Thursday, January 16, 2014

Girls vs. Guys- Facebook accounts.

You may or may not have noticed that my blog has entered puberty. If, by any chance you happened to be accessing my blog from around 8 to 9 pm IST and tried to hit refresh, your brain would have probably melted, surged through your ear canal, and made you deaf. Not to mention brainless. If you are brainless now, I needn't bother an explanation since you wouldn't comprehend it anyway, but in case your brain is still intact and you want to know the reason nevertheless, here it is. I was deep into the process of giving my blog a makeover, and well, what you see now is the result. Look around!

I mean, I know it doesn't look as if I worked very hard. The collage of my doodles in the blog cover and the creation of the background did not take very long. But what took long was fitting those things into my blog. UGH. It was so annoying! I had to resize the picture a frazouland times in order to make the cover photo fit. And why should it fit, you ask? Guys.... I think I have OCD. Some weird, things-should-fit-and-colors-should-change kind of an OCD. I'm sure there's a term more technical for it. Giraffe. On your left, in the background.

Anyway, it's funny that I'm typing this post right now because I haven't accessed Facebook in quite some time since the beginning of exams, but I had been thinking about having an entry about this phenomenon for a while. My dear mortals, within a few years from now, babies will be born without known genders, because no one would care about the chromosomes or peer at their peepees or do an ultrasound or any such thing. Rather, I have a theory that these infants will be given a laptop and told to access facebook, and this in turn would determine their gender.

Now I know I have exaggerated, obviously. But if you think about it, there most certainly are some definite distinctions between the way the two main opposite genders access social networking sites. And yes, I am aware that I'm generalizing (just like I always do for such posts), so I hope you will keep in mind that I'm in no way trying to push you into a category or mock you for being in one, rather rainbowunicornflowersponies nuffsaid. Besides, you should be aware that I'm totally a near-perfect example of one of those girly profiles.

1) Profile Pictures- If this is a guy's profile picture-



This is probably a girl's profile picture.


I don't think that anyone can deny that most guys do, indeed, have simpler profile pictures than girls. They just feel the need to crop their face from any random tagged picture and upload it into their profiles. In fact, most of the guys I know rarely change their profile pictures or care to upload their own profile picture. If they happen to be tagged in something, they will go ahead and profile it, after doing a wonderful job of cropping, of course. 

But girls? NO WAY. I don't think you realize that cropping a picture ruins the picture's resolution, and a picture's resolution is way too important to be tampered with. Girls, in most cases, need the best quality pictures that are in no way cropping any of their essential body parts, and understand the importance of pouting because smiling just hides the cheekbones and pouting makes them more prominent. Moreover, girls feel the need to edit their pictures, to highlight themselves and the beautiful background of the most beautiful resort where they've been chilling so people know that not only are they beautiful, but also that they appreciate nature and sceneries which make them seem innocent, appreciative, and humanitarian. Or simply hot. 

2) Captions of Profile Pictures- I find that guys rarely find the need to have captions for their pictures. They may be bald with a shark chewing remnants of hair, while juggling tomatoes and yet they don't feel the need to explain their actions in a minimum of one to two words. Like, c'mon, you could've written 'yolo' or 'bau5' or something in the caption, that would've be acceptable. But nooo. 

Girls, on the other hand, have 3 main kinds of captions:
1) Song lyrics- Lyrics are basically a girl's way of saying "wow look I'm so hot and this song totally describes my hotness and you should be reading these lyrics right now and downloading that song because it is totally directed towards you and listening to this song will hopefully remind you of me (and my hotness)." 
For eg: If a girl just went through a break-up, and she wants the guy to know that she's totally over him and doesn't give a damn, she will take the hottest picture possible, edit it to make it look even hotter, crop out the toothbrush and the bathroom mirror, and upload it with the lyrics 'WE ARE NEVER EVER EVERRRR, GETTING BACK TOGETHER!' She might even call up a friend and ask her to tag her in the picture so that it comes in the newsfeed and the person-under-question sees it... and regrets seeing it. 

2) Birthday captions!- Honestly, if a girl wanted, she could've merely texted her "BFFL WHO HAS SEEN ME SNIFFLE" or "PANTIE DINOSAUR XOXO" or "JUICY SAAXBOMB" instead of writing a lengthy caption detailing all sorts of maneuvers that she has had with her "OOPID DRUNKARD" on the night she dirty danced with a man who actually turned out to be a disgusted puritan. Why do girls write such long captions, or ask their friends to write long captions for them? For you to see it, of course! Birthday captions are just a girl's way of letting others know that she is fun, has friends, and you should either totally be jealous, or you should totally hang out with her too.

3) "HI OMG YOUR SO PRETTY BUT YOU WONT UPLOAD THIS PICTURE SO I UPLOADED IT, K? KBYE. LUV YA PRETTY THANG."- Captions/eulogies written by others. Either a girl is lucky enough to have such considerate friends who are always on the lookout for hot pictures of her comrade in her laptop that is uploadable on facebook, or the girl has bribed her friends into uploading the picture for her because the girl wants to be seen to have a modest, "I-have-better-things-to-do" attitude, OR her comrade herself uploaded the picture in hopes that the girl would also do the same for her and appreciate her beauty at some point later in life.

3) Timeline- Moment of nostalgia as I almost wrote "Wall" :(
A guy's timeline is usually kind of empty. If anyone did happen to write on his wall/timeline, it would be something vague, like a link to a dexterous wrestler's muscle-building secrets with the remark "yo we gotta do this" or "thats me in 10 yrs". Or it could be a link to a video game. Or a music video that features a hot model. Or a meme. Or a link to my blog. ;D

A girl's timeline on the other hand, and especially a girl who is, say, 14-15 and moderately popular, is filled with other people. Basically, they have wall-to-wall (now, timeline-to-timeline) conversations so a girl's wall is usually beautiful, colorful, and buzzing of a wonderful social life. 


What's that, you don't have such a lovely timeline? Aw, well that's okay. I gave up on wall-to-wall long back. Eventually, people tend to get sick of facebook. I know I am, so my wall is just.... oh wait, it's a timeline now, I keep forgetting! 

4) Comments (in pictures)- It wouldn't be surprising that low resolution, cropped pictures are unlikely to get a lot of comments...

Girls, on the other hand, usually get so much attention for their pictures. Or they make sure they get attention. I mean, come on, what could be more important than the number of likes you got for your picture, eh?


When I was younger, I would tell all my friends to 'check out' my profile picture whenever I changed it. It used to be such a big deal! My friends and I would request each other to like each others' profile pictures and comment on it, because nothing seemed more important than getting likes and comments. But after a point, it just doesn't matter. 

5) Status Updates- Now, thankfully I found at least one area where guys are, more or less, active. If anything, most of the guys I know do update their statuses quite often, but again, these updates are highly subjective. But probably what I see the most on my newsfeed are UPDATES ON SPORTS. So there I am, just chillliiin, scrolling down the newsfeed, and suddenly, from around 10-11 pm, there are all these shoutouts and type-screaming and analysis of players and reprimands at their shortcomings and all these unfamiliar names and unfamiliar games.... and my head just starts to spin. Now, I'm not saying that all girls are like me (I'm such a poor example), but I rarely watch/follow sports, so I have no clue what's going on. Oh, so Ronaldo scored a basket... sorry I mean goal? Oh, so Chesterfield.. I mean Manchester United is in this season..... and that man won wrestling? That's really great, oh wait, he didn't win? You thought he'd win but he didn't? Or wait, oh he's injured? Well that's bad........ seriously, it is just super hard for me to keep up. I do try, though. Like, I sincerely tried to watch cricket and actually follow it throughout 9th/10th grade. Is it obvious that I failed?

Girls rarely update their status in vivid enthusiasm for sports. They write about either a) their mundane daily adventures, or b) songs that are basically implicit messages towards.... (surprise)... you. So I always see statuses like "Just got out of the spa with my mum..... best mother-daughter day ever!" or "just sittin' here under the tree with my sweet ol' southern boy" or "I knew you were trouble when you walked in (trouble trouble trouble)" or "I just wanna shop all dayy!!! :)))" I wouldn't be the least surprise if girls start the trend of describing the difficulties/joy of their morning poo- "Just got out of the toilet! feelin' all excreted and healthy. ran out of toilet paper tho".
Unfortunately, my statuses rarely have to do with these things. My last status was this lame desi joke that I found HILARIOUS for some reason- "Santa and Banta were feeling happy. Happy got disgusted and went away". :D :D :D (Happy is a very popular name in India)

6) SMILEYS- Honestly, I have never seen guys use smileys. Or it is all too rare. And I know I'm not using smileys right now either, but trust me, it takes SO much self control, because I've used smileys throughout my adolescence and can not imagine not using them, because I feel like without them, things can be misinterpreted. Moreover, all my female minions also use smileys, so automatically, I end up using smileys in conversations with them too. 

For eg: Consider the phrase 'wow, you're so cool.' Now, when said without a smiley, it sounds sneering, almost sarcastic. Like, that time when you were reciting to your friends about the time when you were dancing like Ke$ha wearing rollerskates and you fell, and one of your friends go like "wow, you're so cool", HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KNOW IF THEY MEAN IT OR NOT, HUH? Because personally, I think that's really cool. So if I'd say 'wow, you're so cool', I'd mean it. But it could also be said in a sarcastic way like, "wow, you think you're so cool but you're not". THAT is where the smiley comes in. So if I'm online, I'd just be like "wow, you're so cool!!! :'O :')" and anyone who's sarcastic can go like "wow, you're so cool -.- " so thereyago!

Well, that's all I can think of for now. However, if you can think of more distinctive behaviors adopted by girls and guys, why don't you comment and add to my little list? I think I can't think of any more reasons because, I'll be honest, ever since I got this awesome smartphone of mine, I just never felt the need to waste time stalking others on facebook when I could be stalking even more people through other applications! Oh hey, maybe I'll include an even better entry about other applications/websites as well!
But again, I haven't completely let go of Facebook. I still think it is a great way to connect to people who live in great distance from you, see what your old friends/acquaintances are up to, allow those who don't know you very well to get to know you, and find old friends because virtually everyone has an account on facebook. What's that, you don't? That's okay too. You must be having great self control, then.

:)))))) you know, before I end this entry, I felt like sharing two epiphanies that I recently had, about my own blog entries. Firstly, I noticed that I apparently put a lot of commas in my blog entries when I'm having a writer's block, have you noticed? Maybe you should read through the posts in which I mention things like "I wrote this with a writer's block!!" to clarify this point. And secondly, I have noticed that all my entries start off good but end bad! For example, this one. And I also end up saying things completely irrelevant and different from what I initially started off saying. I think that's because these entries, with the fancy pictures and all take too long, so by the time I'm finished, it's like.... 1 AM, lol. 

I've been noticing too many things lately, hmmph. That's just weird. 
Okay, good night! 

9 comments:

the creation of beauty is art. said...

LOL oh my gosh, this is way too accurate.
the-creationofbeauty.blogspot.com

A Fineapple said...

Nice post.. I so agree about the status updates. Guys always commenting on sports and you know some important match is going on coz of this.. and the status updates of girls too.. So spot on..

Loved the giraffe in the side.. nd the top hat too.. :)

Keep writing more fun posts.. and about the ending with totally irrelevant topics. Never really noticed it much, but I guess it is totally okay.. Kinda personal songbird touch to all the posts.. ;) :)

songbird said...

Shannon- Hahah I was worried about whether people will be able to relate or not, and I'm so glad you could! :')

ME-er- "songbird touch" I LOVE IT!! Yay, I'm glad you liked it! Yes I most certainly shall continue!

Unknown said...

Hahaha yes! I'm so sick of the facebook crazyness and instagram selfies and pictures of crossfitters showing abs and aghhh,,, who cares?! Seriously...
Great post

songbird said...

Abs! Yes, that's what I forgot to include! Haha, I find such pictures hilarious. Thank you for your comment!

Anonymous said...

THIS. IS. SO. TRUE. :O
ahahha well you sure know how to differentiate :P

songbird said...

I'm glad you have recognized my skill!

Anonymous said...

Arsenal vs liverpool football match on saturday. YOLO!

Just kidding. Lovely post.

songbird said...

Hahaha, I shall certainly watch this match and improve my sports knowledge xD Thank you for your comment!