Quote your status

ABC XYZ online. Status Message: "The road to success is not straight. There is a curve called FAILURE, a loop called CONFUSION, speed bumps called BAD FRIENDS, red lights called ENIMIES. But there are caution lights called FAMILY , green lights called FRIENDS and if you have a spare called DETERMINATION , an engine called PERSEVERANCE , Insurance called FAITH, a driver called GOD ...You can make it to the place called SUCCESS".

PHEW!!! See the above paragraph? Yes, boys and girls, THAT Insanely huge thing is the "Status Message" of one of the people I have on my GTalk list. Whenever the guy comes online, the notification itself fills up the entire right part of my screen. Beat that! I'm not even gonna mention the times when he's got a bad connection and gets signed in and out every few seconds. I leave that to your imagination. ( I refer to those times as the times when I can catch glimpses of the right part of my screen) Anyway, nice way to let everyone know that you're online, eh? Whenever I see a HUGE GTalk notification, I know it's him. I don't even need to check the name. Of course, it's a different thing that I always abuse him in my mind when I see his "Declaration of Presence" and am always thinking whether or not to go ahead and block him. (I hardly talk to him anyway ;-) )

I remember the good old days of status messages. There were those few that you could choose from: Available/Online, Busy, Not at My Desk/Away, Stepped Out/Out for Lunch, etc. Then there came the custom status messages, where people would put stuff like "Can't wait for so-and-so event", "Happy Birthday *blah blah* ", etc. Those really were the golden days of status messages. Now, look what's going on. I remember when I was a kid and there was no internet, you had to read books from the library to look for quotes and motivational stories or hear them from people around you. Then came the internet and with that came e-mail, which brought along with it, "Forwards" which gave birth to Chain Mails, etc. I'm not gonna discuss Forwards (Leaving that for a different post ;-) ), but status messages. Anyway, so forwards and chain mails and some websites (including blogs) were where you would look for quotes and motivational stories. Now, it seems, as they say, the world is becoming a smaller place. So all that stuff has decided to shift itself to Status messages. Now, instead of knowing if Mr. ABC is busy or at work or planning a trip for the weekend, I get to know the secret of success. And since he comes online everyday, I get to read it everyday and get inspired, right? WRONG! I'm more bugged by the whole thing than inspired by it. Why would I want to know what the responsibilities of a man are with respect to his family and friends or if life is like a box of chocolates or a bunch of stale cookies that look great but follow the age-old law of "looks can be deceiving"? Why, may I ask, should I be the victim of someone's opinion about how I should treat life and family and friends? I really don't understand what a person is trying to say with a status message that says "Everything has been figured out, except how to live". Is he trying to tell me that he has figured out everything, except for how to live? What am I supposed to make out of it? It's weird the way the world is going. It seems no one is taking things literally anymore. Everyone wants to use every possible place to "express themselves" without really thinking for even a minute whether it is the right place to do so.

It seems MSN saw this problem, or maybe they were just trying to make the most out of it and so unlike other messengers that I know of, they decided to let the users put up quotes by placing a "Personal Message" field in their messenger. I never really understood what that was all about anyway, and I think nor did many other people who use MSN. I mean, am I supposed to put a Personal message up there? Is that supposed to be a message from me to some particular person, but viewable by everyone on my list? Or is it supposed to be some kind of message from me to everyone on my list. I think they wanted people to put messages like "Happy Birthday" and "Going for a trip to ______ " in there, but of course people put quotes there. Then they allowed custom nicknames and people put quotes there too. I have a friend on MSN whose nickname is supposed to be "Men, it has been well sed, think in herds; it wil b seen dat dey go mad in herds, while dey only recover their senses slowly 1by1" which in proper English would be "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one". I just asked my friend, "What am I supposed to call you? Men? Herds? Senses? Men-quoter?" and my friend just laughed and said, "You call me by my real name". Sure, I did that. But what about those who don't know the real name? What do they do? But of course my friend didn't think of that. And we think we are smart. *SIGH*

After reading all this, I'm sure all of you would agree how annoying those status message quotes are. I mean, really, if you want to share a quote with me or think I should know some morals, then mail them to me or send them as a chat message to me, that I can delete and forget if I want to. Spare me the agony of having to know that you're online by seeing half of my screen covered. I would prefer knowing about YOUR STATUS than some person's thoughts put into words. :-) I would like to end this post with one of my status messages on GTalk when this status quote phenomenon started:

"A status message is not the place to look for quotes" :-)

P.S. For all those of you who think I'm just preaching and not practicing, here are my "vital status-tics":

Current: Listening to....*Artist Name* - *Song Title* (I'm using HyperIM status changer for this)

GTalk previous ones:

1. A status message is not the place to look for quotes
2. Send a message only when the dot is green

Yahoo previous ones:

1. Sleeping..zzzzzz
2. Not at home...
3. xx Years of nothingness.. / Happy Birthday to me!! (My birthday messages)

MSN:

Nickname: Nobody
Personal message: If the message is supposed to be personal, then why should I type it here for the whole world to read?

:-)