We are suddenly more aware of the ‘lives ‘people around us live.. or atleast appear to ‘live’. One hot-lazy Saturday afternoon when even afternoon nap is elusive, I log in to facebook only to spend the next 1+ hours tracking the lives of friends, acquaintances. Yeah something like the peeping Tom or generally face-booking!
As I browsed through the photo albums, I was entering into their worlds and trying to juxtapose those random pieces to create the storyboards of their lives. I knew this girl way back in school. Our fathers were college friends but we didn’t really much carry forward the family legacy. So I am totally out of touch with her since I left school. And today unable to think of doing anything more constructive I look at her album. Honestly as kids we had no inkling of what each one of us would grow into. Or perhaps back then we never tried to fast forward into our futures and picture that stuff. Now all thanks to Facebook I can rewind back into the little snippets of the past which are public to ‘friends’ and witness the part I missed. And see my ‘friends’ grow into the people they are now, and the life that they apparently live. Well I cannot imagine a conversation between the two of us exchanging notes on our lives so far but in an impersonal way each of us is remotely aware of others existence.
Next I moved on to track down a dear teacher from school. I remember her as this sophisticated, young pretty woman who stood almost 6 feet and to add to her spell she spoke impeccable English. Today I see her looking seraphic, flanked by her daughters, holidaying in Europe, Jaipur. Lovely! It was wonderful to see her after so many years.
Our social space has definitely undergone a radical change with the growing advent of social networking sites. How we ‘project’ ourselves, ‘express ourselves’ has changed because we are now aware of a bigger audience waiting for our ‘updates’. ‘Prohibition never stood a chance against exhibition’, and it seems like exhibition has just found a new stage. Yes at some level it appears as if people are merely exhibiting their lives, their every move- well keep it coming, who’s complaining. Birthday, Weddings all personal events, official/nonofficial trips, daily trivia everything has an audience. One has to comment and tweet, to make others aware of his existence in the impersonal cyber space. There is the maddening physical world where we live and another virtual world which is getting louder by the day. It’s almost like striking a balance to retain your sanity J
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