“Wow! 34 likes and 20 comments on my latest pic. I should log out now and will check it afterwards.” This was my last thought of yesterday's night and, at the same time, first thought of today when I opened my eyes at 9.30 a.m. After morning tea, I saw my husband with the Facebook screen on ipod and going towards the bathroom. I was surprised to see such mornings and these real, yet funny incidents pushed me to think and write about what Facebook has done to our life.
Starting FB was limited to its basic characteristic of connecting people with friends and others who live around them but with the ongoing decoration via attractive features like games, events, exciting applications and sharing our life story via Timeline, etc., FB has attained a big role in our life. Nowadays, almost every teen is the proud owner of an FB account; moreover, even kids and older generation follow FB; people connect to it and forget to get disconnected.
FB is a multipurpose tool now. Apparently, an alarm clock for me today! People tend to forget dear ones, memorable dates, but don't worry. FB is here to remind you of special events such as birthdays and anniversaries. Forget telephone or letters, FB is preferred for speedy spread of information — be it on marriage, travel abroad, new addition to the family or details of health, location change in service, mood swings, revealing personal relationships (or even news of getting fired). FB profiles along with photo albums have replaced old-fashioned matrimonial biodata hard copies.
FB has the power to state our value in social world. In today's quick-paced life, everybody tries to manage his/her time so that he/she can devote enough time to facebooking; thereafter, unable to give time to any other critical task. Like one does not have time to call his family members and discuss their plans, but surely has time to post the options on FB and go with the majority; no time to write a letter to the elders back in the village, but has time to upload the latest pictures clicked in their living room ‘randomly.' Updating status with each and every affair of life, irrespective of its necessity, chatting with a person with whom you have never talked and changing the profile picture on a routine basis have become a symbol of one's existence in the network world. And an ever increasing number of friends, comments on ANY post and links (though most of the times meaningless and baseless) add flavour to one's market value in this network world. Here are some crazy FB statuses:
1) Unwanted data like ‘Still wet from the shower'
2) Expressing moods via ‘grrrrrrrrrr..' ‘?????'
3) Illogical Questions like ‘Is it 5:00 yet?'
4) PDA for no good reason ‘OMG he is so chwweett..love you most honey!'
All this addiction to the FB has reached a height urging us to hit the FB link as soon as the computer boots up, despite knowing that the system was opened for some other work. Seeing this magnetised behaviour of the educated masses, cellphone companies have also started to provide a ‘button' on the mobile screen to be pressed only to get connected, i.e., no chance to get unplugged from FB. Also, we see almost every other sited visited daily is also linked to FB. In other words, FB is omnipresent.
(priya.engg03@gmail.com)
Keywords: social networking, Facebook
If i posted may be i won't get half of your comments and likes , There
is so many Indian origin social sites are there, first we need to give
preference for that ,from Fb lot of mischievous going on especially
morphed images, porn things , communism,fake ids, politics etc and
indirectly hitting on young generation.
fb need to holds hard regimes and Indian cyber crime support also
needed.
You do have a point, but it seems more like evolution. That's what the growth in technology has done. One has to juggle between keeping a "healthy" standing with all his "friends", that one absolutely has to devote time and space to facebook! And the all the things we miss sharing with near and dear ones, we do it on facebook. And if one needs to show the others he/she is living a fantastic life, show off a bit with crazy photos and statuses. It boosts their image, at least in their own minds!
A good article even though you missed to mention few misuses of FB. I
have seen people posting photos of film stars which were edited by
adding speech bubble which contains abuse or comics.And most of the
time al these pictures or edited versions are not for promoting any
particular artist but for only trampling someone underfoot.I
personally think its high time to ban all these fans association
posters. They spread these notices by tagging al their friends name.
How can they knew that the persons whom they tag are 'really'
interested in these topics? Once I heard somebody mentioning his
classmate as 'FB friend'.When i asked what is this new friend species
like close friend, intimate friend, faithful friend etc.,his reply was
he knew him as school mate, not spoken to him, so called as new kind
of friend 'FB friend'. So FB is just used as a window,which is always
kept opened,not only for getting fresh air of the outside world but
also for peeping into the others world.
As Priyanka Agarwal has remarked, it is truly ironic to note that facebook culture has almost erased the habit of face to face chat among friends and relatives, through which we enjoy a hearty laughter making fun of each other, which is very healthy. It involves a variety of facial expressions genuine of course, and interesting gestures. A face to face dialogue gives a real punch and kick to start a day afresh. FB or social network of any kind can replce face to face chat. It is sad that the youth,kids and grown ups find so much time for FB in this rat race. We assume that FB boosts one's market value. In reality it is an expression of artificiality, hypocrisy and idiosyncracies. Some of the FB statuses are crazy indeed.
Well,I totally agree to this above article!.I too have a FB account but
fortunately(that is what i think)i use just once in month,this might
seem strange or weired to dis FB fad society,its not that i am anti-
social but i have strong aversion towards pretention and fakeness!!,no
longer picture's are clicked for memory but rather for FB profile
pictures or album....sad!!!.And people have forgotten real friend for
thier virtual friends in a virtual world.
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