8 KINDS OF PROFILE PICTURES WE ALL HAVE ON FACEBOOK

DISCLAIMER: Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is unintentional. No feelings or hearts were intended to be harmed by this blog. The author of this blog does not support smoking but can't say the same for everybody else who relates to this post. No unwarranted judgement was made on behalf of the author in the making of this post.

The following is a list of 8 Facebook profile pictures most of us have .
1) The " I don't want to tell the world how I look" picture
This picture is usually found at the beginning of our Facebook usage. It could be anything from a pic of a cat, an anime character or if you are like me, a picture of an animated movie character that I thought looked a little like me. It is probably the picture that was our profile picture for the longest. It was also a picture uploaded as a result of a fear of the horrifying world of the internet that was instilled in us as kids.

2) The "I was a cute baby" picture
This picture was uploaded around the time we gathered the courage to dip our toes into the world of social media. It is simply the cutest picture of us as a child that our friends could potentially bring back up at a later time.

3) The "it's blurry but who cares" picture
This picture is really blurry and the truly narrow line between "highly pixelated" and "big blurry blob" is fully understood. The picture is usually beyond repair because no filter or editing can help it's existence. But we don't regret it until many clearer pictures later.

4)The " I can edit too" picture

This picture is highly edited and usually found in the phase when we realise how cool and fun editing is but are still trying to figure out how much is too much editing. The same picture would also be uploaded with different filters. It's got the "I can't even recognize myself in this picture" feature of Snapchat but way more time consuming.

5) The "I couldn't choose which picture to put so I made a collage" picture
This picture is a collage of multiple photos that were possibly taken on the same day. It is a cramped square of the same person in different scenarios or facial expressions.

6) The "honest candid" picture
This is my favorite kind and most used picture. It is usually taken after somebody says, "at candid". It is a picture that was taken with the intention of being uploaded to Facebook and every other social media.
It hides in the guise of candid and masks the million pictures that were dejected and didn'tnt make the cut.

7) The "I jumped on the social bandwagon"

This picture is usually after a significant change in the social routine of some part of the country. It could be a filter/effect/frame offered by Facebook that supports or protests against a certain phenomenon. The most common examples are the rainbow "filter" after the USA legalised gay marriage. This picture could also be a Google image that was uploaded to protest like the black circle on a white square to protest against the Delhi rape case of 2012. It is a picture inspired by the many other similar profile pictures in our walls.

8) The "I'm going to upload this picture again for the 24th time but I'm sure nobody is keeping count" picture
This is the picture we have uploaded over and over again. It is usually re-uploaded after a self imposed socially acceptable period of time. Very few pictures have the honor of being in the position of this picture. This picture will continue to live on for years...on our Facebook walls.

MIDNIGHT MUSINGS

When my mother told me 9 years ago that I would be going to a boarding school, I was excited out of my mind. One of my biggest expectations was to have a lot of midnight feasts in the dark. St Claire's, the series by Enid Blyton had greatly influenced my images of boarding schools and today, food is usually an important part of my favourite memories.
Bringing food into school was one of those rules that nearly everybody broke. My friends and I were no different. When dinner ended at 7:30, I was usually already thinking about the sweet treats waiting back in our cupboards, hidden behind me pile of uniforms.
At night, our matron would walk around to check if everybody was in their beds, switch the lights off and go down to her own room. Her door banging shut was like an alarm that set off all the "illegal" things that happened in the dark. People got up from their beds and went straight to their hangout spots. Like rats that come out in the night, everybody goes straight to the source of food - that one friend whose turn it was to share.
There were usually six kinds of people in these social gatherings. The paranoid one who hits the panic button with the slightest of sounds. The practical one that is usually the fastest when the matron really comes up for her surprise checks. The foodie who cannot wait when it comes to munching, usually the first one there, last one to leave and the noisiest when it comes to opening food packets. The accountant usually keeps a tab on our stock of food and has an approximate idea of how much we can eat a day so as to let our food last the longest. The head chef who comes up with the craziest (but most delicious) combinations out of the most random things and lastly the bad ass who is the least afraid and claims to have the courage to offer food to our  matron if she does catch us.
Midnight feasts were put on a really high pedestal. It was that one time of the day that a lot of us waited for. Friendships were made and broken over it. A sacred routine.

WHITE RECTANGLES OF HAPPINESS

In an era  of social media and the Internet, I still hold the joy of receiving a letter, very close to my heart. An adrenaline rush that was cultivated when I spent day after day, for months following my matron around my dormitory  waiting for her to call out my name as she handed out a bunch of white envelopes with a few bent corners and a handwritten address. My mum was the sweetest, writing me a letter as often as she could. 
Then came the concept of emails. Spending a very precious few minutes of my "computer lab" class every week to write a considerably long message with a list of things that happened over the week and an even longer list of all things I wanted my mother to send me via courier. The number of emails rose and the number of letters fell but I still waited around for that occasional letter.
I grew accustomed to not hearing my own name called out but the small pile of letters and parcels still brought me just as much joy. I stopped following my matron around as much but I waited and watched as she distributed the letters to equally excited girls. For me, it was an art that I truly appreciated. An art that was lost to most of the world and yet important to me.
Even now, living in the same house as my mother and having no need to wait for letters, I  still run to our postbox looking for any mail.  Our little metal box in our apartments basement where the only envelopes to be found are usually bills or bank statements. But I still run and have a peek. Happiness rushes through my veins as I wriggle my stubby fingers into the narrow slit of the box, struggling to pull out that lone white envelope. Something about those white envelopes make me so happy. My mother probably thinks I'm crazy and I may actually be, but I love my little post box in the dingy, dark corner of my basement.