Don't be surprised if you happen to see this in elections after 2020.Remember , nobody would have guessed that we would be pressing some voting machine button to cast vote twenty years ago and thus this might happen !!!!!!
Time magazine's person of the year in 2006 was me !!! and YOU. Last year Yahoo's new marketing campaign was "Its YOU" .The rise of internet users is a good sign of a global platform.But the major catalyst in this change is the recent surge in usage of social networking sites.Its communication and collaboration on a very large scale.If internet connected the entire world into one platform , bypassing time and geographies , then these social networking are in the next step taking the entire world closer.As like everything , social networking has its own boons and banes.I don't want to talk about the boon and bane of it . Rather wanted to take the matrix's approach of red pill and blue pill. A thing exists as it is in the world according to the blue pill and the red pill says the real purpose and effects of the existence.
Here are some popular social networking sites that we use
# Public social networks—Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, LinkedIn ,Myspace
# Micro blogging platforms—Twitter, Tumblr, Jaiku
# Instant Messaging platforms—Google Mail chat, Yahoo Messenger, Facebook IM and others
# Blogs—WordPress, Google Blogger
# Social bookmarking and Tagging—StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit
What are the facts that drive to high usage of these sites ? What are the behind the scene truth of this ?
RED and BLUE pill facts:
The Blue Pill : (The social networking world as we know)
These are the possible reasons for which the online social networking world is existing. (Rather THRIVING !!! )
Fully Connected :
Parting away from friends in schools/colleges , switching jobs , switching locations ,change of career,change of company,routines in job etc makes us to say bid adieu to someone who we might have met and hanged with but no more with us .Of course , if they don't live in your world , it doesn't mean that the are not alive.But the opportunity to hang on together becomes diminishing until and otherwise willing to carry on the relationship.The attached cost in monitory and time scale is high.Given one has only 24 hours a day , uniform globally, makes connecting with everyone we met nearly impossible.When someone is able to collaborate and share thoughts with each other without a break , then that mantra takes a huge hit and thus born was these social networking sites.
Being Neo:
Well , this topic is worth writing a separate blog.Lets take a student / salaried person in a city who goes to school/work . On weekday , routinely what he/she might do is rush to school/work , squeeze himself/herself in the day, come back home , watch TV and sleep.The existence of the alter ego in the cyberworld that is different from the real world glues the users to these sites.So one tends to build an online avatar of oneself that he/she wishes to be in real life.Thus is he/she is reborn in the 'SECOND LIFE'. This is one of the reasons why you can see people using abusive/derogatory language in internet highly but anonymously in comments of a news-post or a video sharing sites, which mostly they refrain in real world usage.
Socially secure :
More the friends you have , more you feel socially secured. Whether it is the love , crush , job , hanging out , partying , business contacts or time pass you need people .A network of people makes you a healthy independent person rather than depending on one or a set of people to drive your entire life.
Cupid's new medium :
Tracing your ex crush to reconnect or for the curiosity of 'What happened next' in the person's life is one undoubtedly strong reason for these social networking sites to be born.The main purpose of classmates.com , which was the 1st most popular social networking site, is to reconnect with formal crush evident by the adjacent ad.I even remember the rumors that prevailed some years ago that Orkut was started by Orkut Büyükkökten to find his ex-girlfriend.The red pill says a different story :) . The high school and college students constitute a major chunk in the user base of these sites and for this purpose. Beating boredom :
It gives a possibility to do so many things in the time in which you could have not done anything.And the power of doing it from the very place you are in makes life simple and easier.
Look at this ad starring Dhoni.
Gaming applications like Farmville, Fishville has a huge women users and also they mostly constitute the educated houeswives who beat their boredom by engaging in social gaming application.
The red Pill : (The reason of creation and its impact that is underway are )
What are the possible ill effects that these social networking sites might be causing that we ignore or the real picture of the world.
Addiction :
The following is a interesting piece of dialogue i read from a forward mail
Doctor: "Don't worry. It'll be all right."
Patient : "I just don't understand it. I thought my update was LOL-worthy, but none of my friends even clicked the 'like'
button."
Doctor: "How long has it been?"
Patient : "Almost 1 day. That's like 1 year in the real world."How many times do we check updates of other friends? how many times do we expect others to read your updates forgetting the fact that everyone have their own world? Does it not cause people to wake up till midnight , subsequently making them subjected to invisible insomnia and further causing a avalanche effect on the final scorecard of the exams or the quality of the work that is to be done in office.?
Damage to Employers :
The young working class tend to spend a little time as a way of ' untraceable entertainment in between work'.All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. But all work and play with the computer ,with only fingers moving and eye balls rolling, makes jack's brain a dump ass.Subsequently lowering the efficiency of the work and thus laying a base for a poor quality of the work that is being delivered.The time that is taken away in browsing these sites , which actually should have gone towards the productivity on work , is lost and unknown to the employer.
Dissociative identity disorder:
Dr Jekyll in real life and Mr.Hyde in cyberworld. This is a mild form of MPD that is surging across, not for everyone who uses this , but the chance of being Jekyll and Hyde is high in this real-cyberspace world scenario.The generation gap between the parents and he young users adds a fuel to this fire.The parents thinks is that the child is working on computer and the little devil knows what he/she is up-to.
Exposure to strangers :
Just browse through your friends list and count the number of persons who are in the list but ou have never seen before and compare with the below table.
| Count | Your status | ||
| ZERO | Good . You only connect with people who you know | ||
| 1 to 5 | May be have connected with someone who has same rare interest that you have | ||
| 5 to 10 | A lot of strangers in your list means you are a nut | ||
| above 10 | Totally 'gone mad' case |
There are so many real cases that has led to online dating to disaster. Specially hazardous for teenagers who may not know the consequence that might arise from abuses.
Most important question i want to ask is , is everyone in your friends list is really your friend ?
we add connections calling them as our friends, but the relationship could be different in real world.
Catching the eyeballs:
It did put up eye catching models in bra-clad pair of breasts and were in sexually suggestive poses that tempts the users to click on it . Then it offers a FREE game and it tags as "free forever".When you play it interestingly and get hooked to it , then you are tempted to use the option of buying in game credits using real money in the real world! This is a gold farming strategy that is being employed and the root starts at the funky advertisement mostly in the social networking sites.
Digital Footprint :
If you think you can get away by anonymosuly or just address some set of people regarding your interested or behavior , its a NO. There are very well know cases where violaters of "dry campus" policy have been punished by tracing their face-book profiles. The recruiting managers nowadays scout for the linkedin profiles to validate the authenticity of the individuals and to trace their activities in order to judge whether they are fit for the role that is being offered to them.
If you ask me . who you are in this , i would simply say : I am introspecting myself with this blog-post as i exist both in the cyberworld and the real world .I am yet to take my pill.
Further reading :
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