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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Facebookers Anonymous

There was a time when love was sublime. Today people make updates about it in Facebook, and Twitter.

Whenever someone talks about the overreaching effects of social networking, the main culprit is said to be the absence of real relations. I wonder if this is always true. The reason is that when I was working in Bangalore, I had very few friends, did not go out that often and everyday I felt the need of making more friends. But I never used Facebook. Not that frequently. Felt it was meant for voyeurs and used it sparingly, afraid to become one myself.

Today, as I am in the midst of company, and very interesting company at that, more than 480 students to talk to, I find myself drawn more and more towards Facebook. Every day, I open the home page to see what people; barely 10 meters away from me are doing, and ask them the sometimes cryptic status messages that they upload.

It is a mystery to me as to why I have willingly given up the mystery that used to define life, and why do I want everyone to comment on it? When I take a picture, why do I evaluate its worth by whether or not it can go up on Facebook.

I decided to give up using Facebook as often, not because I realized these things, but because I realized that I was using it too much, I was getting addicted to it. I had an obsessive compulsive desire to check the home page and comment and like and share. Thank God that is gone. I had my share of withdrawal symptoms and headaches and strong desire to go back, but now I seem to have recovered. I do not know, if I can sustain this once I am back on Facebook, because I will be, the advantages just cannot be ignored.

Really wish to start Facebookers Anonymous, but hope and pray there are not enough people who wish to join me. I hope most people aren’t afflicted and have their self-control intact.

9 comments:

  1. Fully Agreed.... this is very true indeed...

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  2. but you posted this on Facebook itself!
    I think facebook is an extension of the normal real world coffee or dinner table where you sit around with people and share views.
    Or about the photo pic, I am sure you think about how you are looking when you are about to go into public. depending on the occasion the attention to detail will vary. This is nothing but a virtual extension of that behavior.
    And I dont think its anyway wrong at all. Didnt man move from a animal like subsistence existence devoid of language and settlement to the city urban language centric structure that we have now? I think its the next step in the evolution.
    So dont say that you belong to Facebook Anonymous. For all you know you might be part of Human V 3.0

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  3. Yeah Mr. Bhatnagar... but cant you see that this Human V 3.0 has too many bad effects on our day 2 day life? Dont u think we r spending all our time on this dinnin/coffee table and not spending time on actual ones? We cannot say this all as Wrong but this is jus too much. Over ho raha hai sab...

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  4. Hi Debo, I am agreed with you and wd control to use Facebook so often but how can get ur blog news

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  5. ma longest stretch w/o FB is 2 days... i need to learn from you a thing or 2 about this OCD...


    btw i thght you were in midst of a 'hectic term'

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  6. "the advantages just cannot be ignored"
    this is nice! :-)...but i would rather put it the other way....the disadvantages just can't be ignored!!
    social media, and internet in general have brought in an artificial time crunch in our lives...

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  7. Hey Debomita, Lovely blog yaa :)

    about this particular post.. i kinda empathize, but the fact is that it is difficult to survive without social netwroking.
    It's not whether u want it or not, its about from where u get the response!!

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  8. well said...but when you finally join a company after second year....you will have a blackberry...and your homepage will be FB again (or a replacement if its doomed by then) :P

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  9. Lord, how true. Forget declaring love, people wish their siblings on their birthdays, spouse on their wedding anniv on FB. I mean, we as a human race really need to take a step back. Social networking is slowly becoming an obligation..a lot of times:)

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