The networking blacks and whites

Every body says the world is shrinking. Is it really? Am I the only one who feels otherwise. They also say social networking is getting us closer. Really? 

Okay it does get us closer. Maybe in certain ways world is shrinking as well. But it is also making us impolite, rude and intrusive.

The downsides of excessive social interactions are many and at various levels.

No?

It somehow brings out our worst…

When we call people again and again, despite them not taking our calls?

Or when we don't answer people's calls, despite them calling us again and again?

If there were no mobile phones, we won’t have had the incessant need to call, neither we would have been so accessible. In the older times, a phone call was precious. Both, for the one making and for the one receiving. I miss that.

When we invite people with merely a tagging on the Face Book?

Or when we don’t respond to the e-invite?

If there was no email penetration or social networking we would have called or at least made the effort to post a note to the people who we want to invite. For the rest, well, we would have just let them be.

When we gawk at all the good looking people’s pictures in our friends’ list?

Or when we swear at acquaintances who ‘like’ or comment on our pictures?

This is something I don’t understand. I have seen people who actually keep a tab on other women/men’s lives who are not even their friends. Seriously don’t understand the need to do that. Have also often seen intelligent, well-read married/committed men check out other (read hot) women’s profiles. That only makes me wonder if we are that desperate or if we really are that short on entertainment in our lives. And what about the ones who first put them up on public display?

… and the best…

Oh, how I love what technology has brought us. The ease, the comfort and the closeness of relationships.

Thank God for the Mobile phones. We can actually talk to whoever we want to whenever we want to. Distance, time, location no bar.

The time, the effort and the costs involved are all saved when we can now just send an e-invite. I can’t imagine how difficult it must’ve been for the generations before ours who had to actually pen down names and addresses on each and every one of the 500 envelopes they sent out for weddings! So much more we can achieve in that time saved!

We are all so far apart. Can’t share the day to day activities with the ones who matter. Can’t share the thrill of new places we have been to. But now we actually can. I love the ease of social networking when I can just post the pictures and my friends and family can view them. I love it when through such pictures their lives actually become a part of mine.

It is all relative. Isn’t it?