Social Networking needs

one of the headlines of today's paper was that facebook has became a recruitment platform for drug vices and malaysians are easy targets. no points for guessing why.

obviously its because malaysians have the most number of 'friends' and spend an average of 9hours on facebook. i cant help but to think that social networking has changed our lives in ways we cannot imagine.

it created our stupid online social networking needs.


i think it all started with the birth of internet. with that came emails. i remember when i was probably 12, i was obsessed with emails and forwarding them. every freggin one. now i cant even be bothered to read forwarded mails, what more to forward them.




then came the chatrooms and messengers.

i started with IRC, if i'm not mistaken. i did not get to spend alot of time online while i was younger, but yeah, i enjoyed chatting very much. irc soon faded and was replaced with Msn and YM. and then came Skype. and forums. which started the need to gossip and be two faced.

we could have all been happily going out and meeting up friends and catching up in person. but then we all substituted it with typing on the keyboards and nudging people who dont reply in time.

nudges is fine if a person has something important to say, or he's somebody you want to talk to. but i freggin hate the people who abuse them. how irritating is it to have a conversation keep popping up when you're trying to do something and this idiot just cannot wait 2minutes for a reply.

*pulls hair out of frustration* *clicks 'BLOCK PERSON' and live happily ever after*




then Youtube and other sharing-based networks came along

suddenly everyone is sharing videos online and obsessed with covering songs in desperate hopes of having their 'talents' discovered and shoot to fame. suddenly the need to abuse their webcams and video cameras to tape every amusing (or not) action for their friends/subscribers viewing pleasures arose.

to me, youtube is a platform where i view music videos and missed episodes of tv or drama series. oh, and tutorials. its much easier to watch than it is to read step-by-step guides. i actually learnt to makeup from youtube. and some useful things like cooking and using softwares.

i dont have a youtube account but i think youtube definitely created needs for the exhibitionists to display their 'talents', share their moments and attract attention in hopes of their 15mins of fame; and for the voyeurs (like me!) to view, laugh and poke fun at, to rely on and learn from.




the rising of user profiles like Friendster, Myspace, LinkedIn and Bebo.

the need to write testimonials and have people write nice things for us arose. everyone made friends online and be anyone they wanted to be. with the help of Photobucket and Flickr and those photo sharing sites, social networking was no longer a past time, it became THE norm.

young people started having needs to gain popularity through a thousand testimonials and five thousand 'friends'. we all started wanting and needed to have awesome, misleading profiles and deceiving photos and make 20 000 friends we dont need which we would later regret having because they would be the same ones who annoy you and be mere acquaintances who waste your time or the kind who would backstab you.



oh dont even get me started on virtual worlds of IMVU and SecondLife.

its fun. in the beginning. you become whoever you want to be. until you start to realise that most people in virtual worlds are really pathetic losers in real life. ridiculous.

*rolls eyes*

why would people waste time 'dressing up', 'working', 'making friends', 'hanging out' and 'having sex' in virtual worlds when they can have the real thing? because people who resort to 'living' in virtual worlds and are obsessed with being the most popular avatar, are losers who dont get laid. with the time and money wasted on virtual worlds, you could have built an empire and live the life you want.




Blogging. oh blogging.

before the rise of blogosphere, i never needed to publisize my life for people to see. i wrote diaries. i talked to myself. and type drafts which i later delete.

Wordpress, Xanga, Blogger and the alike definitely created this stupid needs of speaking out loud and wanting people to read them. it created our needs to take awesome photos for people to see. and spending hours and hours editing our pictures and drafts. needs of reporting our daily lives and speaking our minds and letting the whole world inside. and got people obsessed with being jealous of other people's lives. started the whole culture of attention-seeking and stalking.

we all became exhibitionists. everybody had things to say and things to show. we all needed platform to let other people know how awesome/sucky/mundane our life is.

it was mother of all evils.

you see what you do to me blogging. i take pictures of nothing. complain too much. and write about everything. write things to indirectly get to people. expose myself and become obsessed with you.




and Facebook. and my undying love for you.

i was obsessed. i spent hours stalking other people. facebook is awesome because unlike friendster, you are an invisible stalker. =) i read their profiles and look at their pictures. i eat, shit, sleep, think facebook.

i refresh the home page every five minutes to see stupid status updates and roll my eyes at people who update complete nonsense like "i'm hungry", "i'm angry" and "i'm drunk". then i realise i am equally pathetic to read them. i was obsessed to the point that i would facebook on my mobile every few minutes just to read those updates.

how pathetic could life get.

and with stupid games which i played. Nightclub City kept me occupied for hours per day and got me hooked for months until i knocked myself out of it. had Mark Zuckenberg not come up with this brilliant idea which made him rich, i never would have imagined that i needed to update status every now and then to declare my (un)happiness and whatever i felt.

i never would have thought that i would spend hours hooked on facebook after an event just to make sure people dont tag my ugly photos and be quick enough to untag myself before other people see them.




Plurk and Twitter also started the need of people reporting where they are, what they are doing and what is on their mind to their friends.



Four square and Friend Finder is just nonsense.

we all used to be so scared of exposing ourselves online. no one in their right mind would write their phone numbers or whatever private information of themselves on their profiles or chatrooms or forums in case maniacs could get to them. we (at least, i) hated friendfinder because i never liked the idea of people tracking me and having obsessed people like parents and ex boyfriends know of your whereabouts.

ironically now its the other way around. people started to need to report their whereabouts because it is the IN thing to check-in to 'cool' places and make sure your friends know so you'll be in the 'cool' gang also.

preposterous!



Social Networking created these stupid needs. the same needs which is why i am here writing this long absurd post on nothing until 5am while trying to learn the complex art of photoshop. so that i can post deceiving pictures. to satisfy the need of social networking.

a fucking vicious never ending cycle.

its like drugs. once you get a taste of it, you get hooked and addicted. it becomes all you ever think about. it dictates how you live you life. and it is almost impossible to escape.



way to go social networking. you have successfully taken over my life. now i'm another loser who's obsessed with the virtual world. =D