MADURAI: Thimiru Pidichavan (hot-headed), Adhigam Padikathavan (not-so-educated) and Muganool Sutrum Valiban (Facebook-trotting youngster) — these are some of the peculiar Facebook names of the 500-odd people, mostly young and middle-aged men from various parts of Tamil Nadu, who got together to meet their virtual friends in real life here on Sunday.
It was a fun-filled rendezvous as excited members of the crowd went on stage one after the other to introduce themselves, giving their Facebook names as well (these were mostly different from their real ones).
Call-outs like “Dei enga da antha Kanyakumari kaaran? Vettiya madichu kattitu pose kudupaney Facebook la? (Where is that Kanyakumari fellow who poses with folded dhotis?”) were commonly heard. Despite communicating only through Facebook till then, people gelled instantly and took selfies and pictures.
These are not the city-bred English-speaking Facebook users but predominantly people from tier-2 and tier-3 cities whose preferred language of communication in Facebook is Tamil and for whom the possibility of communicating with innumerable strangers through Facebook is thrilling.
Unlike those who accept friend requests only from people they know, most of these people claimed to have 2,000-5,000 Facebook friends.
“When I get a friend request, I see if there are any mutual friends. I go to the person’s wall and see the kind of posts he has made. If I like them, I will add the person,” said R Rajesh from Tiruchy, who goes by the name Muganool Sutrum Valiban.
Most people had no qualms in accepting that it is an addiction and the thrill is in the number of likes and comments they get for a post they make. “People constantly try to outdo each other by posting catchy things so that they get more likes. Memes based on film dialogues or politicians is the trend now,” said Bharani Venkatachalam, a web-designer from Madurai who was one the seven event organisers.
Surprisingly, these people are not part of a single Facebook group where they interact with each other. “Seven of us created a Facebook event page for this three months ago and invited our friends who in turn invited their friends. In the end, around 40,000 people were invited of which around 3,000 promised to come” said Bharani. He agrees that trolls operating with fake ids and trying to provoke others with casteist, religious and sexist comments are common.“It is inevitable. Sometimes you lose your temper. But mostly, you just ignore them,”he added.
