I can no longer talk about my feelings to anyone. It is my profile status. I actually revel in the joy of the number of comments I get for each status update. And I am depressed when no one cares about my state of mind.

Why is it necessary to announce to the whole world that I had dinner at a long lost relative’s place yesterday? I complain about this, yet I find myself asking whether my friend enjoyed the dinner.

If I am depressed, I want everyone to know. Everyone consoles me and asks what happened. I pour my heart out into another status update.

It is easier for me to message a friend Happy Birthday or write on her/his wall. Just for being so impersonal, I get my thank you as a status update on her/his behalf – ‘So and so: Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes.’ Of course, if that is how much you care about me, this is how much I care about you.

A friend of someone I know passes away. His status update reads: ‘Still in shock. May your soul rest in peace.’

I gauge my popularity by the number of photographs and notes I am tagged in. It matters more when someone comments about me in the photograph. It hurts me when I haven’t been mentioned.

I hate what it has done to me. I have lost feeling and emotion for people. I cannot look anyone in the eye and tell them about my feelings. I find it so much easier to write in on their wall.

The point is, social networking sites have made my life most impersonal and inhuman. I feel like I am connected to the world only by means of these. I feel like I don’t have a life beyond it. But what I don’t realise is that I have destroyed all of my life beyond this. It is only my doing. I didn’t know where to stop. I went on ahead, wearing my emotions, not on my sleeve, but on my profile status. Everyone knows what’s happening in my life, and no one cares.

I want to give it up. I want to maintain relations with only people who matter. I don’t want to make new friends online. I want to make real friends out in the real world. I want to expand my network by being myself. I want to meet new people through me. I want to be the reason for my happiness and unhappiness. I don’t want to credit the same to some website online.

Ironically, I am complaining about the internet to the internet. I really am trapped in this world wide web. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it…

This article is part of new section TDIS (Thank Devil Its Sunday!). Read more about this section.]

-- This Post Me and My Social (Networking) Life [TDIS] is Published on Devils Workshop .