We live in an age where technology has not made life simpler; it has complicated and obfuscated the simpler things to such an extent that they don’t even come into our purview of cognition anymore.
Have you noticed that the frustratingly curious uncles and aunties don’t ask kids “How many friends do you have in school?” these days? There was a time when kids used to innocently count out friends on their finger tips. Now they refer to their FB profile for the updated figure (sometimes even including the pending friend requests). Also, have you noticed how difficult it has become to answer seemingly innocuous questions like “Are you still in touch with him/her?”. That person is on your friend list; comments on ALL your updates (even the Farmville and mafia wars ones); seems to like ALL your pictures (even those crazy drunken party pics); seems to know about all your parties, vacations, relationship status updates and even mood swings; someone who sent you his/her marriage invitation (as an event on FB, of course). But someone whom you’ve not met in half a decade. Are you really in touch with this person?
I assume that blogs were introduced in order to facilitate the process of venting out. It gave a medium of expression to people who had none; a veil which a common man could use to express his views without worrying about any repercussions. There was a time not long ago when blogs were flourishing. Then came twitter. All of a sudden it became ‘cool’ to express oneself in 140 characters. Laws of grammar and sentence construction be damned. Inanity became the ‘in’ thing. The originality of our thoughts dying out due to the endless onslaught of tweets and re-tweets. A span of attention as long as the next breaking news or gossip.
It would be very myopic of me to squarely blame these so-called social networks, for the doldrums in which our social life lies today. A gun is only as lethal or protective as the hand using it. We have to draw a line between our virtual and real world. There has to be a perceptible difference between the two; always. How unfortunate is the person who has a thousand friends on FB, but not a single shoulder to cry on?
