Little Cut From the Social Media - A Personal Experiment

by ravitblue

The limit to a man’s patience has been surpassed.
It is not like I am some very special being from an utterly special planet, neither it  is about me pretty much anti social (or is it?). It is about finding out one fine evening that I’ve been living a double life.
No. I’m not Batman, to my much despair.

The double life I’m talking about is one which a lot of us lead without knowing in today’s world- the life on and off the Internet. Or as I would like to call it The Facebook me and the real me. Now let me clear about one thing first, I’m not a pretentious douche. Neither do I like double fascism. And certainly I do not suffer from any sort of split personality disorder.  With the bloom of Facebook which was about the year 2007 in my case, there has been a lot of ‘liking’ ‘comments’ and updates. This parallel universe of digital data has led us to make a parallel personality and in turn live a parallel life- in my humble opinion. Of course this has shad the widely known physical and psychological outcomes and I’ve always felt I was not much affected by all these.

But recently when I realised that my Facebook life over the past couple of years had started to mold and shape my real life, then I knew this had to stop. Interesting stuff happened when I tried blocking myself off Facebook. I had withdrawal symptoms. And not just simple “Oh I should check my Facebook” once in a while thought kind of withdrawal. Serious shit. So much so that within the first few hours I found myself opening a new tab typing “facebo” in a fraction of a second. This was scary. This tiny little social network had gotten into my sub conscious. And it was not just about Facebook, my email, the constant use of text messaging on my phone. I was connected to people at a level that was far from necessary.

Deactivate.

Although Facebook as a tool is of very high usability and convenience. Being able to talk to long lost high school friends and see that “photo Rahul tagged of Pooja from last night’s sick party” . It does gives one the whole feeling of being able to connect to a friend or family member at a personal level. How many times have you skipped calling that one friend or relative on their birthday because you had “wished them over Facebook” or worse how many birthdays you do remember?

“Facebook will take care of it” Right?

Because of the plethora of information from social media, you are constantly inside the life of your friends and acquaintances, which according to me is eating up the real value of having a few but important and meaningful relations.
Then of course there is this huge competition of what I like to call “digital Ego” where your digital life should be better than her.(sexism intended)

Being a self confessed geek and having every form of social network from its genesis. From Friendster and Myspace right till Google+, I feel there is a need, at least in my own life to go back to the roots. Of course there will be times when I would want to rant my heart out or talk about the cool experience I had during my day today or simply share my views on a particular cause or happening. But I would not want “Tom I know from two blocks down the dorm” to have ‘comment’ about it. Sometimes the comfort of one’s own personal journal is not sufficient and you want people to hear what you have to say. What would I do at those times? I’d go talk to a friend I feel I’d enjoy having that conversation with. Or better still I’d blog about it. Nothing beats the feeling of letting your thoughts out in the open and not on the face of those 500 odd ‘friends’.

Later.