Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Social networking

I think am shy, am reasonably well behaved, so as not to poke my nose in other people's business...all this till I joined the social networking world! Boy! Everything changed! Well am still shy...I still don't put everything I feel up there, but I don't feel shy about sharing my pleasant stroll in the woods or my delight at a lovely lunch with, well anyone who cares to know.
Look, don't get me wrong; I am an opinionated Bengali, an argumentative Indian and a woman! I have opinions and I share them proudly, with sometimes willing and sometimes unwilling participants. But usually this is after the tea or the whisky has been served and usually in close knit groups I trust. But the world of social networking has unleashed a whole new beast in me...am now sharing my random thoughts with rank strangers. yes yes, I have shown some restraint ...as I mentioned, I talk about reasonably 'safe' topics. But still…
The serious concern is that….I have turned a voyeur. On a lean day, I go to places on the Facebook, where I am convinced I have no right to be. I have now gurgled at child births of a friend of a friend who I have never met, smiled at happy pictures of peoples parties where I have not been invited, know where strangers have traveled, stalked (isn’t it a bit like stalking) people into their cappuccinos at cafes, salivated over peoples dinners that they are cooking in their kitchens, frowned upon their freely shared opinions about, well anything… I am a SICK SICK individual.
Hey wait …am not the only one! I believe there are millions of us out there! So this can now safely be called a syndrome. Why? Is it that we were always like this? We grew up in a world of misdialed wrong numbers … I know people who made friends with such mistakes, also heard of someone who actually married a ‘wrong number’ and they are actually happily married now ( no I swear they are not friends of mine). So we were always comfortable with sharing stuff with absolute strangers. No wonder there is a campaign running on radio about ‘share your interesting experiences on dialing a wrong number’. Should we worry or should we celebrate…that we are now a sharing, voyeuristic happy lot. We live in each other’s pockets…we share others joys, we share their losses and we celebrate a coming together. Really?

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