When I came across this article, Our public private lives, on The Star, I thought it was about time I write on how I feel about social media in general. Mind you, I'm no expert in the media world but I am a member of the society and since social media can only exist with both society and media coming together, my perspective will bend more towards the social aspects of it.
Like any other members of the society, I have a Facebook profile, a twitter account and a personal blog and that's more than enough to cause me to slack and ignore the fact that I've less than a month to revise for my exam =/. Other social networking outlets I've tried is Formspring but no one ever bothers asking me questions so we'll forget about it for the time being.
The trophy 'friends'
One of the common features of all these outlets or platforms is that they all involve the gathering or collecting of contacts or users. Whatever the names given to brand the users being gethered in one's profile or account, be it 'friends' or 'followers' or 'subscribers', it appears that the whole point of such platforms is to gain audiences to take a closer look into our lives. It has been said that social media has made the public some sort of attention-seekers (kinda like what I'm doing now =p) and these days, attention-seeking comes with greater and bigger dangers.
I deleted my Friendster account when I decided to join Facebook back in August 2008 because by then, pretty much everyone on the virtual world had realised that Friendster was going down the drain. If I recall correctly, I only had around 170 friends then. Almost 3 years of using Facebook, I still only have 171 friends. I fell short of the average 233 friends most Malaysian Facebook users have.
In that three year, I've removed several few from my friends list either because I befriended the person for the wrong reason (I had a crush on this person so I added the person on Facebook merely for stalking purposes but when that didn't turn out right, I just removed the person's profile) or because there are other means I can use to communicate with that person (I talk to my family on Skype so I don't have any of my siblings' Facebook profiles) or because there was just no communication to begin with because maybe both the person and I added each other on the basis that we went to the same high school despite the fact that we didn't really talk much back then. Had I not removed those people from my Facebook friends list, I still wouldn't have the average 233 friends.
And it's not something that I regret. These days, I've put a target that my number of friends on Facebook will never cross 200. I used to put the cap at only 150 but since I'm meeting new people and making new friends every year, I guess it's inevitable.
After using Facebook for a while, I decided to put my profile on private in which only whom I'm friend with will get to see my wall. Not only that, I've also made my profile unsearchable because I hate it when people request to be my 'friends'. Like seriously, since when friendship is something you could request at whims? Earn it!
I know I appear very unfriendly but I'm very friendly towards everyone around me, virtually or in reality. Except maybe I don't consider them as friends, just acquaintances. Yes, just like how I have a very small number of Facebook friends, I have an even smaller number of actual friends who know me inside out and vice versa. Quantity is not quality and having well over 1000 friends on Facebook does not reflect the depth (if it's any deep) of the friendship you have with all 1000!
The blatant invasions
I honestly don't get this uncontrolled need to add tonnes of friends on Facebook and get zillions of followers on Twitter. Not only I don't like the fact that people I hardly know at all get to have access to things that are personal to me, I also hate getting unnecessary updates and random comments about things I couldn't care less.
I've noticed that some would follow my Twitter account before unfollowing me when I choose not to follow back. Like seriously, it's my freaking choice if I refuse to be updated of whatever you're eating, or wherever you're going or whoever you're making out with!
I rambled a lot on Twitter and I do post the most ridiculous and unnecessary of tweets at the most random of time but the last time I check, I've never forced anyone to follow my account in the first place. When people choose to follow my Twitter account (it's idzwan88 if you guys wanna follow =p), I am under the impression that they are well aware of the fact that they will be updated with my tweets round the clock but I also accept the fact that those people are at liberty to unfollow me if they think my tweets intrude in their daily lives. Trust me, there will be no love lost.
Having said all that, I'd appreciate it if people give me that same option of whether or not I want to be updated with their constant tweeting. I ain't gonna follow you simply because you're following me. At the moment, I'm only following 69 users while I only have 68 followers. I'm not a busy body (at least, not severely nosey =p) so I don't just follow people at random and I'm glad that I didn't have that many followers (half of the followers I have are commercial accounts trying to sell or promote things and they follow me because some of my tweets include the keywords related to whatever they're selling).
The same happens to me when it comes to my blog. I found it appalling that some bloggers would follow my blog then tell me to follow their blogs before they unfollow my blog a few days later because I choose not to follow their blogs in return. Like, how pathetic can you be?
My blog is nothing special when compared to other blogs I've encountered. More often than not, I wrote about what matters to me. I want my blog to serve as a reminder of things I've done in my youth and all the people that have made my life worth living. I wish that when I was older, I would look back on all the posts I've written and be reminded that there was so much courage and potential in youth that adults these days tend to forget. My blog is an extension of myself, of the person I was, and of the person I've become.
I'm perfectly happy with only 37 followers because I blog for myself for the reasons I've stated above. If you choose to follow it, you do it at your own discretion and don't expect me to follow back because I didn't expect you to follow me in the first place.
I also found it extremely annoying to see my Facebook newsfeed being flooded by conversations of some of my friends talking rubbish and insulting each others' mothers. And what's up with friends Facebook-raping each other? Once or twice might be funny but if it were to go on and on for days again and again with the same sexual-related comments, that's really just childish. And what's up with people using gay and homosexual-flavoured lines e.g. 'Damn, I could still feel the juicy cock up my ass from last night!' to embarass their friends? By doing so, those people are insinuating that being gay is shameful and something that has to be publicly denied and I think that is insulting to the gay community, apart from just being plain rude!
I've chosen not to add people on the simple basis that we study at the same place (if we already see each other everyday, being Facebook 'friends' wouldn't make the relationship any more valuable) or because we've met once or twice in some random party (in which you were drunk and you can't even recall my name!) or just because the person has been reading my blog or we've exchanged genial banters on Twitter. I don't have anything to hide but just because I'm not hiding anything, it doesn't mean I have to let the whole world know what I'm doing. I'm a very private person. And it's enough that I have to handle all the drama from the 171 Facebook friends I have so I'm not taking anymore on board!
The slippery slope
Now, Facebook-raping a friend with gay-related comments might not be as bad as actually live streaming the video of your gay roommate having sex (because that is just something that can't be reversed and a young man had jumped off a bridge because of that) but aren't social media providing a much greater platform for invasion of privacy. Are we going down the slippery slope or have we all fallen off the edge of the cliff ages ago?
One of the most recent feature of Facebook is Places where users can 'check in' using their mobile devices that allows others to see where they are at the moment. For someone who has already taken pretty much every possible measure there is to make sure that none but my friends will have access to my newsfeed, I still feel uncomfortable with the idea that people would know where I am on real-time basis
Yes, the idea was practical from commercial point of view. When I see a friend 'checked in' in this newly-opened Korean restaurant here in Newcastle, I quickly commented that the place was beyond shit and not at all authentic (I tried it the day before and it was severely dismal!) and in doing so I get to destroy the business by preventing my other friends from going to that shitty restaurant. It sounds bad but hey, it works the other way around too so others could counter-comment and give differing opinions.
It, however, is very very dangerous from the perspective of individuals' privacy. Imagine somenone who hasn't taken the steps to protect his or her Facebook profile from the prying eyes of a stalker. The new feature will allow the stalker to pin-point exactly where that someone could be because the feature also comes with bing map in which one could get the exact location and direction to to the place. Now, that's kinda like every stalker's dream.
According to Life Online Show (follow #lolshow on Twitter), the feature has yet to penetrate Malaysia but I can imagine Malaysian Facebook users using it to the very core. As it is, many Malaysians are already using Foursquare to openly reveal the locations they're at and the updates can be seen on Facebook and Twitter, two platforms that can be accessed openly by pretty much everyone if the users do not implement any form of protection.
The two sides of a coin
If social media is a coin, one side will be the society and the other will be the medium and neither can exist without the other. For a coin to remain balanced standing, both sides will need to be of equal weight and the same can be said of social media.
More often than not, when the usage of social media results into a tearful tragedy or a blatant breach of one's right, society tends to lay blame on the medium itself. What most people fail to reflect on is that, most of the time, the medium has been designed in such a way that all those tragedies could be prevented had the society learn to bear its share of responsibility.
When my then 13-year-old cousin just started his Facebook profile, I was shocked to find that he had publicly revealed his home address on his profile. I told him to remove the address there and then. In a situation like these (in fact in most situations involving social media), ways and means have been provided to make sure that any untoward incidents could be prevented but it all lies in the society to learn and make use of those measures.
Yes, ever since the very start of the world (real or virtual), there has been this constant race to gain the most friends, followers, or subscribers. Our pursuit in chasing the glory of having 1000 friends on Facebook or 5000 followers on Twitter or simply to have our opinions heard on a bigger scale might have put us at risk of losing some of the core necessities of human civilisation like feeling safe in our surroundings or common sense.
Constant vigilance is the operative player in the equation of social media. It is, in fact, the kingmaker in determining which sides will have a greater influence on human civilisation. Any tip of the scale due to the lack of vigilance that causes the coin to lean to one side will cause that side to reveal its evil face and at the moment, I'm more inclined to think that we're seeing more of the evil face of society rearing proudly because while the media has proven its vigilance (by providing measures to protect one's privacy), it's the society and their lackadaisical attitude and ignorance that tend to tip the scale.
So, which is the lesser of two evils?
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