Social Media Mumbo Jumbo
As expected I begin with Facebook and the buck stops here.
We live in an era where Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram et all dominate a person's daily doings. A question that comes up is, what is the purpose of it all? What is it people are trying to achieve through their daily mumble jumble and the constant barrage of meaningless photographs, text, status updates, posts, shares, likes, promoted to each user based on pre-defined logic by the social media companies?
Earlier, parents, well-wishing media, society in general would complain how the TV was an 'idiot box' and made us all into 'couch potatoes'. Now it's about the constant fingering of the 'smart'phone while being anywhere on the planet. It's the complete opposite of the TV, so well, it should all be hunky dory.
Let's discuss whether technological innovation has helped dissemination of information and social interaction or not.
The TV presents us with content that is professionally curated, directed, shot, and created, and available to witness by changing to our preferred channel, along with the occasional ads, which we had to view even if we paid for monthly cable subscriptions. This was Push Media, Pulled depending on the channel we decided. The Media companies, cable companies and all those in the chain had nothing but our Name, home address and credit card information.
With social media, the content is either being generated by the users or are advertisements. Your channels buttons are social media icons, and once you click a particular icon, you are at the mercy of the company which decides the post that you get to see. You may get to see a random selfie that the attention seeking girl in yoga class put up and miss out on the birthday celebration that your old college friend just had. Is this why you signed up on Facebook?
Instagram is basically 'Pull ads'. The best content is generated by the companies that make money of generating this content and get as many followers as possible. You get to see 1 friends post for 5 ads.
Snapchat? Well, snapchat expects you to be on their app 24/7 else you may miss out on "crucial" posts by your friends and now ads.
The social media company knows your name, address, phone number, time you sleep, time you eat, what you eat, what you read, what you like, whom you like, how you like to do it, what you like to do and this list keeps going. They don't need your credit card info, as to collect all of this information they need to keep their services 'free'. Your credit card information is, however, available with Amazon, Flipkart, the latest fashion brand, the fastest delivering grocery store, the uber cool shoe company and others whom you have previously signed up for or are going to sign up for when you see their ad on one of these platforms. Again these ads are most pushed to you, and these marketing companies are the ones deciding whom to push based on the plethora of information they now have at their disposal, provided by you, routed via FB to them.
If you do delete either of these apps from your phone, it will have no effect on your mood, social abilities, updates on friends lives. You will not miss anything substantial or what you really wanted in the first place. At the end of the day, everything that we do shouldn't have to be about buying or selling. Social media companies should pay attention to the fallacies of their products and start moving to more meaningful products, lest they risk losing it all.
Moving from social media to reading, news, video, movies will bring back the joy in the procrastination that earlier helped us not only while away our time but also learn something while at it, learn a new interest and make life more meaningful.
Don't forget to like my post and sign up on my FB, Insta, Snapchat pages!
We live in an era where Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram et all dominate a person's daily doings. A question that comes up is, what is the purpose of it all? What is it people are trying to achieve through their daily mumble jumble and the constant barrage of meaningless photographs, text, status updates, posts, shares, likes, promoted to each user based on pre-defined logic by the social media companies?
Earlier, parents, well-wishing media, society in general would complain how the TV was an 'idiot box' and made us all into 'couch potatoes'. Now it's about the constant fingering of the 'smart'phone while being anywhere on the planet. It's the complete opposite of the TV, so well, it should all be hunky dory.
Let's discuss whether technological innovation has helped dissemination of information and social interaction or not.
The TV presents us with content that is professionally curated, directed, shot, and created, and available to witness by changing to our preferred channel, along with the occasional ads, which we had to view even if we paid for monthly cable subscriptions. This was Push Media, Pulled depending on the channel we decided. The Media companies, cable companies and all those in the chain had nothing but our Name, home address and credit card information.
With social media, the content is either being generated by the users or are advertisements. Your channels buttons are social media icons, and once you click a particular icon, you are at the mercy of the company which decides the post that you get to see. You may get to see a random selfie that the attention seeking girl in yoga class put up and miss out on the birthday celebration that your old college friend just had. Is this why you signed up on Facebook?
Instagram is basically 'Pull ads'. The best content is generated by the companies that make money of generating this content and get as many followers as possible. You get to see 1 friends post for 5 ads.
Snapchat? Well, snapchat expects you to be on their app 24/7 else you may miss out on "crucial" posts by your friends and now ads.
The social media company knows your name, address, phone number, time you sleep, time you eat, what you eat, what you read, what you like, whom you like, how you like to do it, what you like to do and this list keeps going. They don't need your credit card info, as to collect all of this information they need to keep their services 'free'. Your credit card information is, however, available with Amazon, Flipkart, the latest fashion brand, the fastest delivering grocery store, the uber cool shoe company and others whom you have previously signed up for or are going to sign up for when you see their ad on one of these platforms. Again these ads are most pushed to you, and these marketing companies are the ones deciding whom to push based on the plethora of information they now have at their disposal, provided by you, routed via FB to them.
If you do delete either of these apps from your phone, it will have no effect on your mood, social abilities, updates on friends lives. You will not miss anything substantial or what you really wanted in the first place. At the end of the day, everything that we do shouldn't have to be about buying or selling. Social media companies should pay attention to the fallacies of their products and start moving to more meaningful products, lest they risk losing it all.
Moving from social media to reading, news, video, movies will bring back the joy in the procrastination that earlier helped us not only while away our time but also learn something while at it, learn a new interest and make life more meaningful.
Don't forget to like my post and sign up on my FB, Insta, Snapchat pages!
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