FIFA World Cup has always been a big thing in football-crazy Nepal, but the 2010 edition in South Africa hit different. It wasn’t just about the games, it was the first World Cup where many of us got to use Facebook and Twitter on our phones with that slow, stubborn GPRS.
Suddenly, social media wasn’t something you checked only in cyber cafés, It was right there in our pockets.
For the first time, we could jeer friends who weren’t even watching together with us, drop our “expert opinions” on lineups and tactics, and celebrate goals in real time with people far away. I still remember shouting alone in my living room and somehow feeling like the whole world instantly knew who my favourite team and player were. That month just felt different because we could talk about the World Cup from anywhere, the moment something happened.
We proudly posted those grainy VGA photos about snacks on the table, the jersey we were wearing, even the TV screen mid-match. The quality was terrible, but no one cared. The excitement was in being able to share it instantly. And honestly, it felt like a miracle that the photo reached the internet in under two minutes using a few kilobytes of GPRS. Looking back, I’m pretty sure that World Cup pushed Facebook’s popularity in Nepal to another level.
Fast forward to today, and Facebook just doesn’t feel the same anymore. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s the algorithm, who knows, but the vibe has definitely changed. What used to be a feed full of friends’ posts, random thoughts, travel pictures, and silly arguments has slowly turned into an endless line of ads, promotions, and suggested stuff. Or maybe people have just stopped posting. What once felt like a fun community now feels like a shopping mall pretending to be a social network.
And the bigger issue is that social media itself doesn’t feel social anymore. The curated perfection, the filters, the pointless fights, these things were always there, but now they feel like the main thing.
Back then, Facebook felt like a digital adda, a place where your actual people gathered, joked, fought, shared, and celebrated. Now it feels more like a media platform that occasionally throws in a post from someone you know just to keep you from leaving.
Maybe I’m just romanticizing the past as mobile internet was painfully slow and expensive back then. But there really was something pure about that first digital World Cup summer. Football just felt better when you could scream about it with your people, in real time, without ten ads popping up asking you to buy things you were never going to buy anyway.