E. R. Ronny
I just got a sheep thrown at me. And I survived its bleating fluffy impact. This is what modern times have come down to where people throw sheep, fish and other livestock at each other. And apparently it is the in thing. Facebook users can virtually throw these at each other using a feature called ‘Superpoke’. Welcome to social networking where people you never met and probably never will, can and do throw sheep at you.
One upon a time I was blissfully unaware of social networking. Then my peers started to pressure me to sign up as peers are often inclined to do. And before I knew it, I was getting hit by sheep, invited to join the mafia and generally asked to be a part of activities which would be quite painful in reality.
Turns out everyone except me was already on some network be it MySpace, Orkut, Facboook, Nosebook etc. My father, who never went online, turned up on my friend list after he went to Canada. Yesterday, even my dog signed up. Or at least someone whose profile picture and name was suspiciously similar to my dog. It makes for a good cheap way to connect to those far from where you are.
Before I knew it, I had 200 friends half of whom were not. But a colleague in the next cubicle had 872 friends. That’s like half the world right there. This was worrying as I saw people hunched over their computers adding friends as if that alone would solve world hunger. Not that hunger was a subject anyone was bothered about because someone was sure to send a virtual hamburger. With extra virtual cheese.
I noticed people sitting there watching other people. Once upon a time this was called stalking. Now, it’s just staying updated about the 1233 friends across the world. But we live in times where the entire world is always ‘out there’ and knowing it is so large, we have to bite onto as big a chunk as we can. With so much out there, it’s easy to become lost and unnoticeable like a vegetarian in a meat eating contest. So to get noticed, we advertise. Which brings into play the status update.
Last week a friend wrote ‘I am so sad’. Because I actually knew him in real life, I called only to find out he was sad because no one was ‘noticing’ what he was doing. Which was basically nothing. But his status did get some response. It’s something we learn as babies. When in pain, hunger or simply in doubt, cry.
And that’s what these sites are really about. Not crying, but advertising, both of which are sometimes hard to distinguish. We post to let others know that we are alive, that we are interesting. 9 times out of 10 we are probably not interesting or even alive for that matter. But the human spirit is not easily deterred. While we are busy advertising ourselves, marketers (the ones that get paid to advertise) use these social networking sites to sell everything from toothpicks to tampons. MySpace recently posted $20 million in ad sales.
We seek out each other because we are not solitary creatures. Or maybe we do so because in these times, we probably are more solitary than someone 200 years ago. Now we know there are 6 billion people out there ready for romance, friendship, kinship or simply someone who will give us money. We don’t want to be meek sheep, we want to throw sheep at others and let the world know who we are.