I’m not one of those people who love to get in to these so called social networking sites. I frankly think it’s a waste of time. But of late many of my friends and family have insisted that I join “their” network and share my views thoughts etc and check out their photos. No offense to any of them, but I don’t see the point in broadcasting my views, messages, photos to everyone out there. Whatever happened to good old emailing each other and talking to friends over the phone? I know one response I often get is “yea, but what if your friends and family are in different countries and all of you want to stay in touch with each other?” Well, whatever is the reason, everyone these days is on one social network or another. Some of the networks have scraps, some have tweets, some have messages, some have “what are you thinking” or “what’s on your mind”…I mean come on people… what’s on my mind? And that’s not all, once you’re “in the network”, you can always find old friends, classmates, college mates, old girlfriends, group of people who share your hobby, group of people who live in the same country, city, area as you, who watch and like the same shows as you, who follow the same presidential candidate as you, who follow the same game team as you do, who just want to make new friends and the possibilities are endless. My point…does anyone have time for all this in your day-to-day routine? I mean, I agree that I’m not a people’s person but doesn’t this go beyond “staying in touch”?
I’ve also heard from a few friends that on some sites which let anyone see your “scraps” and photos there have been some morons who stop-by just to look at the pictures and then leave inappropriate messages or comments on them just for fun. So you see there are some disadvantages of always being “in network”. As if there are less creeps out there in the world, that now you give them an easier way to find you. Then a few months back there was this supposedly big news that a lot of senators and congressmen and congresswomen have joined the new generation networks (thanks to Barak Obama’s election campaign tactics to get the younger crowd). John McCain is on Twitter, and so are numerous other politicians (you can find the list here). Um okay, so other than pointing fingers at the opposition party members, not figuring out a way to solve the economic crisis, wanting the President to fail and not doing anything for your constituents and states and cities; you now have time to tweet / scrap whatever the hell it is you do? I mean who cares? Just do the job you were elected or appointed to do that’s all anyone asks of you and save the people you were elected / appointed for from losing their hard earned money. You don’t answer their questions anyway and just want to broadcast your message to a broader audience. We get it…now move on!
And as if it wasn’t crowded enough with the politicians, there are now many television and movie artists on to this too. Do we really want to tell everyone every minute of what we are doing, where we are and what’s on our mind? I know I don’t. Don’t the politicians have news reporters and actors paparazzi on their back every second anyway? And what’s the craze about. I can understand school and college students doing this, because they have a lot of time on their hands and don’t know what to do. But that’s not the case with people who work right? Even on the TV you can find programs and reporters showing their TV viewers what’s going on in the twitter circuit or what messages they got on facebook. Huh? And as if all of these “people and celebrities” weren’t enough even MnM Chocolate candies have their own facebook page with more than 4000 fans, not to mention TV channels themselves like NBC and CNN.
All this networking and the need to know everything at every time of the day does have one good output though. Whenever you take a break from all this communication craziness and spend some real time with friends and family face-to-face, you will enjoy every minute of it. Or will there ever come a time when we would be satisfied with meeting our friends and family only on these networks, exchange a few thoughts, photos and get on with our over communicative lives?
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