Facebook and Buddhism

Well, certainly not a very usual combination, perhaps not a popular one either, but then again, I am not linking the two anyway. Just writing about both on the same day, is all.

Facebook. Orkut. hi5. And so many other social networking sites that got eclipsed by competition. They have taken the world by the horns, so as to say, or at least the cyber-world. Some have preached to me the networking benefits offered, while others have told me that its the way of the future where email will be obsolete, in much the same way as post is becoming now. And then of course, there are those who have told me that its a great way to share photographs, lists of favourites, appointments, and lots of other trivial and non-trivial crap - in short, our lives - with other people, some of which could be actual friends.

Here is the deal. Networking existed, and functioned very well, even before the telephone was invented. Now of course, we don't even sit on the pot to crap without our mobile phone. Post is still not obsolete, and never will be. Its like the fears about hardcopy newspapers and real books dying out in the 'electronic age'. So with email in the 'social-networking-site age'. And if your idea of 'sharing' involves large-scale exhibitionism, with voyeurs you perhaps never will meet or even know, good. And so many you are sharing your life with aren't even really interested in it.

Such sites have some real merits, and I will not deny that at all. But they seem more like an online extension of popularity contests and mutual back-scratching. And oh, how can I forget the attempts to date on such sites, by the very same people who will look down upon online chatting with strangers. I could also mention the many hours of man-hours (or for those feminist fanatics out there, woman-hours too, which perhaps account for more anyway!) wasted on this phenomenon. But nothing gets to me more than the mental laziness (and some physical too) these things drive you to.

It takes about as much effort and time to email someone as it does to send them a message through these sites. But mental blocks and laziness tell us otherwise. And this anecdote takes the cake. Before I narrate it, I have to say I have an account on Facebook, which will cease to exist in 5 days from now. If it weren't for my intoxication, and the (irritating) persistence of a friend, I never would have been on it. Tino, you prick. Anyway, so I sent a message to everyone I knew on Facebook (which took me about 45 minutes to figure out, since I don't really use that site at all and was unaware how it worked) saying I was out of it in a week since I hated it. I gave my email id (two of them, in fact) for those who wanted to keep in touch and asked people specifically to not reply through Facebook. Sure enough, I have had more responses on Facebook than both my emails put together. And at least half the people haven't bothered responding at all. Hahahaha. Very clever, Very social.

Something else I heard yesterday that impacts you Facebook users. There is now an application for it (which needs to be bought, it ain't free) which allows one to look up complete activities of other users, from which pages you visited to who you poked (whatever the fuck that means) to whatever the fuck else people do on Facebook. Enjoy your public lives!

Have written enough in one post I think. Buddha comes in next!