JOURNEYING THRU LIFE: Another succumbs to the Monster- Social Networking Menace!!!

Gosh, just yesterday evening I was telling my colleague why I am not on Watsapp and why I deactived Facebook in September 2012 (shortly will log in and delete it entirely, just found out that's possible!). When I was listing the points, she went from 'Uh' to 'Gosh' and wondered how I was thinking so far...! And same night all the Sunanda Tharoor suicide episode was all over TV! These social networking sites can grow on you, mislead you and make your real life a mess if you get too involved in it. And now people ending lives over it?

These are my simple observations, which I told a few friends and selected colleagues :

1) Waste of time. Instead of connecting to friend or finding long lost school college friends, the sites/ applications connect us to strangers, pests, make you answerable to known people you don't accept as friends, get friend requests from anti social elements. And now its being used by many for all the wrong reasons.....!

2) Your life becomes an open book and people start tracking you (its virtual stalking!). Your friends. Enemies. Unwanted admirers. Your Boss. Your rivals. Your prospective suitors. Your prospective employers. People employed detectives earlier. Or poked their noses. Now they simply have to see your facebook account / page. Every post becomes a cause for gossip. There's one advantage here. You can manipulate. But everyone ain't smart for that. You end up making a fool of yourself. Even the rich and famous cannot abstain from being boastful and show off on Twitter (not yet used it myself though!). You get so caught up in this parallel virtual life that it grows on you. The main purpose of re-iterating this social media thing, is of course the Shashi Tharoor -Sunanda episode, finally ending a life. Was all this worth it all?

3) You are exposed to temptations. If you get too obsessed with the networking media, then you get transported into a parallel world. You might avoid the 'real' people. Might even not relate to them. You avoid family and real friends around you. This might affect your overall personality. Females (and innocent males), nubile girls and even kids could be fooled and swayed by anti social elements who befriend who and then might kidnap or mis-use you. I heard about a college girl get kidnapped through Facebook. Then she was found but has lost memories of the days she went missing. Damn scary! We've heard of the other famous cases.

4) Everyone has access to you on a personal level especially if you download something like Watsapp. Even if you store a number, they get connected. From your milkman to courier-wala to doctor and many people whom you wouldn't want to have a peek into your personal lives. The thought makes me creep. I am a private person. And especially fear men from getting too pally and this day no one's intentions can be known! Here I do not know if the culprit is the Smart phone which has made us fools, or the networking apps. The smartphone itself is an instrument worth discussing about.

5) You waste precious time reading posts, re-posting posts, commenting on silly things, posting your pictures. And slowly you start posting personal pictures which shouldn't have been made public in the first place. Then you get more obsessed with it till you start acting like a celebrity and pictures from your bedroom also reach the world. I know of few colleagues, who later started posting personal pictures like candid honeymoon pictures to holiday bikini pictures. Are you tempting people out there? Or losing respect amongst colleagues, who might start making personal comments on you, which you might take offence to. Recently heard of someone make personal comments on 2-3 females, thanks to pictures posted on watsapp and facebook. Some personal pictures are not for the junta. And do not forget that these pictures are much downloadable by anyone who can see them. This isn't the best way to go down in history. Make your own history with your talents.

8) Any damn hacker can hack into your account and get vital information from your messages and might destroy your life, or blackmail you or have access to your entire network and might mis-use it against you. Not only that, we even tend to pass on passwords, phone numbers to family, close friends etc through messages within the sites. And lo! There you lose everything..... if it goes into another's hands!!!

7) And if God forbid, we die due to an accident or any untoward incident, the media will start highlighting your facebook details. The police will employ hackers to hack it to get into your lives. At least one would want to die in peace.

8) Lastly, your life and statistics will end up as NASA MIS!!!

My colleague was astonished and guffawed. And was telling me, oh God, how much I am thinking about this....

I told her how I am getting time to do nice things after getting the time. Even after putting in 10 hours or sometimes more, I found time to learn a new skill like jewellery making through You Tube and some books which kept me busy and helped me come out of my low phase. Now I've a collection of handmade jewellery made, a website!!! With the available time, I brushed up my knowledge skills, got back to my hobbies, redefined my goals, got thinking about my career aims, life. Me. In being social and helping and in the puzzle of life, I had got lost somewhere. And finally found myself again. Enjoying my shopping (though alone). The end of season sales, the running to hitherto unknown wholesale markets all by myself to buy unique raw materials to make jewellery. Learnt about basic skills of webpage designing. There's so much to learn in this world and so little time. So why waste it? Another thing to learn on wish-list : French speaking~!