As we grow older, we realize the importance of our parents and appreciate them more. This doesn’t cancel out the fact that they still embarrass us. As people grow older, they become less cool – with the exception of freaks of nature like Susan Sarandon and Sayed Ragab. Your parents (and older relatives in general) have found a way to embarrass you more often, and with a larger audience, Social Media. When you got your dad (or uncle, or aunt…) a smartphone for his birthday and made him a Facebook account, you couldn’t foresee that he will…
Thank you for “Idafa”
Any older relative might do this to you. You’re never safe from the glittery picture saying “shukran 3la al idafa” maybe because deep down, they didn’t expect you to accept their friend request. The picture can be of pretty much anything; flowers, birds, kittens, or a baby.
Say “Good Morning”… On your Wall… Every. Single. Morning!
Will it be a picture of a winking girl saying “Saba7ak 3asal”? Or a baby saying “thaba7 elkheir”? You never know, but the damage it will do to your online persona will be permanent. There’s no recovery from this.
Go All Montada Abu Nawaf on You
They’ll use – and abuse, mostly abuse – the picture comment option. With a fine selection of cringe-worthy “ya wad ya gamed” picture comments. It’s never easy to have tante Samira post this on your profile picture…
The Ramadan Countdown
It doesn’t matter if Ramadan is in two months or six months. The countdown will go on, confusing everyone under the age of 30.
The Share Pandemic
As people grow older, they grow weary of having to research any piece of news they hear. They simply don’t need to bother with that. And since they’re unaware that 90% of the information on the Internet has the credibility of a drug dealer on parole, they’ll end up sharing pieces of news like “woman gives birth to live kitten!” with captions saying “sub7an Allah”.
El Politica
Many will agree that gap in political opinions can be correlated to the age gap. Your parents and older family members will almost always never agree with you when it comes to politics. The most common scenario is you’re pro-revolution, and your family is against it, naturally. This will result in a fight every time you express your revolutionary opinions. The fight usually ends with them commenting on how spoiled you are. Ask not what your country can give to you ya Hamada!
The Baby Talk
These people have seen you when you were a baby. Therefore, you are still a baby in their eyes. They will call you by your baby pet names on Facebook, publicly. They might even post a picture of you when you were a two year old; their favorite being the one taken in the bathtub.
The thing is, it doesn’t stop there. It goes as far as bothering some of the older Facebook users as well. As we’ve mentioned before, some people manage to stay cool as they age. These people end up suffering the previous points, in addition to some more things only reserved for older people. For example…
Video Killed the Text Star
This only happens in older groups. They exchange holiday greetings, Duaa’, or even sometimes random morning greetings in the form of videos. Whether it’s Safaa Abou El Seoud singing Ahlan bel Eid, or Sameer Ghanem’s little monologue about Sham El Nessim, there is always a handful of videos occupying their phone’s storage and the cooler they are, the more they hate it.
The Goodie Two Shoes
Most women in that age group will never put their pictures online (God forbid someone sees their face) and will opt to put a picture of a kitten or a baby. Those who don’t do that, though, and share their pictures in cyberspace, are considered too bold. This happens more often if said women are beautiful. They’ll be told by their goodie-two-shoes relatives that at their age it’s “3eib” to have such a pretty picture of themselves online. Scandalous!
The Clique
Facebook is for old people what High School is for teenagers. Our parents’ generation found in Facebook a reason to be childish. They will form cliques and ignore certain people. They will get easily offended if one of them chooses to stray from the herd and have different opinions. And don’t even get us started on what happens if their posts aren’t liked by their close friends! The laid back, cool type, will find all of this juvenile and try to avoid all of the above groups as much as possible.
Emotional Blackmail
To be fair, this bothers the younger people too, but the older you are, the more you’ll encounter it. There will always be a picture circulating the web, emotionally blackmailing you for likes. “If this was a picture of Brad Pitt you would have shared it, but it’s a picture of a starving child”, “Kam like lesourat alra2ees? #Ben7ebbakYaRayes”. Have you ever looked at one of your parents’ timelines, they’re full of these! And if they’re unlike their peers, they probably hate it.
