Social media was never something new. Pixels and text allows us to interact with others virtually on the web. YouTube with subscribers watching, twitter with updates and trends to track, friendster known as asian profiles, MySpace as the hip, funky version for American teens, facebook used to be an elite college-thing, now becoming a major “social utility that connects you with the people around you” – it all becomes an integrated part of our social media lives.
Oh. Does that mean I couldn’t connect with people around me without the use of a computer?
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But then almost everybody nowadays uses at least one of these. why so? how come its so booming and so widely used?
Lets go back to the basic human needs – to socialize. The tendency of people to interact with one another. with the limited hours we have in a day, incompatible timing to get together, internet provide social media tools to allow fast connect, instant friend updates, transforming communication from talking to typing. The lack of availability and increase in mobility of one self, whereas the need to spend quality time with others is still being sought after. Social media, facebook in particular, now provides an alternative—talking, joking, and watching.. to wall post comments, poking, and video uploads. Sure, thanks for the hug (literally). And, oh. The food you gave me was so mouth watering that I just seem to have forgotten how to taste it. Ehm, what’s that. Click to poke? How am I suppose to respond to surprise, excitement or repulsion to such habit. To ignore applications and requests from friends is very tempting at this point.
It’s ironic. If supposedly social life through a media is when a person spends their Saturday nights “facebook-ing” at home.. alone.. chained to the desk, creating a deluding impression to present themselves (intentionally, or not). What’s more, little do we know, us users are volunteers (unknowingly in most cases) to provide our personal information, for ‘them’ to generate a database of consumer preferences sold to businesses we know nothing about. There we are, filling out details, hobbies and listing out our fave consumer items, while ‘they’ sit back, relax, and watch as the amount of users grow and so as the revenue.
Anyway, the good thing was keeping tabs on (distant or close-by) friends online. Apart from that, it could be the human nature itself which longs for that sense of vanity and self-pride. Some craves attention, the desire to exist—even with the smallest extent. Some of us like putting posters of movies; actors; singers on bedroom walls or school desks. Nowadays it’s the photos of those famous stars on facebook, tagged with those who admire them. Thus, users freely post anything that is appealing to them. Knowing the content is widely distributed and shared, increasing the potential audience, just like a promoting tool. All driven by the tendency of people to express themselves and build their very own personal brand.
Due to the ease to expose these so called personal information, overloading is what seems to be the flaw. Status for once, not everybody wants to know what you’re doing in every few minutes. “Hoaaahm,”.status-poster are simply caper. It’s irritating at times, when people starts posting junks, now with the ease of mobile connects technology given the fact that its much cheaper this way to ask whats for homework, than it is to actually SMS somebody. Or when half of the page is filled with the same person who’s complaining how long it is to wait for the clock to turn six and go home.
Quiz updates moreover, not everybody want to know how high your IQ are. sure, everybody likes getting attention, in a way. quiz results posting boasts the poster in how well they score, how cool they are, thus—becoming celebrities on their own page as well as someone else’s who couldn’t care less no matter who is your celebrity twin. In the end, important friend updates actually buried within the piles of these scraps.
Back to the advantage, there’s your way to do a great broadcast. Links to a certain page can generate a topic amongst friends. Discussions is easily heated up when knowing voices are heard and made by people who most likely know each other. From Iranian deceptive election to a recent musician’s death, social media covers it all. Buzzing the news.
But did people know to ‘share’ a link is to ‘advertise’? Several are obvious enough to spam news feed with video clips of a well known fast-food restaurant. Fancy that. Hmm. Wonder how that works.. does people get paid uploading product pics and tagging their friends along?
So,
it all comes down to this,
Facebook as a social media: Does it connects, or isolates? for expressing ourselves or to show off? is it communication or spam? Broadcasting or promoting? it’s a matter of perception really.
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Photocredit by : Hellblazer
