With the coming of the season's finale of college life, my batchmates are flooding each other's Facebook profiles with 'picture tag' notifications. That is, people have been gleefully clicking pictures of one another and putting them up before the entire virtual world to appreciate.
While I bear no reservations against such inane activities, I find myself a tad bemused by the entire concept. Especially in light of the rapid popularity of Web Portals such as Facebook, Orkut and the more recent Twitter - I found out about the last one through an article in The Hindu. Apparently even celebrities have started using these portals for their own publicity.
I find the concept of splurging one's personal memories before an unknown audience a little disturbing sometimes. I often wonder if the popularity of such mediums to broadcast one's daily/special affairs are a consequence of the world having shrunk/come closer or of having grown increasingly lonelier. I'm afraid I don't have an answer. God bless.
9 comments:
well i used to think the same thing of blogging... in fact for me blogging is a lot more personal than status updates and photos of me running around on a beach with mud stuffed down my undergarments... that is why i didn't start blogging until recently... and as to the reason of me starting... credit goes to a senior of mine but that story deserves a whiskey...
yes it is the same with blogging sometimes, isn't it? also maybe not, at other times. i dunno.
There is or can be an element of sincerity to blogging that is forever absent from orkut or facebook and whatnot. There's something disturbingly frivolous, in an indefinable way, about being a facebook or orkut addict as some people are.
One may also take the somewhat indefensible position that writing is art whilst facebooking and orkuting are not.
Though my perceptions matcth yours,i still believe that the frivolity of an act is a matter of the practitioner's opinion.
i dunno how, but maybe there are those who facebook with utmost sincerity.
however, blogging holds more value to me for it is a medium through which people "can speak their minds" to an otherwise inaccesible audience.
Facebook and Orkut just seem so darn pointless to me.
Well, they do have one obvious use-that of being able to communicate with people...and its not even the pointlessness that i object. Far too many things are pointless about our modern existence...its that they are so fucking boring...
Maybe the problem with them is that they can reveal your personal life without revealing who you are as an individual...revealing intimate details without revealing inner nature. In which case it is not orkut of facebook but the people who are inescapably hooked to them, that are to blame...
It is one thing to philosophize about this issue. I personally feel people are still as distant from each other, and consequently lonely, as ever. The plain answer to your quesry seems to be 'the advent of technology'. A friend once said this about social networking: "It's like being in an aquarium and watching the other fishes around you..."
@yemeth : i don't think they allow you to communicate. maybe "keep in touch", but we've always had better modes of communication per se. from posted letters to emails.
my wnndrr is why are they so fucking important to the modern urban life, despite being so boring AND pointless. heh.
@atul : "Being in an aquarium watching fishes around you"...I've never thought of it like that. interesting idea.
and yes i guess we'll always be just as lonely as we were. might only get better at pretending otherwise.
Boredom and joblessness aside, Facebook and Orkut also have uses, like people who post on advice for buying things on their status messages. One incident went so far as to find a transplant for a person using FB status messages.
I agree there is an incredible amount of clutter out there. But I also believe that online social networking represents a step in the right direction, though maybe not on the right path, of the limitless uses of the world wide web.
PS: @Atul... agree with Rorschach
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