Flashback to this time last year. As if lockdown wasn’t monstrous enough, three weeks into it, my mom walks into my room with her usual rant on how the daily help turned up late for the umpteenth time this month. Seeing my unamused face, she immediately digressed and blurted out, “Oh, guess what! I’ve joined TikTok”.
Say whaaaaaaa?
“And I didn’t pick your calls last night cuz I was trying to get Urvashi’s kaduvara kaduvara dialogue right on TikTok. This lip sync business is not that easy!”
*Blink* *Blink*
Whether it is to simply scroll through entertainment content or connect with good old friends or even to keep up with their kids, of late, Gen X parents have been scrambling to seal their presence on social media platforms. And that makes it absolutely safe to say that the killer burns and shames they give us in real life have also gone virtual. On that note, here are 8 cringe-worthy things that parents do on social media:
Narcissism rules
From ‘hearting’ their own pictures on Instagram to binge-sharing their own statuses on Facebook, it’s self-love all the way! Oh, and how can we forget another of their favourite activities – putting statuses on their own walls saying “I’m fine. Send me your WhatsApp number” as opposed to replying to the person who has struck up a conversation with them.
Racing you to post pictures of events
You can close your eyes and place your wholehearted trust in them to do that! Whether it is your wedding, their birthday or a casual eat-out with family, the pictures are gonna make it to Facebook or Instagram microseconds after things wrap up! The day after my wedding I was talking to one of my friends who couldn’t make it to the big day. Before we hung up, I told her that I’ll send her some of the pictures right away, to which she was like, “Oh hey, actually I saw close to a hundred of your wedding pictures on Facebook, including those of your gown trial sessions”. Uhm, well, so much for spamming!
Make Thursdays dreaded for you
Throwback Thursday, you see. Imagine breaking out of your slumber and grabbing your phone on a glistening Thursday morning only to get greeted by a gazillion pictures of your childhood butt-naked self, lying in a thottil (think Kani Kani from Meesa Madhavan). As though the pictures weren’t enough, they are accompanied by hashtags that yell out the half a dozen weird pet names you were called in your childhood.
The comment shenanigans
They can spill the beans about your weirdest quirk to the song you sang while pottying. Apart from splashing out-of-context responses under your pictures that go from “Why aren’t you picking my calls?” to “Come home by 7 PM. Ammini aunty is here.”, you can expect a whole array of annoying and unrelated comments. Imagine you create this whole life coach persona online and chalk out tips to overcoming and confronting your fears as an IG post. One of your parents has to be the first one to comment asking, “Why do you still scream, panic, and run away in terror when you see a palli in the house?” Tch tch…burn!
Miserable stories = 32 missed calls
You cannot officially post or vent out about your distressed days at work or how messed up you’ve been feeling lately. Try doing this and keeping your phone away for a few minutes. You’re sure to get at least 32 missed calls from your mom. Of course, we are not going to talk about the concerned comments that would come flooding in from her. One of the reasons why many people turn down their parents’ follow/friend requests and ultimately line them up on their blocked list!
Tag! You’re it!
Posting unflattering pictures of you clicked on a bad hair day when you look bleary-eyed and awful in a hideous grey sweatshirt is one thing. Tagging you on all those pictures that look exactly alike is another. To embarrass the living shit out of you, they go ahead and tag all your relatives so that they get notifications even if they miss it on their feed is like the last straw. Ah, onnum parayanilla!
Widening their circle
Well, nothing wrong with that! Of course, they have the right to follow celebrities or content creators or anybody out there in the graamam. But according to millennials, there is an unwritten social media parental etiquette rule that says “Your freedom ends where my follower/friend list begins”. So, creeping on their young ones’ friend list and sending requests to their friends, colleagues and literally, every name on the planet you’ve uttered to them (WHYYY?) would not only put you in a spot but your friends as well. If they play the broker card, then get ready for some egg-on-your-face days. Reminds me of the time my friend was once rambling to me, going beetroot red and flustered in the face, about how a friend’s mother wrote on her wall asking to send her latest pictures so that she could find a good alliance for her.
I’m cool yo, look at me!
They would be on a constant endeavour to update their teen lingo and appear “cool” on social media. As a result of this athyagraham, they most likely end up being a laughing stock to the younger generation. A few years ago, my cousin who was grieving her cat’s death was gobsmacked to see a “lol” from her mom under the post. It was later revealed that the “lol” she rightfully meant was “lots of love” and not the actual lol. There’s a long-standing joke in the family that one of my aunts who got obsessed with the word “yummy”, started using it on every post she came across, including posts that had people and not food in it. Well, embarrassment level infinity!
Despite all the virtual put-downs and let-downs that make us wish the ground would swallow us up, we love them all the same and embrace most of these moments as chuckle-worthy. There was, after all, a time when we shat on them (quite literally) and embarrassed them, and yet they chucked it off!
Do you have parents who are on social media, and are doing things to embarrass you? Let us know!
