Entangled in the web

Thanks to the social networking sites there are millions of such Jimmis and Ginnis coming together and are eagerly waiting for you to join them, writes Anushree LN.

What do ‘Campus Republicans’, ‘I love Biscuits and Scones’, ‘We Need to Have Sex in Widener before We Graduate’ and ‘I hate Nazis’ have in common? Apart from being some-what meaningful English phrases, they are only a few of the many bizarre 21st century online communities that we are a part of.

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So I woke-up one day and found a ‘want to be your friend’ invitation sitting in my mailbox from a certain James in Chicago. Close on heels was a Ganesh from Chennai, with a similar request. Out of morbid curiosity, I checked their ‘profile’ page only to find reams of their personal information ranging from the college they study in to the colour of their underwears.

Soon I was wading through their photo albums, feeling no less than a voyeur. While Ganesh was posing in front of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, James had uploaded his own set of the French holiday. Then there were others like Ganesh at his birthday bash and James at his college reunion, Ganesh’s pooch biting into the birthday cake and James smooching his girlfriend, Catherine. What, however, caught my attention, was a picture of my prospective pals — James and Ganesh— with both grinning at me from what seemed to be a picturesque snow-covered landscape. Jimmi and Ginni meet — backpacking in Ladakh — the caption read. That explained it all.