It is hard to believe, but India's current social media bae, Facebook, was once the new guy in the market. It was sleek and toned, with just enough an air of danger and untamed recklessness—a sharp contrast to then market leader, the predictable and dependable nice-guy-next-door, Orkut. We fell for Facebook's beguiling charms. And how. You could #wanderlust and #spiritualpilgrimage on your Goa trip, publicly check in every step of the way from the airport to Arambol beach, and tag all 1,000 sods in your friends list for a cross-legged selfie of yourselves in a Rs 100 'om' t-shirt and Rs 1000 borrowed Aviators.
Orkut died the inevitable death, becoming a myth that was occasionally reprised in poorly compiled listicles (“You are an awesome 90s kid if”), along with the delightful 'Duck Hunt' cartridge game. Gen Y had a remarkably fickle memory. But Orkut founder, Turkish engineer Orkut Buyukkokten is planning to recapture his lost empire. With Facebook under the hammer for data leaks, he says he will release a new application named “Hello”, the spiritual successor of Orkut.
There is no doubt that Orkut was a revolutionary application. It wasn't much appreciated in the United States, but it was very well received in India and Brazil. In the dark ages of B.O. (before Orkut), we could share information, messages and photos only through email or Yahoo chats. Orkut changed all this. It was the first social networking site in India with around 19 million users. You could 'scrap' someone—the stone age equivalent of inboxing. You could share photos and videos; the absence of a like button meant that you did not suffer a psychotic breakdown everytime less than 100 of your friends 'hearted' your profile picture.
Anime nerds found their second homes in communities, where they could discuss for hours with like-minded compadres whether Vegeta would win in a duel against Sesshomaru. The ugliest politics you encountered was a 14-year-old kid from Worli who just would not accept you into an “exclusive” X-Men online group that he was an admin of, despite you buttering him up for days on end. Internet trolls, just literate enough to type 'anti-national' and 'Pakistani' in all caps, were still a thing of the future. Private messengers were non-existent, and the worst an online romeo could do was to scrap a tentative 'heyyyyyy'.
Vipin Das P.
A former user recollects: “My wife and I started talking on Orkut. We didn’t have phones, so texting wasn’t an option either.” Orkut harkens back to simpler times, an era before the internet kaliyuga, when you could still talk to strange dudes online without having to cringe in disgust every five minutes. In a way, it was the wheel of life personified. Orkut was the innocent baby phase of the internet—where you bartered 'testimonials' of best friendship and love, or you became the another person's 'fan'. Even the (possibly cooked up) origin story of Orkut is sappy and saccharine—the lore goes that Orkut was created by Buyukkokten after embarking on a search for his missing girlfriend.
In comparison, Facebook was the hormonal teenage state, Hulk to the Bruce Banner—a mindless, violent force that thrives on anger, hatred, suspicion and fake news. In simple terms, Facebook is to Orkut what Reddit is to Facebook. But, the question remains. Will Facebook users, enmeshed in an endless loop of a toxic relationship, be able to shrug itself out and admit to themselves: It is complicated.
(Inputs from Vaisakh E. Hari)