The social media has opened a completely new world, not only in terms of culture, but also in terms of how information is spread these days. It has created a virtually seamless world where communication with anybody on the planet is instantaneous. One can trace friends and family one hasn’t seen in years. One can go about living one’s life in the public domain, where privacy is relative.
It has its funny and witty side, its boring side, a dangerous side and a sad side (there are many Facebook pages devoted to people who have passed away). But it is also extremely strong. It can mobilise people, drive revolutions like it did in Libya and Egypt, and topple governments.
Technology has brought us closer together on the one hand, but it has also made some of us distant, emotionless people with faceless friends with whom we conduct meaningless conversations without any real emotion or depth. I am a reluctant and late Facebooker, mostly because I am technologically deprived and didn’t really understand how to use it or why I should.
Today I am hooked, and suffer withdrawal symptoms if I do not get my daily dose of Facebook voyeurism into the meaningless daily activities of friends and others. Usually when something newsworthy happens, it may be a very mundane incident, it becomes a trend on Twitter and one can feel the airwaves becoming alive and bristling with all the tweets doing the rounds. Twitter sometimes provides us with an avalanche of absurdity. Reading those tweets, one realises that previously voiceless persons have suddenly found a voice and a means of expressing themselves. And that the world is not necessarily a better place for it. Silence is golden sometimes.
