(Dis)like: The toxic lies of our Facebook lives

Move over agony aunts, dark chocolate, vodka and films-with-Reese Witherspoon. We no longer need you to make the average janta less unhappy with the boss, girlfriend/boyfriend, landlord and that mounting stack of bills.  All we need is just one click and the tenth of a second. I am talking of course, of the Facebook 'like'.If you're the kind who is more committed to the cause of your Facebook display picture than to your income tax returns, here's a video you should watch without fail. And no, it's not going to make you feel very happy about your Facebook behaviour.The video, which has garnered more than 2 lakh likes in just a few weeks, shows a man living a double life - one on Facebook and one outside it. So, while he eats a regular takeaway for dinner, he posts a status update saying he is having sushi with 'his girl' - followed by a heart emoticon.When his presentation doesn't go down well with his bosses, he posts another update saying, that his presentation actually rocked the boardroom. And while he does all that, the video shows how his life is actually falling apart - he is depressed, upset and getting increasingly dependent on the number of 'likes' his FB posts invite. In fact, even one 'like' gets a smile back on his face.[caption id="attachment_1590009" align="alignleft" width="380"] Representational image. Reuters.[/caption]Now, what is right with the picture? It's scarily similar to the lives of a lot of people you know. And what's wrong with it? That it is scary - the lies you want to live because you have a Facebook appearance to keep up.What are the things that Facebook makes you do? One glance over your timeline and you basically know what the girl you half-like had for dinner, which team your best friend's husband is supporting in the World Cup, who has booked tickets for a holiday, whose girlfriend has bought him a iPad for his birthday and who claims to have finished reading anything Eliot has ever written.There are the girls who post pictures of haircuts right from the wash till the final blow dry, there's the woman RIP-ing whoever Google says has passed away that day, there are boys telling you all's well with the world because their team won, there's a person objecting to everything everyone else is doing. And unknowingly, they are all united in the fact that the hoard Facebook likes.Psychology Today points out that there are four kinds of Facebook personalities - 'Voyeurs, Informers, Me Mees, and Evangelists. However, the writer Bernardo Tirado, underlines the fact that our Facebook personalities could be vastly different from our real personalities, because the space of communication lends itself to very different behaviour."Communicating in person is quite different than communicating via an electronic medium. For example, would you go to the front of a room filled with strangers and tell them that you just ate or better yet show them a picture of it? The answer is NO because that’s awkward. Yet on Facebook it’s quite common to see people post what they are eating", he says.The SurpassHosting blog echoes Tirado's feelings when they suggest that there could be up to 40 different Facebook personalities, from the 'spoiler' to the 'check-in-er'.In fact, the 'personalities' on Facebook necessitated  a hugely popular study by FiveLabs which decoded what kind of a person you come across as on Facebook. It rated personalities on various traits including openness, agreeableness and how neurotic you were.However, most people who took the test were partially amused at what the results suggested - mostly because they disagreed with or were surprised by the results. They themselves, and their friends, believed them to be different in real life. Though both approximations of personalities - one by yourself and one based on FB posts have their loopholes, it can be said that the human appropriation of an individual's personality is slightly more accurate.That basically suggests, that despite our denials, that we do actively construct and maintain appearances on Facebook. And why do we do so? Because we want a wider circle of people to take us for the person we like to be on Facebook. The sushi-eater for some, the relentless poet for someone else, the social conscience-keeper for another maybe. We do so, possibly because we feel the compelling need to be a person widely 'liked' on Facebook.But like this video shows, we may not end up liking what that makes of our lives though.Watch the video here: