Life of a Girl on Pakistani Social Media

I often wonder that without social media would I be able to see so many unsolicited dick pics, friendship requests, marriage proposals, one night stand offers, requests for phone number or Whatsapp number, demand for my photos without clothes, my “rates” etc? And the list goes on. The life of a girl on Pakistani social media is not an easy one.

On daily basis, I receive dozens of any of above things in my various social media accounts. After 13 years or so on social media, I have learned to not to get frustrated, flustered, angry, or outright crazy over such things. Yes it still makes me hurtful and ashamed and yes I still get angry when the senders start abusing my family when they don’t have their way but I have accepted the fact that, it’s the price of being active and contributing female member on the social media. 

And though the title of the post says about Pakistani social media, this is the case in virtually every country though in so-called developing country like Pakistan it’s worst. I have lived in Australia, Canada and couple of other countries and I did receive obnoxious things there too but the scale was less and most of people knew that an active girl on social media doesn’t equate to a free passage. In Pakistan, most of the males think that since i have “put” myself in the public so I am “available” for them.

As I run this website voluntarily and promote the articles written by myself or various other voluntary authors from around the world (mostly from Pakistan), I get to use social media a lot. Juggling this site with my day job and domestic responsibilities is a challenge in itself. I get on to social media whenever I get a chance to promote the site but half of the time get spent in filtering out unsolicited messages from the genuine ones. That makes me exasperated on daily basis but again such is online life for a girl out there. 

Another very common thing which happens every time is that if I post anything personal or random personal thought, then there always are people who would throw cold water on it in one way or another. They will body shame you, or they will nitpick, or they will criticize something or another. That really boils your blood and you want to smack them hard. But with passage of time, I have calmed down and have learned to just scroll past them. I don’t even bother to block or mute such people anymore as they pop-up on daily basis. 

There is one particular kind of people (almost always male) which really bug me but again I have learned to ignore. They are the ones who talk to you like they know you from your childhood or they are your alter-ego. They would comment under your tweets or Facebook posts like “Tu kya ker rahi thi” or “Tera kya haal hai” or “Yaar kitni dair say ai hai.” I mean what the heck. In Urdu, when you don’t know someone you have to be formal and say ‘aap’ instead of ‘tu’. These are just common etiquette. But I stopped putting up fight to that long time ago and now when I see some girls objecting to that, I just shook my head as I know that there is no use really. 

I am more than sure that I am not going to see this state of affair improving at least in this life, so let’s enjoy what it is girls.