The Yemeni people are among the best at social networking. They can spend four to eight hours chewing qat, a mildly narcotic plant, and chatting about almost everything. Politics gets the lion’s share of their discussions. In fact, official working hours usually end at one in the afternoon, and there are no major activities they can do after work. Chewing qat has become a daily habit for millions of Yemenis, and it is an activity that requires sitting in a closed room.

These social discussions, however, have started to dwindle during the past couple of years. Participants in these debates are now tied to a virtual world, outside the room they are sitting in.

“Excuse me. I need to go to the nearest Internet cafe so I can communicate with you,” a guy jokingly told his friends busy surfing the Internet on their computers and mobile phones, without paying attention to the people around them. Social networking sites (mainly Facebook) are probably among the most visited websites in Yemen. The Facebook page for the author Fathi Abu al-Nasr shows that the time lapse between one comment and the next is often as short as two hours, probably reflecting the author’s short naps in the “real world.”

Given that Yemeni society is a closed, patriarchal society — aside from a few exceptions — nicknames and fake accounts on Facebook are widespread. Some boys and girls create nicknames for the sake of fun, to avoid any social constraints. Others create fake accounts to trick their friends into thinking that they are chatting with beautiful girls, who often end up being their male friends sitting next to them. The pranksters then reveal their true identity. They trick their friends for the sake of fun, and for the sake of revealing their friends’ personalities — hiding under the guise of socially committed men.