Easter Cocktail of Real-time friends

Quite a long weekend ahead, huh?

Yeah, it’s Easter again and y’all want to have a good time, maybe travel home, visit a park , like the little-known Chaka Ranch or take this exciting road trip with friends to some countryside, recover on lost sleep or mostly catch up with friends.

I bet you will receive a text from some contact in your phone that spoke last with on New Year’s Eve. There’s this unwritten rule that one is allowed to stay quiet most of the year as long as they don’t forget to text during the holidays!

This reminds of days when I (and most of my friends then) didn’t have a phone and I had this sim card that I carried with me. I would have to wait hours late in the night to use the only phone in our dormitory which used to be charged through very risky means. Chance was really at play here, since the girl I was calling had to be not only awake, but also near the available phone. Patience, that was. I actually had half the phonebook off-head!

Then I bought my first phone, the awesome (still is) Samsung e250i slider, and by then there was this 2go app that we christened ‘dark-room’ due to the crooked things that happened in the ‘rooms’. Once, I literally spent the whole night chatting some chic with a really kinky pseudonym.

Then they introduced sms bundles and communication became less costly. Now I could comfortably talk with virtually all my contacts without making a call for almost a week. Keeping up conversations with in the living room became quite a big deal with all these texts flooding my phone. Poor mum, she couldn’t understand.

But then came the mother of all idlers, WhatsApp, she even made it cheaper to text and now you even could tell when they are ignoring your texts. This Easter they’ve upped their efforts of assuring your redundancy by introducing free calls. Oh boy! Today alone, calls I have received are double those of a week. In fact the WhatsApp status of one of my friends reads “don’t text, I will call you” never mind that this is a dude operates on 20mbs a day!

The love people have for free things is astounding! So marketers and spammers took advantage of this and quickly came up with a link which they purport once you invite at least ten groups or contacts from a user’s phone would activate the feature in his account. Truth is you are giving away people’s contacts to advertisers. I have received like thirty of them this week and counting. How resending a message activates a feature I can’t tell. But then its faith. The most circulated one is that which promises to continue making WhatsApp free (people believe this!!)

But the most hilarious one yet is when I received this long text where at the end there are several balls and the promise was if I forward to twenty people the balls would start bouncing!!

My online friends.

The couple of years I have been on social media I certainly have made intriguing ‘friends’. People I would definitely never have met in real life and a good majority that I haven’t met yet and a great deal who I’ll never meet beyond the precincts of my 5 inch screen.

The online ‘friend’ in reality is an acquaintance, since it’s a verifiable fact that you don’t actually know these people personally. You met virtually and what you interact with is a manufactured version of them.

One friend told me he had once grabbed the number of a girl from a mutual friend and they had these awesome conversations on WhatsApp until they agreed to meet. Luckily, she hadn’t photoshopped her profile pictures and neither did she have what my lecturer calls ‘a face for radio’ but the conversation wouldn’t take off to the level of the online chats. It was quite un-exciting and slowed-down. Funny enough they still chat but meet up no more.

Here are a few archetypes that I have encountered, and most definitely you have too. They map into real life acquaintances.

The newscaster friend

He’s the tweep who incessantly posts interesting links on a hoard of events that happen all over. You can bet that he spends considerable amount of time on gossip sites like ghafla, and all categories of gutter press (they prefer the label alternative media). He seldom posts personal info but will gladly inform you about any other thing including his immediate neighbour’s yester-night squabble. You’d want to ignore them and sometimes you contemplate unfriending them but you don’t. Sometimes they are useful, they give you a heads up.

The Avoid-a-friend

It’s either that ex who wants to keep tabs on you, or that friend you pissed off in a past event and they can’t stand being around you. But they still want to keep abreast with what you do, so maybe, just maybe they can find a chance to get back at you.  The ex wants to confirm if they ‘won’ the break-up; if you have a new girl, a new job, new style or you post messages targeting them.

They would rather not meet you in real life, but they have some unfinished agenda with you, so by keeping the online connection and employing discretion they can grill you.

The friend collector

He’s obsessed with numbers. He will accept any friend request with relish and deliberately look for new ways to increase his followers but still ensuring that he follows very few. Credit be given to this friend since he takes time to post catchy and well-thought posts to keep his followers engaged but seldom replies on the comments he gets. He prides in being a mini-celebrity.

The friend of a friend

I like to call her the distant-friend, more like that distant relative. She showed up on a mutual friends list and because you wanted to increase your friend list you added them. It’s some kind of a long-distance relationship since this friend at times is a friend of a friend’s friend and the chain can go even farther. In the least it’s comforting that someone on your list knows them, but in reality that friend who ‘knows’ them might have friended them in the very same way. Apparently, these are the best shot at making real friendship.

The frenemy

They are nice to your face, praise you for milestones achieved and paint this illusion of good genuine allies. They track your online footsteps, like your posts and even retweet your witty tweets. But in reality they talk smack about you behind your back, are envy-infested and could jump on the very next opportunity to plot your downfall. But to do this they must keep you friends and try to impress. We all have them.

The show off

Social media is the best thing that ever happened in their lives. They are intrusive, change their profile pictures a zillion times and their status updates elaborate full of pseudo-sophisticate lingo. Instagram is home for them and are always keen to take photos with people who matter.  When they talk to influential or well-known persons even for a minute, they will not hesitate to let you know. Almost their whole life is laid bare on social media. When they buy a shoe, watch, have dinner, travel or even dump someone you will know.

The unfriend

People who you’d wish they never sent you that friend request or made you join that WhatsApp group. They are the moral authorities in your real life, when around them you ‘behave yourself’. But now they joined social media and they probably have favorited you that they receive notifications every time you post something new. That may your boss, auntie, big sister, your lecturer, pastor or even your parent! A friend of mine was forced to open a new account after his mum sent him friend request.

They make you feel like that protected kid all over again. But you cannot unfriend them, or put restrictions on their profiles, it will even make the situation worse.

The apathetic friend

He’s savvy, non-nonsense and takes social media as seriously as his day-job. He has no time to comment on links that you share on his timeline leave alone clicking on them. But he wants you to comment on his updates and retweet him.

When you send him that long inspiring or funny message on WhatsApp, he’s furious, he can’t read it. The best he can do if he’s in a good mood is type some brief vague reply like “he-he! Funny!” or “interesting” or just “Ha-ha!” Make the mistake of telling him to forward it to others and he won’t reply. He believes that Instagram should be a photographer’s exhibition point and not some selfie-archive!

The friend-in-need

He takes time to mostly click like on your updates and some occasional brief comments so you notice him. He retweets witty tweets from all and sundry in hope of re-follows and mentions. All this to build a base for this business he runs and will broadly ask you to share his links and visit his website. When he needs a certain service to get exposure, or has a new blog, a weekend offer or an event he’s organizing even your email won’t be spared.

Well, I will agree with you if you have more archetypes or even better names to brand these online creatures who keep us happy, sad, engaged and all the while online. Or for some on-the-line … (of something).

Think you fit in any of the above?

Better still this long weekend as you explore that colossal dream sequence at home and rejecting those unsolicited WhatsApp calls share that story of that rare online friend.