Of MBA Grads and Social Networking Sites

If Facebook revealed the stats of who uses their photo album feature the most, there is one group of people who will definitely make it to the top of that list - Indian B-School graduates, Batch of 2008. 

Every single day my Facebook homepage tells me how who amongst this newly graduated army of yuppies spent his/her time (and money) the previous evening. So thanks to the ever-updating online albums, I have seen detailed photo essays of a hundred and fifty new year bashs, umpteen trips to Hardrock cafe in Bombay, a gazzillion house parties, evenings at fancy lounges & fifty different weekend trips to Goa. 

Thank you very much, but it's getting very boring now. They ALL seem to do the same things, hang out at the same places and I think even look almost the same. All the girls have suddenly simultaneously acquired a 'taste' for dresses and short skirts. Most of them look horrendous in them, they just don't seem to be able to carry them off well; but its not their fault that they're wearing them, they need to exhaust the monthly limits on their platinum cards everytime - so they HAVE to go for the 'hep' stuff. And the guys - they all try to pull off that cool-banker-after-office-hours look - striped shirts and steel grey trousers with sleeves folded and uncombed hair after a long day's work of putting formulas in excel sheets and exchanging fifty unproductive mails on Outlook Express (accessed through their company-gifted Blackberries if you like). 

I know its a great feeling to earn your first few salary cheques, but its incredibly funny to see the effort that these guys make to tell the world about it. Of course, they'll claim they're not intentionally trying to tell everyone that they've started earning....they're just 'cool guys' who like to 'hang out with friends' a lot (work hard, party harder?)  and that newly acquired cybershot 'just happens' to be there in their pockets every single time!

So what's wrong in all this? And why am I sounding like a cranky old man complaining about someone else having fun? Don't get me wrong...I am not. Really. Neither am I against their exploits, nor do I find social networking sites annoying - both help me pass a lot of time online these days and I have to admit its tremendously entertaining at times. After all, for all you know they maybe the last bunch of such entertainers the world will see for a long time to come now after the 'entertainment' their predecessors have had in office all these years.  

If you're passing out of a B-School this year when the global economy is in such fantastic shape, you know what I am talking about.