Excuse me please: 5 things I learned this week (Part 11)

If you scroll down from the beginning of history, you’ll see it being divided into various ages according to the 'in' thing of that period.

The Bronze Age was upgraded to Iron Age once man chose the better metal. His fears and superstitions were exploited in the Dark ages, which were stopped by the Renaissance movement. This heralded the Industrial revolution, which saw an exponential rise in human greed, resulting in the devastating world wars. This was followed by the race between two giants in the space age, and then the subsequent cold war. The progress of humanity was accelerated over the ensuing decades by technological advancements, which inspires us to refer to that period as the Information age.

A general consensus is yet to be reached whether that age is still continuing or not. A lot of ideas are being bounced about these days, and here I’m going to throw in my own.

This is age of social networking.

You want to have a “conversation” with your friend, there’s gtalk.

You want to “share” with your friends what you are feeling now or something funny, there’s Facebook.

You want to “shout out” to the world your ideas, there’s Twitter.

Hell. There’s LinkedIn just in case you want a new job.

We have a detailed pathway through which we share information among ourselves these days. If you don’t have an internet enabled Smartphone, you are deemed unfit for progressing in this society. I’m not going to go into a rant about this, because my opinions on this matter are not sorted out to one side till now. I believe you should be given the freedom to enjoy the luxuries that are offered to you, if you can afford it. But no matter what the case may be, you should keep in mind that this is just a luxury, and you can live without it.

Let me start out on today’s blog. It’s about Facebook. Please refrain from reminding me that this is not technically “5 things I learned” this week, because I’ll feel more guilty for writing this. I’ve lost many a blog posts in this series just because I couldn’t find 5 interesting/relevant things to go with it. I don’t want this blog to enroll in that list, and so I present to you the “5 things I made up/learned/noticed this week”.

Did you know..

1. …that you may be having the most bizarre of acquaintances as your friend in Facebook?

In my case, this would be the bus conductor who used to be in my college bus. We had only known ourselves to each other by casual, “acquaintancial” smiles. You know the ones where you suddenly get your face to bloom into a picture of happiness, only for it to fade away in a second, as soon as that person is past you. The least I can say about all this is that Facebook has changed the way you define the word “friend”.

2. …that Facebook understands the pain you are going through to stalk “that” gal??

That is the reason behind this new tool developed by the tech team at FB HQ, which is basically a room full of nerds. 'The Graph Search', or as it is fondly known 'The Stalker', helps you to find people in facebook who, I believe, never thought they would be found. You can now search for people in FB by giving conditions like male/female, single/double, lives in delhi/mumbai, is/is not my friend, etc etc.. I don't think I will now have to mix it up and spoon feed you as to how stalkers can find you using this. The only positive, if any, is that this is not available to every Tom, Dick and Harry out there. There is a waiting list. But sometimes, I don't know how, you get lucky, and you bypass that waiting list to full on stalking glory.

3. …that you need to be aware that your family and seniors at work can see what you post publicly?

This is from a very bad experience, in which I shared something publicly on Facebook, without remembering that I've my father, my brother, my cousin sisters, a few aunts/uncles, my teachers from school/college, my seniors,etc at work as my friends there. Needless to say, I now have a custom list to share to now. And I believe it's time you made one too, in case you haven't already.

4. …that you’ll have at least one friend, to whom you will be having the best conversations on chat, but the moment you two are put face-to-face, it becomes awkward?

You might have only one friend like this, but for me, well, let me just say that I’ve lost count. If you see me chatting with someone from this category, the world will forgive you for mistakenly identifying me as the superhero “Flash”. But put me in a room face to face with that same person, and you can easily hear Casanova banging his head on his coffin. (-_-)

5. …that Facebook is one of the most unproductive, time wasting, energy consuming, addictive, engrossing, lively, interactive fun (where am I going with this) thing around?

There. I’ve said all those adjectives for Facebook and that makes my point clear. Like in the movie ‘How to train a dragon”, Facebook can be a dragon, which we could have as a pet. Or Facebook can be a pet, which could become a dragon. I know you didn't get what I meant there, but don't worry, most people don't. :D

Again, Facebook should be treated by one and all as a luxury. Something you can have, but not something you should have. To quote myself, (I’ve always wanted to do that :D )

“I believe you should be given the freedom to enjoy the luxuries that are offered to you, if you can afford it. But no matter what the case may be, you should keep in mind that this is just a luxury, and you can live without it.”

Before the customary goodbye, let’s just go back to the beginning of this discussion. We were talking about the different ages that mankind has been through, before settling into this age of information. And in a month’s time, India will say goodbye to one of the oldest method of information transfer (read communication) – the Telegraph. By July 15^th, the dots and dashes will be no more.