"And she said we are all just prisoners here, of our own device...", reads one of the lines of the most celebrated and cherished songs and reminds me of certain structures which we have created ourselves knowingly or inadvertently and now are trapped helplessly. "Didn't you check your WhatsApp? I had already posted about it on the class group last night" one of my friends said one fine day morning after I missed a lecture. Indeed certain things created to connect people have now ended up becoming the utmost necessities, so integral that its hard to dispense with them now.
"Will you WhatsApp me your class notes?" a close friend of mine asked me. The inherent nature of platforms like WhatsApp or Facebook is/ was to provide a platform to people to interact, falling within the domain of "social media", for exchanging pictures, videos, etc., for recreation, to preserve the moments, to get 'in touch' with the ones who otherwise are 'distant', and for other myriad reasons. Sometime back WhatsApp introduced a feature of exchanging documents and probably the traditional place, emails (if not since ages, then at least since last few decades) would soon be finding a little space for themselves.
The recent feature of video calling on Facebook and more recently WhatsApp has further enhanced the way we have communicated and an attempt has come to fore to substitute reality or if not substitute, then get closer to it and reduce distances. This feature to an extent seems to meet the criticism of the social media platforms for losing the personal touch. The video calling feature however does pull out the users out of their comfort zones of texting. Texting involves fabrication and manipulation of the situations to a great extent and at times the person on the other side has to rely on presumptions (so its easier for me to send a laughing smiley on being asked if I am alright but even when I am actually not!), and on other instances interpret things, and self-compensate for the absence of tone in the messages sent, sans audio or video calling.
No doubt these social media platforms today are the fastest means to disseminate information, but at the same time to to disseminate wrong information, for both Arab Spring and several communal riots across India have taken off from these platforms. At times the source of information is difficult to verify and a user who does verify different claims or does not 'interrogate' or 'investigate' is likely to fall in trap and the consequences ensue.
However, indeed we are addicted to these structures or a part of them and perhaps after writing this the first thing I am going to do is to share this over WhatsApp and Facebook, because thats how you make something reachable to the people and it is inevitable!
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