There are over 850 million Facebook users registered with the (soon to be IPO) social giant. Of those 850+ million, there are some many millions changing the course of their life by virtue of being logged on to this social network, larger than most developed economies of the world, combined!
Of those some many millions, there are a few doing exceptionally interesting things that not only grab everyone's attention, but also manage to become the epicenter of a moral dilemma that makes a big fat u-turn to the basics of social networking and how it might be corrupting the fiber of society.
Still with me? Good. Go back a few weeks to when Mr. Texas shot his daughter's laptop and made a big fiasco about how she was impertinent and obnoxious and deserved nothing but solitary confinement. Perhaps not as exaggerated as I just put it, but man did that YouTube video go viral. 30 million views in 3 weeks! The objective was met and delivered successfully. What did it result in for little Ms. Rudely? Who knows, no one really remembers the problem anyway.
When social media began to take effect, sort of like a hostile take-over of what you know to be life, it also began a transformation in society with the way we interact with one another offline. Our behavior and curiosity began to grow and like I mentioned in a previous post on my blog, we started focusing more on who we want to be online and how that can translate into a better 'me' experience, offline.
Our goals for social interaction began to change. So much so that today you can book a seat on KLM flights by Facebooking your would-be flight neighbor based on their photogenic appeal. What? I can legitimately stalk people before I actually get to meet them for a minimum of 30 minutes in closed quarters where only mythical fantasies are known to happen? That's clearly a violation of some privacy.
Apparently it doesn't matter because there must be a waiver that is signed before allowing public display of your antics from last night's street fiesta. Even still, the desire to open ourselves up, first online, then offline - kind of takes the meaning of cyber dating to another level.
Enough about that, this post is not at all about relationships from social stalking, but about the crisis of a digital identity that begins to consume our real identity - the one we can feel, smell, touch and even pinch occasionally. Yes, the one you require to read this post and ponder over how it affects you (good, bad or neutral).
More specifically, I'd like to focus on an incident that became headline news a few days prior; the one about the Taiwanese girl, Claire Lin, who suffocated herself to death with carbon monoxide fumes. That's not the odd part, it's that she did this with live updates and commentary to a group of friends, all of whom 'virtually' tried to help her, but failed to call an ambulance, family, police or even a journalist for crying out loud! When did we stop becoming humans and start becoming faces behind a monitor with no physical abilities to interact beyond a status update?
Regardless of whether I think that's even acceptable 'social' behavior, the fact that this was not a teenager, but a grown 31 year old adult who amused herself with giggles about her feelings as she took her real life, also terminating her digital life. The memory will stick for a while, her friends and family will mourn, but we will go on about our daily business because life goes on. However, it would be prudent to consider the limit to which we are capable of sacrificing our offline life for our online one. The debate isn't about spending too much time online, it's more to do with what you become when you do. This is where I say, be careful what you wish for.
Sadly, the news goes viral by the same means she decided to be emotional and careless with her life, social media. The irony is that it will continue to exist, with or without you. This is beyond organic growth - the social world has become an alternate to our existing one and without proper care and guidance, you could get lost to it. The key is to remain in control of how you balance your two lives, while keeping both feet on the ground. This doesn't mean visiting one of the online suicide websites to rid yourself of your online presence - just tread with caution and be conscientious of your actions.
Remember, we've been social since the caveman, so evolve with care.
Zohare Haider is the head of corporate and digital communications at wi-tribe. He tweets as @JJBaybee.
image courtesy sfantoo