As I logged on this morning, my
friend John’s post came as a rude shock. It read “I am in the loo, paying obeisance
to the porcelain Goddess” – sent from my iPhone on 4G. The inane banality of
the post got me thinking. God, is this the pit to which we have descended while
linking up and tweeting and liking what each other was having for breakfast?
Think of it rationally. Aren’t we
acting like self obsessed, attention grabbing children with short attention
spans on an eternal dose of instant gratification? “Look Mama, no hands”! Our
obsession with the self is increasing exponentially in direct proportion to the
time spent in social media space – I ate this for lunch, I am listening to this
song, I am in the lobby of this 5 star hotel – if that ain’t being obsessive,
what is? Or is vainglorious a better word?
Fact is that is not the end.
After posting such facts of earth shattering importance, we actually wait for
equally philosophical comments and likes, expecting our gems of wisdom to go
viral. Why, the other day only, an old friend of mine posted her acute agony on
my failure to “like” the 37 pictures of the pair of shoes she had picked up
from Lonavala. “It is a kind of a compulsion” said a leading psychologist when
I broached the subject, warming up further to say that “some facebook users, are
developing a constant urge to feel like celebrities, who are watched, followed
and idolized on a daily basis. It’s not that it wasn’t there, it is just that
social media is exacerbating the menace by giving the stage and making
available tools that can be used to spread it.”
They are opening their private
world, baring their lives on their walls all the while peeping into the worlds
of others in some strange exchange of voyeuristic brownie points. What is even
more damaging is that some are unconsciously tailoring their lives and their selves
to become “facebook ready”. As if, it is more important to post something than actually
doing it. This facebook worthiness is of life and death purport to them as the
only way they can define themselves is by more and more people knowing about
them. It is such a hallucinating experience – it’s a as if they do not live in
a real world, but in a space, where what counts is what people think about you.
To coin a term, a “click per pay” existence promising the ultimate high.
“They abhor eye contact, have
very poor verbal skills, have hashed up the language, are with extremely poor
attention spans, need instant gratification and are eternally seeking approval
from what they consider their peer group– yes, the social media junkies are
here.” If you find that scary, then think of a world populated by people to
whom it is more important as to what other people think about their actions
than the actions themselves. That would be Matrix imitating life!
But hang on. Not being in the
social media space too is unkewl. As a matter of fact, as one popular columnist
put it, “If you’re of a certain age and you meet someone
who you are about to go to bed with, and that person doesn’t have a Facebook
page, you may be getting a false name. It could be some kind of red flag”. As a
matter of fact, recruiters have made it mandatory to check out potential
candidates in the social media space and a no-show there is a certain signal
about the unsocial, even anti-social nature of the person leading to rejection.
The biggest example the apologists are extending in
support of their arguments for increasing social media exposure is the fact
that 24 year James Holmes, of the perpetrator of the Batman Massacre and Anders
Behring Breivik, who bloodied the Norwegian woods had one thing in common –
they lacked a Facebook Account!
No comments:
Post a Comment