In a desperate effort to bridge that ever-increasing generation gap, my dad decided that he must join Facebook. And why not? Everyone’s on it. He got on the bandwagon, along with a few other grown ups (in this case meaning people 50+) in my family and suddenly, my family tree, which I have been attempting to build for years, came alive as a social network of its own.

Fuck that shit.

–

I’ve seen it all come and go. Windows 3.1, then the upgrade, then ‘95 and its upgrades, ME, XP, all of it. I’ve seen Mac OS7, then 8, then 9, and then the grand launch of OS X. I’ve been around. But these grown ups don’t understand. They’ve joined in once technology and the internet has reached its best point as far as a user-friendly interface and ease-of-use go. Now, I am not against them coming online. Not at all, because that’s only for the better. My rant here is really about how they’ve suddenly made it theirs. Fitting in isn’t needed, uncles and aunties, we love you all the same. Or not.

Posting personal messages on my Facebook wall is just the tip of the iceberg here. My dad poked me once. He poked me. In real life, we greet with a handshake. That’s just the relationship we have, and we are both comfortable with it. But he poked me on Facebook. I just sat there looking at my screen. I couldn’t believe it. Why the fuck would he do that? Am I supposed to poke him back? I ignored it. He poked me again. Then he sent me a message telling me he had poked me. Followed by —> . Yup, he winked at me. He’s never winked at me in real life, because he never jokes with me in real life. But online, that’s a different story. Suddenly, he can do anything without any feeling of discomfort. At least as far as confrontations are concerned.

And it’s happening to me all over the place. Uncles and aunts I speak to once, maybe twice a year send me cows and offer to clean up my weeds on FarmVille. I. Hate. FarmVille. I’ve said it before here and here. But it happens. And thanking them in any way besides sending them back a cow would be inappropriate. I can’t send them an email or a Facebook message saying “Thanks for the cow; I milk it every day” because that would be retarded.

An uncle of mine, with whom all family ties had been broken decades ago, and who no one really talks to now, added me as a friend on Facebook and follows me on Twitter. I met the guy last when I was about two. Now, I’m 32. After a 3-decade hiatus, he’s back in my life and knows what I do on weekends, what my wife wore to the beach party, all my self-important status updates, that my daughter had a cold all last week, and regularly reminds me that he’s viewing my NSFW videos with clicks of “Like” and commenting with “LOL”.

When I was a kid, I was never allowed to meddle with whatever the grown ups were doing. If I was amongst a group of grown ups, I was asked not to interfere or listen in. And never, ever, did I poke anyone. Not even my own mom or dad. It’s wrong. But this fucking digital age is really messing things up. They (grown ups) are getting into our territory, and although we welcome them with open arms, we don’t appreciate the swarming in on our private lives, which ironically, are open to the rest of the general public. I want to open up my Facebook page and type “gaand marwao benchod” as my status update, but my dad’s watching. And my aunts and uncles. Not to mention my mom’s mid-wife. I wouldn’t do it because the messages that would come in following that condemning my use of language would just eat up all my inbox space.

Grown ups don’t realize how good they have it already. They get greedy and want to make it better by doing everything the young ‘uns are doing. And it just gets awkward sometimes. I remember when my dad first started using web mailing services. He got email accounts with every provider. Like he needed it. Yahoo, Google, Hotmail, Lycos, AOL; and he had chat IDs on every IM service, too. Greed, I tell you. And no manners or online etiquette. I get wall posts from fat aunts who only call me by a nickname (no, I will not reveal what that is), and from my dad who doesn’t quite understand why all my friends know about his prostate. I called in sick from work one day, without describing what my sickness was. My dad who knew what I was suffering from thought he’d be helpful and posted some medicinal recommendations on my wall to help with my urinary tract inflammation (I still cringe when I think of that day). I walked into work the next day with everyone asking me how my infected dick was.

I will end my rant here and share my biggest pain. The biggest. A certain relative keeps sending me PowerPoint presentations (with sound!!) featuring varieties of inspirational quotes, complete with sunset backdrops, funny cat pictures, religious slide shows discussing how Muslims are the greatest “race” in the world and a selection of divine/motivational/emo crap that no two sane people would ever talk about face-to-face.

I’m glad I got all that off my chest.