Perspective

Its easier to sit behind a screen and judge people....This blogg entry gave a new dimension to the "facebook suicide" discussion. However it doesn't change my ideas of facebook and its shallowness.

To be or not to be...

...a member of social networking site is not a question for me anymore. Been there, done that...nothing for me. The main problem is that a person's social agenda is defined by his/hers activity on the site or how many "friends" a person has. I had about 140 "friends" on facebook, I deleted my account, opened it again after an year and deleted people I couldn't care less about from my friends' list. And guess what? I could delete 100 of them in a jiffy. Why? because I have no personal connection to these people. My account is permanently deleted now, and amen for that!

I read this article which convinced me about the kind of activity people are interested in while spending their time on facebook. A similar case took place in my hometown too. An old acquaintance (whom I wasn't friend with on facebook) wrote "hejdå jakobstad" on his status update, and then committed suicide by jumping off his balcony. He died later on after hitting his skull on the footpath. Why didn't anyone react?

Jealousy, curiousness (not interest), gossiping and hatred are the key words. Most of the facebook users just want to spy, others want to brag about their "social" lives, some like to update every "thought" the have and everything they do EVERYDAY. It's all about me, me, me. Of course their are those who are genuinely interested in maintaining contact with friends but I could count them on the fingers of my right hand. A friend in need is a friend indeed and not a friend on facebook!

Does online social networking make you more empathetic or is the case other way around?