Sunday 9 October 2016

Social Media - Simply Complicated

R says:

Do you remember when people started defining their relationships as “It’s complicated”? This is not the only term coined during the age of social networking – just one of the many. 

Starting with emailing and then googling, we have been introduced to social networking via linkedin, facebook, whatsapp, instagram and countless other websites and applications that have become from small to medium to large businesses in their own rights.

There was a time, when people spent time meeting each other or reading a book or on other hobbies, now they spent many of those hours on social media – liking and disliking (no such option available – hence by way of not pressing the “like” button) each other’s life posts. Connecting with long lost friends became possible as much as being able to track each other’s lives. More so the social stalking (of old loves) has become a favored time pass. These days apparently, you can just break up with anyone over social media as well (appalling or convenient?). Do we need rules (just like dating rules) of what should be acceptable behavior?

I was at a cafĂ© in Sydney, which stated, “no we do not have wi-fi, we encourage you to talk to each other” which left me thinking. Has social networking really encouraged us to socialize more or has it actually alienated us into a virtual world away from reality. Can you even imagine your life without wi-fi anymore – not being able to check what friends are posting on their facebook accounts?

To be fair, social media does enable social networking, making the world flat and accessible for us. It is a pleasure to see my long lost school friends doing so well via linkedin, and I am really pleased to see their children growing up, their holiday jaunts via pictures on facebook and instagram. It also enables me to keep in touch with them and wish them on their special days (which I could never manage to remember otherwise!). I am happy to be able to ask for advice from my professional mentors and whom am I kidding, I have even managed to procure jobs via linkedin. So it is definitely effective and useful.

Nothing in this world comes without a price though, so is the case with social media. Sometimes I feel I make less effort towards my relationships, as I would have if there were no such easy way. I find myself favoring, spending hours on social media during weekends instead of actually walking out of the apartment and making new friends or meeting the ones I have. These are easier things to deal with, in my humble opinion with some self-restraint and self-discipline. What is disturbing is when you hear people getting punished for the opinions they expressed on social media (since its public)! Does this mean we are losing our freedom by using an avenue truly meant to promote freedom of speech? It is disturbing to see this channel for bringing people together, being used as a cheap means of stalking by anti-social elements.

Every new innovation goes through a cycle of change, and social media is on the upward spiral in the current times. Do you think we are leading towards ultimate disengagement or is this innovation here to stay, just like electricity, to become an indispensible part of our lives? I am no foreteller, so cannot predict the future course, however I do believe that we should promote the autonomy vs. the immurement. That, I think is the real power and it's simply complicated.


B says:

Social Media, something that we all got introduced to through Orkut and now are addicted to through Facebook and Linkedin. One for entertainment and the other for career - but now and I lose track - after Facebook and Twitter, we have Snapchat, Whatsapp, Instagram, Myspace and million other ranging from not so successful Google + to very successful dating sites. After the word social media got popular our lives changed drastically.
It became a way of life - we embodied all the teachings of the marketing gurus - we knew all the Ps and the Cs, whether we know what they stand for or not (like for the life of me I cannot remember what they were) if you ask us to depict our vacations, festivities and display of uber life and in some cases glamorized rural life we do it like we all individually own a marketing theory.
Having said so, it is easy to display pomp and splendor and easier to stalk our exes, snoop into their lives, leave them drunken messages typed or recorded and worse never really get a grip over our lives. 
Our pages are a reflection of who we are and what we like. Our friends are a reflection of what we want since they exist on our pages whether we have them in our lives or not.
It is like a tracking system, friends who number unto a thousand sometimes, colleagues who send you unsolicited requests which you cannot ignore and relatives who clutter your e space with forwards and tags. Birthdays of people who you have trouble recalling keep popping up and game prompts take all your attention up.
We love our social media and we are lazy because of it. We type and better still as we type we get emoji prompts us to be nice, funny silly and even polite.
We are lazy because we think we can have a webpage and sharing it will be profitable - monetarily or socially. 
I am beginning to believe that we are now forced to being mediocre with social media, but the big question is had it not been for social media would we know most of the things we do. 
I firmly believe that social media is something that we need in our live after all as R says it is innovation and in all forms innovation is what will make us live. The thing however is, like all innovation we need to be able to decide when to customize an innovation for our benefit, how to contain the innovation before it goes out of hand and becomes a web world which will neither stop terror nor replenish our natural resources 

Use it wisely to help our lives and now flounder it to display our non existent exciting lives