Social Networking - The Flip Side

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Twitter.  Facebook.  Myspace.  Orkut.  Whats common to all these?   They are social networking sites which have invaded our modern lives.  These allow interactions between people all across the globe from the comforts of their homes.  They are apparently good for they help you stay in touch with people in your life and beyond it.  It helps you know what the other person is thinking about, with features like "whats on your mind?".  It helps you join groups and causes of your interest and to  promote any event on a magnanimous scale like never before.  You gain free access to trivia quizes ranging from which  cartoon character you resemble to finding out your lovers intials.

In other words, these sites help you meet people you were dying to meet only to regret it in a few days.  You end up making half the world your buddy.  Hardly managing to send them a scrap/message even once a year!  It is a relationship maker not a relationship keeper.  Humans are thus reduced to mere animated icons on your friends page list!  Relationships, my friends are better formed off the new age idiot box over a cup of coffee. Or better still by a handmade card or a handpicked gift!  Try spending quality time with people you want to understand than attempting to figure them out by their posts.  (For all you know they themselves might be unsure about what they've posted!).  Espousing causes through a mere click is like telling a man dying of hunger of the enormous amount of sympathy you feel for him and merely keep ranting about it till he falls dead. Words not supplemented with concrete action amounts to nothing.  If you really feel for a cause, its time you get out there and partner with the many organisations making genuine efforts to better the lives of our fellow men. Impractical babble on discussion forums will not change the world.  But will simply add to the clutter on the net. A San Antonio-based market research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets over a 2-week period and separated them into six categories: News, Spam, Self-promotion, Pointless babble, Conversational and Pass-along value.  The firm found that "pointless babble" was the largest category of Twitter content!  Making up 811 tweets or 40.55 percent of the total number of messages sampled. As of the whacky personality tests, the buyers are greater fools than the sellers .  The half baked quizes which claim to sort you out on the basis on a miserly 10 questions are anything but a wastage of precious time. 

Social networking sites are just a waste of energy time and life. I believe these have allowed intrusions into ones privacy.  On pretext of opening their worlds one discloses personal information. Such disclosures are mindless and dangerous. These sites are incapable to fully protect the disclosed information from being mishandled.  Users also seem ignorant of the fact that such sites are public spaces.  Many have lost out on study and job opportunities because they were mindless of the possibility of schools, college admissions officers, and future employers checking out their profiles on these sites.  On pretext of breaking barriers, users face the danger of even being sexually and emotionally abused.

These sites have subtly erased the line between the inner and outer worlds.  No longer is distinction made between what is to be enjoyed in privacy or with few chosen people and that which must be proclaimed to the world.  Exposure is the in thing. Anyone and everyone exposing what they feel, when they feel it, why they feel it, is simply sickening.  Sites have become display windows to flaunt your haircut, your boyfriend and even your newborn!  Particularly teenagers feel pressurised to portray themselves as doing things they would normally not like to engage in. All for the sake of showing off !!  Sites are cashing in on the desire in every human - to be known. Writer Clive Thompson says social interactions on these sites are an "expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world.".  SuperNews! a satirical animated television series, satirized tweets as "shouts into the darkness hoping someone is listening".Clearly these sites operate on sadistic pleasure derieved by men in being allowed unrestricted access to other's lives. Taking all this into account, networking practically amounts to nothing productive .It wouldnt be a surprise if one were to see an entire generation chirping tweet tweet in the heightened stage of insanity.  For those who have not yet been caught in trap of these sites my heartiest Congratulations. For those who have, happy insanity !!!