You are probably thinking I am crazy and should be impaled on a stake while being slowly roasted by a firewood-stoked fire, eh? That’s a sure sign that your Facebook addiction has reached the ‘point of no return’ and you are very likely going to get a query from your boss at work when he catches you ‘liking’ a friend’s picture or something redundant like that…

Sheath your swords, children… I am not in a feisty mood today… This particular piece is more self-reflective than belligerent. I was sitting in a bank the other day, getting my time wasted by some inefficient staff and I was mentally composing some blood-curdling curses when I spied their customer service representative grinning like Patience Jonathan at her husband’s inauguration. I lowered my glance from her hideously painted face to her computer screen (my seat was positioned behind her work station)and noticed with disgust that she was going through some pictures on Facebook… At 9am in the facking morning!

Lemme get this straight, you probably wake up at 5.30am in the morning, hurriedly get dressed and leave the house before 6am in a bid to beat the traffic rush, get to your office around 7.45am, open for business at 8am, and jump on Facebook at 9am? That’s some pretty mind-boggling stuff… I recently learnt that the UK estimates a loss of around14 billion Pounds a year in wasted manpower hours, no thanks to the ‘great’ Facebook. If you are good in math (unlike me) and you are willing to risk a Continental-sized headache, try and estimate how much Nigeria loses every month as a result of the social network. What even makes matters worse is the fact that nearly everyone owns a Blackberry or a WAP-enabled phone which affords you the opportunity to ‘network’ even when your company wisely blocks Facebook access during official working hours.

But as always, I digress… The point of this whole wahala is to hit you with the truth and hopefully, hit you where it hurts… THE AMOUNT OF FRIENDS YOU HAVE ON FACEBOOK IS NOT A REFLECTION OF YOUR POPULARITY IN THE REAL WORLD!!!

The amount of ‘friends’ you have on Facebook is not directly proportional to the amount of people who actively consider you their ‘friends’ in the real world and invite you to hangouts, birthday parties and stuff.

I see people with 1,548 friends on their friends list and I just shake my head in disgust. I make bold to say even President Obama does not KNOW and remember the names of up to 1,000 people. Do people really get off on having an army of friends on Facebook? Does it bolster your flagging self-esteem whenever you imagine how well ‘loved’ you are because you have a bunch of people who you haven’t met before in your life and who probably don’t give a piss about you? The only time they remember you is when that helpful little application on Facebook reminds them of your birthday and after dropping a three word sentence on your wall, they promptly ignore you for the next 364 days… Give me a break!

Confession: I used to suffer from similar delusional thoughts while playing Football Manager on my laptop some years ago. After winning countless titles with your favourite team, you tend to become a little smug and out of touch with reality. I became aware of this failing of mine during the 2008 African Nations Cup where the fat, unfit, unpatriotic,over-aged and minutely talented foreign-based ‘stars’ of Nigeria were playing beautiful rubbish as usual and causing countless cardiac arrests among fans of the team. I was railing at the coach, the fans, the ball, and anything remotely related to the competition! I swore that I could do better than the bumbling coach who appeared clueless on how to effectively coordinate his team. After Nigeria was deservingly kicked out of the competition, I attacked the game with a fury, hoping to get some consolation by winning the Champions League title with Arsenal. To cut the long story short, an un-fancied Racing Santander thrashed me 4-0 in the final, scoring three of those goals in the first 10 minutes of the game… B**ls%$t!!!

I recently took a good look at my Facebook friend list and realized that I had physically communicated with less half of them before. At various times, I have added people just because they looked good in their profile pictures or they were females. (You do it too,so shut up!) Much older and wiser now, I mentally kicked myself on my shin and embarked on a mass deletion of ‘friends’ that I have not communicated with in a long while, or people whose faces I just don’t like… I look forward to the ruckus that this action is sure to cause…

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