Sunday 11 January 2015
Sunday Herald/Humour
Let’s face it...
(Pic from the internet)
I really don’t
know what the fuss is all about. The
pundits, that great faceless anonymous collective, tell us it is akin to
opening Pandora’s box. That once you are hooked or wired as the case may be,
the disease spreads in great galloping strides. That your ordinary life goes to
rack and ruin.
I’m talking
about a social media platform the name of which rhymes with Glazed Look. I opened that particular Pandora’s box a
handful of years ago, and have survived to tell the tale. And now, I want to deconstruct
the myths.
They say once
you get on, you stay on, all day and all night. This is not true. Those of us
with demanding children at home (and how they demand) , 800-word articles to
write or that TV show we are addicted to watching, just cannot and will not stay
online indefinitely. Real life
invariably intrudes and intrudes sharply. Of course, there is also the fact
that those in the know er, know. They know there is a peak time to post, so your posts will attract the maximum eyeballs. They also know that if
you stay online perpetually, people will realise you don’t have an offline life.
Ergo, they don’t stay online forever.
They say you
tend to post status messages that are banal, bragging, snide or plain obnoxious
by turns. Nonsense, I say. Online media is all about building up your own
constituency and then broadening that baseline. The canny method is to post deep and profound messages, at first dutifully giving credit
where credit is due, be it to Zig Ziglar, Khalil Gibran or that cat who wears tortoiseshell
spectacles. After you are sure your posts are read by all and sundry, then you
can (and will) post anything. I have seen posts lamenting a dogfight fast becoming
a serpentine thread full of sympathy, empathy, helpful hints!
They say you
invariably doctor the photographs you put up. Only the most naïve people would
say this. I mean, just about every
picture one displays is first photoshopped, right? I mean, do we really let people see us as we
really are, except when we go under the Witness Protection Programme? We, my
dears, call it curating. Not doctoring; that’s ever so coarse.
They say your
posts become vulnerable to cyber cruisers,
trolls and perverts. Not if you have the
necessary smarts and know how to put your privacy patrol in place. Then of course,
there are some sorry souls who feel wanted, needed only if the abovementioned trolls
and pervs accost them online. Different strokes, guys…cut them some slack.
They say your
inner quality controller lies down and dies every time you click `like` on just
about anything and everything you see. Well, what exactly is wrong with clicking
`like` on everything you see, if you
like everything you see? It’s unassailable logic. Your wall is largely composed
of posts by people like you who post things they appreciate, which in turn you
are bound to appreciate. So, I say just go ahead and click `like` on that post
about 56 Greasy Foods That Are Actually Good For You, on the essay condemning
that spot in the Middle East, on the post revealing how the other spot in the
Middle East is playing the media, and on that bouquet of lurid pink roses wishing
you a Happy Day. Hey, who doesn’t want to have a Happy Day?
As for those
people who post selfies of themselves at the reasonable interval of one every
hour, dashitall, it’s their camera, it’s their face, it`s their life. And boy,
it sure makes your life seem so much
better.
They say you
develop an inflated and unreal sense of yourself as a person. Really? Like you
don’t already have an inflated and unreal …? Get real. You know you are
special. Very special. And when your
favourite social media platform underlines your specialness, who is the winner
here, huh?
Now if you
will excuse me, I need to go check What Colour I Am. After which I need to
undertake a test that will reveal Who I Was In My Past Life. All this really is so much fun.
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