What is your relationship status?

Single / Committed / Married??

Ok… half of you, who have read the title, and the first line, will have already made the connection! And the rest of you will relate to it, when I tell this word: Orkut

Rings the bell?? That question in the profile description on the most popular socializing website around?

Started a few years back as a small online community for the youth to socialize, by a genius from Stanford, it has today become a HUUUUGE rage all around the world, inspiring a plethora of other such communities in the web world, and hogging enormous amount of bandwidth – enough for almost all corporate companies to be forced into banning it at office before long… including mine:-( (those who are still lucky – enjoy!! You too would join us soon!)

And among the several things it has revolutionized, is the paradigm shift it has brought into common parlance. From adding new meanings to ordinary words in normal English, to adding new words to our slang lexicon, to being a part of a person’s identity, and changing the way they keep in touch with people... life's changed so much, since Orkut. Among the new concepts it has enlightened the hither-to ignorant common man, is a person’s relationship status.

One of the fields that get displayed with a person’s profile summary, along with, his/her profile photo, name, age and place, it has gained so much prominence, that it has become an integral part of the picture, a person draws, about another, at the sight of the latter’s profile summary.

A “Single” status – especially if you are a cute guy / girl, and have spiced up your profile – would possibly invite lot of scraps, from ‘interested’ people, who want to make ‘friends’ with you. No offense meant… although this is one of the prime purposes of such an online community, the observation made, is in the perspective of the person’s relationship status. If you are “committed”, statistically, the chances that people would be interested in making ‘friends’ with you, and add entries in your scrap book, of the likes of ‘Your profile looks nice. Can we be friends’, is definitely less.

While the “married” status is normally the poorer and insipid cousin of the first two, the response that evokes curiosity, and raises eyebrows, probably to the greatest extent, is – ‘No answer’. Apart from those young, fresh, or unaware users, who just don’t know what it means, any other user, leaving that question unanswered, would most probably belong to the category – single and mingling :-) – someone who is going around with a person, but isn’t sure of the relationship, or doesn’t want others to be conspicuous about it – yet, cannot “bear the guilt” of claiming to be ‘single’. In other words, it is the silent way of saying – I am not available.

Open marriage, and open relationship – are status messages, which are very rarely used genuinely, alteast in the sub-continent. A person seeing this on your profile, most likely, will probably think you made a mistake, or will know, from the rest of your profile, that you are either acting too smart or funny. The bottom line is that – it is almost always ignored.

Amazed by the degree to which, this question forms a part of an Orkut-user’s cognizance, I decided to put my theory to test, by changing my own status from single, to other different options. These are the conclusions I have drawn from my experiment.

• Changing from Single, to ‘No answer’ mostly, only raises eyebrows. As if to reflect the person’s preference about answering the question, scraps, probing about it, are minimal and normally only from the most active (read jobless) orkut-user-close-acquaintances of the person.
• Changing from Single to Committed (or vice versa) normally sees a huge influx of scraps – manifesting either as curious and congratulatory messages like “Wow!” “Congrats!!” “When? Who?”, or sincere condolences like “Oh… what happened” “Sorry for ya mate!” “Cheer up” – based on which way you change your status.
• People who want to avoid all this attention, showered by the above two cases, normally prefer to not try to be too honest to their own conscience, and show up as Single. So, if some one isn’t too nice to your overtures of ‘friendship’, despite being ‘Single’, this might well be the reason!
• Changing from any status to “married” is just another event, if it is the truth. Since, normally there will be a lot of hullabaloo regarding your wedding, especially in terms of the increased traffic of good wishes (and condolence :-)) scraps, the people who ask you “Oh! Wow! When?” or something similar, are usually far acquaintances of yours, whom you either forgot to invite for your wedding, or knew you once upon a time as a hi-bye friend.

So next time you look at some person’s relationship status, you’ll definitely know to take it with a pinch of salt. For all you know, it could be as much, or even more deceptive than the rest of his profile.

PS:By the way. I am ‘married’ :-) and really lucky, that my parents belong to the not-so-web-savvy generation. They definitely would not take my answer(s) to this question too lightly!! :-)

Closing statement:

Due condolences to Mr. Adnan Patrawala, one of the unfortunate preys to the ugly side of this extremely cogent online community. Please make sure, that your personal security will be your prime concern while using them. Be responsible, stay safe.