Orkut and the Art of Being Cool

When my sister Reny handed her orkut profile to be maintained by the oh-so-knowledgeable-computer-whiz. (Ahem! That will be me), due to internet scarcity at her hostel, I did not foresee the inevitable avalanche of troubled and lonesome souls who would want to cast themselves at her profile. Scraps like "I want to make friend with you" and "I just came across your profile and I wanted to say hello" smell of loud desperation. So now, my major task consists of doing elimination rounds on candidates wanting to be friends with my little sis. I know! The whole thing smacks of big brother-ism. And ironically, I am helpless. After facing the first wave of testerone charged males, I had to ask my sister on whether I should continue to do whatever I was doing with her stuff. When she said yes, I pondered on the task laid out to me and I decided I would just have to be cool about it. After all, I can sympathize with the "i need love" feeling running around people's (read guys) minds. So, when I see an unknown scrap, I just ignore it. When there is a friend request, I just do a little homework on the person (check out his communities / profile / ask sis whether she knows him) and just kick him out if it’s just some random dude.

PS: Reny does log-in to her profile and she is the only one who scraps or sends friend requests to her friends since doing that is a big no-no for me. Just want to assure her friends that all messages coming from her profile is a 100% Reny genuine :-)

And since I am done with narrating my ever-continuous ordeal, I think some tips for members of the same sex are in order:

1. First of all, grow up and get a life! You ought to be better than just having a presence on the web. Be good at something or a number of things (like playing a musical instrument, or developing some other skill). Something which will make you interested in yourself.

2. Realize that chicks join online communities mainly to connect with their long lost friends and/or current people in their lives.

3. If you really want to get to know girls, do so in REAL LIFE first (that will be another blog-post @ my blog-spot OR do a google search ;-). Then when you are on talking terms with her (and thus, a friend), ask her whether she is into orkut/facebook/gazzag/hi5/friendster/myspace/whatever. When she gives you her profile id, you send a friend request and scrap away to kingdom come.