, Can you talk to him and ask him what his problem is?” I agree almost as soon as she says it but I ask her for a little favour “Can you remove that busy status and make it available so that I can see it just this once?” She gives a “hahaha” and then changes it to available. (My mind goes “yippee”) 

(Hmmm… That’s very friendly. See how opportunist people can be?) Then I go,  “You know, I kinda have better things to do… Oh btw, I added you to increase the number of friends on facebook… Not coz I wanna talk to you! Sheesh! Guess you’ll look better in my blocked list. Next time bother to get friendly before asking a favour! BYE B****!!!!” :P :P   

 Somewhere in the back my mind there is an evil laugh and a dialog that goes, “Stand up so I can kill you again!”

***

            The net has always inspired us to be fake, hooded behind a screen. It definitely cannot be ruled out that there are really busy people busy with other conversations or some of us like some privacy online. But how many of us just put the status “busy” to show off we have things to do when you’re just almost snoring away in front of the screen waiting for something extra ordinary to happen? How many times have we simply got irritated and went offline instead of just telling the guy, “Dude, I really don’t want to talk to you now or anymore” We find an excuse for not being direct, saying we’re busy, we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings etc etc... If there are strangers bugging you, you probably let them into your friend’s list in the first place! 

            It is customary for us not really bothering about people we do not know or who are far away from us. As the old saying goes, “Out of sight, out of mind…” Things can be solved by a block button or the simple status that goes “Busy” Nobody ever did question your freedom to do what you feel like, simply, you question yourself, for being fake… A prompt answer would be, “Simply, coz that’s the way everyone is…”

 It’s funny the way things are. We have status messages and buttons like ‘like’, ‘poke’ etc to speak for us… We hide behind them, as we devoid ourselves of expression… The problem of stereotyped stuff is that they express only a part of what you feel and rest is left for the other person to guess and sometimes even misunderstand… Say, someone you don’t know ‘poked’ you on facebook. You probably poke them back out of no interest but just to get rid of the thing. Bingo! They get a different meaning there.. 

 Time would probably come when we’d be busy or rather sometimes lazy enough to employ buttons that store whole big sentences, simply coz its fashionable…

            Again, reminding you of the escape clause I left for you in the beginning of this article. You may be included in the list of the really busy people or you may continue to convince yourself and everyone you’re busy. It’s all yours…!!!

 :)  Keep reading guys!!! 

This is Vijay Velayudhan Signing off!!!