Gone Gaga in the City

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I stumbled upon a new pastime 2 weeks ago: guessing who among my contacts ( I’ve decided to stop using the word “friends” for online social networks) are feuding, who’s flaming (a cross between a blind item and hate mail) who, and who’s desperate for a little attention from an “unknowing captor.” As much as I’d like to write this in true telenovela-final-episode fashion, I would have to resist the urge so I can keep things real.

I’ve been following a girl named after a ripened reproductive body of a seed plant. I wasn’t stalking her. It’s just that her recurring appearances on the feed made it all too easy to follow.

The girl seemed smart although not exactly very pretty. “Nice” wouldn’t be a good description either. In a soap, she’d be the support character whose motives everybody couldn’t figure out until the last episode. (Maybe, it’s because we’re all like her–a supersized combo of good and evil.)

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If the word “success” were to be a person, she would be it. Sad to say, the image she projects on fb screams “desperately in denial” or “denying desperation.” In the book The Cinderella Complex, it was said that it is women’s nature to be powerless where a man is concerned. In fact, the book explained that no matter how successful and strong a woman is, when she falls for a man, she becomes instant putty. All of a sudden, she couldn’t change the bulbs, her career becomes meaningless (Translation: It doesn’t give her much freedom to be with him.), and oh, she still could cook. In fact, she might even cook better. (I was thinking of the seven men she had to feed, but oh yeah that was Snow White not Cinderella.)

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Strangely, she became all that even without a man. Ergo, if I were to amend The Cinderella Complex, I would have to say that a woman becomes jellyfish (not without her consent) not only because there’s a man in her life. It could also be that she’s hoping to get someone in it.

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How to Tell if a Girl Wants a Guy to Take Notice

1. She says she doesn’t believe in romance–and in very creative ways, too. (I’m not a traitor to my own kind and definitely not in a hurry to die, but I must admit that between men and women, we are the more manipulative sex.)

2. She bombards the feed about how tough and bad-ass and smart aleck she is.

3. And then she disappears.

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Through Koreanovela, I’ve learned that cold-at-first, aristocratic, filthy-rich men fall only for girls who act and talk funny, plus bad hair and poor fashion sense. Through Mexicanovela, I’ve realized that there are two ways of finding your soul mate: one, marry a rich, old man who’s going to die of cardiac arrest in a heartbeat (pardon the pun), and then fall in love with the help; two, sell flowers or BE the help, and then pretend to be coy with the masters’ unico hijo. Through fb news feed, I’ve learned that men aren’t at all in the dark about the message that women want them to get. They’re just pretending not to notice, because they think what you’re doing is very entertaining–and they’re afraid that when you notice that they noticed, you’d stop being their one-woman amusement park. When they play dumb, they play you.