Once
upon a time when everything was well with the world and no one
minded another persons business... lol, i'm just making that up. I
don't think a time as such ever existed. You see, people, by nature
are inquisitive. They want to know stuff that matters. They also want
to know stuff that doesn't matter to them. And to most people it's
the stuff that doesn't matter to them that matters quite a bit to
them. Which is why when a couple of your best mates have a hush-hush
conversation and you walk in, you still demand to know what they were
talking about even if they insist that it has nothing to with you.
Now,
if we were to reverse the equation and introduce a dash of high speed
Internet connectivity to this 'minding-the-other-persons-business'
communication model, you will end with what Social Media Networking
does. People in general, have gone from being 'keeping-to-themselves'
to sharing everything with the rest of the world or at least everyone
who is a follower on twitter or friend on facebook.
So,
what is it that has led people to reverse the roles they play in (if
I may be so bold as to say) 'gossiping'? The traditional method of
gossiping was; the others would talk about everything there is to
talk about, about someone in particular. But since the success of
twitter and facebook, people have started tweeting and updating their
status to let the world know what they are currently experiencing,
whether it be emotions or funny stuff or whatever they feel like
posting.
So,
again, what is it that led to this behavior amongst people? Was there
a law that was passed that everybody should tell everybody else what
they were doing in order for the governments of the world to properly
understand, analyze and document human behavior so that later
generations could have very thorough lessons in the history of Man
and the human mind?
Is
it a fashion or a passing fad? But then again a fashion is a fashion
only as long as there is a select, exclusive group of people doing
it. Anything more than that and then it would be out of fashion. And
that rules it out as a fashion.
No,
to the casual observer it would seem that the whole mystery of the
success of social media networking lies in its ability to provide
up-to-date real time feedback to the user on what is thought about
what she does or says. A status update or a tweet posted online will
bring back comments, retweets, likes and favorites. The majority of
users rely on the feedback they gain to determine whether what they
have been up to is a good or bad thing.
In
the eyes of a casual observer it would seem, society doesn't measure
the popularity of a person by their job, income status, family
lineage or skin color. Rather, their popularity is measured by the
amount of feedback received on the social network of the person
concerned.
At
the end of it all, to think, a little electricity and a lot of
scientific know-how could have transformed society by so great a
magnitude.
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