Column

I think Kapil Sibal is right, there indeed are many offensive things on the internet, especially on Facebook, which must be screened and stopped from appearing on my laptop screen. These things hurt my sentiments, rather sensibilities, and incite me to indulge in violence, like causing physical injuries to an unarmed mouse and a keyboard.

Since our minister has announced that he can’t allow people’s sentiments to be hurt, I want to submit to him a list of offensive activities that I want to get banned on Facebook.

Let me first start with something that concerns society as a whole, not just me — the ‘poke’ button. Facebook has gone through thousands of changes in its features and layout, but this totally nonsensical button still exists. Each time a girl logs into her Facebook account, she finds that at least 25 persons have poked her, and she can’t even file an FIR for eve-teasing.

I call it eve-teasing because 99.99% of those poking a girl actually don’t know the Facebook definition of ‘poke’, which means that a person is relaxing his privacy settings, allowing the ‘poked’ person to see his detailed profile. But no, when they ‘poke’ someone, they have the dictionary definition of ‘poke’ in mind.

This could cause crimes against women to go up as men would think ‘poking’ a woman is allowed. How can a responsible minister like Kapil Sibal allow this?

Furthermore, why does Facebook need this feature at all? They already are into the business of randomly relaxing privacy settings. Even Mark Zuckerberg’s privacy settings were relaxed and people could see his detailed profile, including private pictures. They call it the ‘glitch’ feature. Why poke when you can glitch?

The next thing on my list is something that Sibal already agrees with — the Facebook pages that pronounce hate for a public figure. I mean, I don’t understand the purpose of a page titled ‘I hate Rakhi Sawant’, which people are supposed to ‘like’. And when someone in my network likes such a page, I get an update that goes like — Jitin likes I hate Rakhi Sawant.

That doesn’t make sense at all, and could completely destroy the understanding of English grammar. Sibal should immediately get these pages removed, and replaced with titles like ‘To hate Rakhi Sawant’. So that next time Jitin repeats his activity, people read a properly formed sentence — Jitin likes to hate Rakhi Sawant.

Apart from these two, which are for the larger benefit of society, there are many other things that Sibal must get banned, or pre-screened. For example, the first comment on any status update should never read as ‘first’ or ‘1st’. These terms must be banned. Other comments that must be screened and blacklisted include ‘Issme RSS ka haath hai' and ‘Why this Kolaveri di.’
Sibal should also force Facebook into stopping people to ‘lyk’ something when they find it ‘gr8.’

tYpINgLiKeThiSmUsTbEbANneD, and no girl should receive a message that reads ‘urbuetifull face izdovine, plzzaad me azfrand and replay me.’

The list is long, like Sibal’sobjections, but I’ll stop here; let’s get these implemented first. Thank you Mr Sibal, you are my only hope to make this world a saner place.

— Rahul Roushan thinks he can make some sense through nonsense. He attempts the same through his news satire website www.fakingnews.com