The New Socialite
Baisakhi Roy gets caught in the social network and finds it a bit difficult to get out.
Whether it’s Twitter which lets your babble sting and shock the universe endlessly (never mind the word limit) or Four Square which gives out badges to users who “check-in” at venues to where they travel and have interesting experiences, you have been neutralised. You are now known by your friends or the quantity of them that you might have. It is easy to see where the addiction factor rumbles in. We do love appreciation and we love those badges.
We also like to know about lives that are different from ours and/or if our lives are as interesting to them. A self declared Facebook addict, Payal Rawat Nariyani, a manager in a telecom company in Mumbai says,”I have to keep checking Facebook every hour or so to check what people are putting up, photos and notifications. There was a time I decided to not access it for at least 3 days but gave up after 6 hrs. I was too eager to check what people must have commented on my status.”
The social network has also become our playground. We don’t like the clubbing scene or the vacation-by-the-beach scenarios (except in emergency situations like honeymoons). People are known to spend ungodly hours on networking sites, hooking up, “friending” and mostly merely trawling the sites for self-gratification.
Remember that card game on Diwali night with flatulent uncles and rabble rousing cousins? Fun! Recall the binge drinking followed by some rustic karaoke? What’s more fun NOW is to play teen patti on Ibibo, one of the most popular social networking sites in India. Online poker was not such a popular concept in India till recently. Ibibo enables us to play games like “parking legally or illegally on your friend’s streets and getting money for it.” So can we now do without human contact? Are we living virtually? Why can’t we park legally or illegally in REAL life and see what happens?
“I think it’s brought a lot of my friends together. We can’t meet all the time and this is a good way to have some fun. People we never spoke to before are all connected and that helps in the long run, especially professionally,” says an advertising professional based in Delhi. He’s on these sites for at least 6-7 hours a day. Meeting some friends for dinner is very ...yawn! Get to know each other a bit better over Ibibo. You can then go over to their farming section and let loose some steam.
In the meantime you can go over this list. Just to take your mind off parking or farming or whatever it is you are addicted to.
You are an soc-net addict if:
- You need your Facebook fix every 20 minutes. Just.
- You are dying to know who says what when you said something very trivial
- You are suddenly in touch with vague people you knew a long time ago
- You are now “friends” with family members you hated. Just because you can.
- You check your accounts on Facebook and Twitter and a million other sites. From your I phone.
- You have more than 30 friends
- You are intently following the lives and loves of all those 30 friends. Through status updates.
- You get freaked out when someone calls before visiting. Why didn’t they just do so online?
- You check whether your birthday bash has been tweeted about.
- You get upset if it hasn’t.
- You couldn’t make it through this list without twittering.
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