The Offline world !!

An uncanny interest towards human behavior and its idiosyncrasies’ compels me to write this piece. Frequently chided by my pals for not being a big enough fan of The Facebook or the Orkut, I have come to being a muted participant in the otherwise no holds barred facebook comment zone. During my 10 minute daily participation at the social networking site, I read people philosophizing about their forlorn love, irreparable motorbike, indulgent lifestyle , intruding parents ordaily career progression. “Raining outside”, “Boss is bad”, “My mom supermom”, ”Cooked Maggi today”, “life goes on” are some of the enlightening status messages that one finds. Displaying monotonous happenings about obvious climactic variations to not so strange facts about work life on a public forum is courageous indeed. Due to my inability to boast of matters as private and mundane as these, I am forced to settle for the unenviable status of a silent spectator.

Hand held mobile phones have only made this ritual easier for the people. These have become affordable, stylish and enabled with faster browsing speed. The sites have also been a boon for marketers who feign inability to find their target audience anywhere else but on the site. Thanks to the penetration of Facebook, the world is divided into 2 zones now-Offline (read real world) and online.

I have also closely noticed online behaviors of various kinds of people who thrive on the site-one of my friend who seems to be perennially depressed logs onto it every 2 hours to check the status updates of some of his friends. This exercise gives him that much more of a reason to whine and add up his accumulated depression. Another one is a very active member of the site and frequently uploads videos from the Youtube for all to relish. He refrains from commenting at all uses (misuses rather !!) the site as a vehicle for online video dissipation.

Revelations about a deceased celebrity hitherto kept secret get revealed and beamed by the news channels for the voyeuristic consumption of all, thanks to one of his/her seemingly trivial comments on one of these platforms. Lately, the attention of the media seems to have got diverted to the Twitter though, which gives a real time opportunity to celebs to vent their ire on one another or exhibit their humorous side or more importantly promote their upcoming releases to their zillions of hypnotized followers.

Sometimes I feel grateful to the rate of technological evolution over time. It is good that a platform like Twitter did not exist during the time of the famed fan rivalry between Kamal Hasan and Rajnikant and between Mohan lal and Mamooty. My addiction to movies limits me to offer a comparison of only these kinds. However, one must add that those fights between followers were real world ones that frequently involved tearing down the theatre for reasons that ranged from a not so appeasing ending of the movie to the cinematic demise of the star.

Talking about social media platforms, one can ill-afford to detest them because they are not only about Facebook and Twitter , which in themselves are great vehicles for mass consumption, but also about blogging and other web 2.0 features.. And I am a compulsive blogger myself. Not to mention a hypocrite and an armchair critic !!!