In 2010 I wrote a blog about how communications have changed
over the ages and how we are in this age where we have really taken them to a
level never imagined. This is where I catch that train of thought and roll out
again.
The one thing in the story of Facebook that was captured
really well in the ‘Social network’ was its founders’ character. It starts with
a scene where he is sitting talking to his girlfriend and he is extremely insensitive
to the point of insulting her in more ways than one. This scene was played with
a background score which gave the viewer a feeling that what the protagonist
did was kind of cool. This is followed by him creating a sexist website where
he gets guys to rate women and blogs nasty about the girl who just dumped him. Well
I have nothing against the character, after it is was only ‘inspired by’ a real
person. But one trait that clearly comes out is that of insecurity. He wants to
get into the prized clubs of Harvard and he is willing to do anything for that.
He is genius which is a given since Harvard does not take management quota. But
then the word genius has no moral binding to it. Morals themselves are the
greyest areas of human imagination. So, our genius ends up building a fantastic
website which then turns out to be Facebook and he is a billionaire before
puberty hits him.
No one knows the true story there and I would be very
insensitive myself if I pass judgement on one of the richest men in the world
without true knowledge or understanding of him as a person. But one thing I can
judge to my heart’s content is his product, Facebook.
Born out of an absolute sense of insecurity, this product
targets that trait in every person. It does not fail and it does not falter,
with all the genius coders who design the algorithms which capture every bit of
the user’s life and put it out there for the world to see. It is the best place
to celebrate, vent, crack a joke, cry, laugh, pass judgement, conduct media
trials, express love, break up, post your pictures and appreciate everyone else’s
put up there. It feels so good to have thousands of friends of friends like
your pictures and status updates.
What a place to be! Over a billion users, one of every 7
people in the world today uses Facebook. You are connected to every person you’ve
ever met and every person you want to meet. You have the ability to document
every minute of your life and put it up on display to the world, the way you
want to. It gives you that power. It allows you to cover up all your ugliness and
makes you look like a star, like a person who lives an absolutely fantastic
life. It gives you the power to be who you want the world to believe you are.
Everyone on Facebook is their own super hero, in their own head, on their own
profile page. The amazing bit is the fact that everyone wants to be everyone else
they see on Facebook. When a guy posts a picture of his new BMW, you cringe in
your head, though you like his picture. The next day you are putting pictures
of your vacation in Europe and the guy who bought that BMW is cringing because
he is paying for his car and can’t afford that vacation. Facebook is getting elephants
to climb tress because the monkeys are posting pictures swinging from branches.
There is a certain obscenity to all this. It shows us how
fake we all can get, how our own mind is but fooling us into feeling good when
in reality it is not that good after all. Eating dinner and taking pictures of
food is more about convincing yourself that what you are eating is great. And
how do you get that conviction? All the likes! The world approves of what you
do and that gives your insecurity a blanket. Every profile on Facebook is a fake.
It is a Utopian world for self imagery. Activity on Facebook and that person’s
life are inversely proportional, almost always.
What provokes me next is the number of friends people have.
I did an exercise of sorting out my friends from the long list I had on my
Facebook. Out of some 560 odd friends and family, I could single out exactly 43
people whose place in my life I somewhat value. And of these you could take out
my parents and my girlfriend, they are one in my life, so 40 people. Drill down
further and of these 40, it is just about 20 who I deeply care about. Their
contribution in my life and mine is theirs is valuable and worth cherishing.
Drill down further and I find that it is only about 10 whom I am regularly in
touch with. By in touch with I mean a personal phone call or a face to face
meet once a month at least. The span of
the human mind to relate to people for reasons beyond material benefits is just
about that much, 10 people or 20 if you push it. Beyond that it is all
irrelevant. It sounds harsh but it cannot be relevant to you what a person whom
you met in a party many years ago is eating for lunch. You wouldn’t notice if
he is dead tomorrow.
These 40 odd people in my life are the ones who matter. Of
these many have moved on and even though I may not speak to them anymore, I
would always acknowledge the part they played in my journey of life. The 10 I speak
to now may not be the ones I speak to as much a few years hence. People move
on. It is how it is supposed to be, this life. But what matters is the quality
of time you have spent with these people. It is the impact that they created
and the difference that they made. These are special people. I find it highly
disrespectful to like a picture of one of these friends’ lunch. I value their
privacy. If I wanted to know what they were eating, I would rather just go down
to their house and ask for a bite myself and I am sure they would be more than happy
to have me over.
What we lost when we shifted to Facebook was the romance of
communication. There is no effort of
putting our minds to it when we talk on Facebook. Imagine writing a letter to a
dear friend, and think of how much you would want him to feel your mind through
your words. That effort is not there anymore. It is not there on Facebook and
it is not there on Whatsapp. The romance of beautiful expression is lost
forever.
I guess I am born in the wrong era. I seem to detest
everything that consumes wastefully while the world glorifies it. With
Facebook, it consumes time wastefully. Something none of us have a luxury of.
So might as well stop posting what you are doing and put your mind to doing it properly.
You may record a moment and share it but you can never truly live it again.
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