Voyeurism in the Virtual Vurld!

Ok if you still staring at that last word and wondering wht on holy earth it means, scratch your head no further, cos I couldn’t think of a word which starts with V! Gotcha there! Last week during our regular chai-meet I was humoured by this interesting conversation between my fellow othala members(thats our gang name, jobless, that’s wht it means).
“Dudeh, new rules on Orkut, you can’t view any random girls scrapbook or album unless you are on her friend list”, Othala exclaimed with that extra pinch of remorse.
“Abhe yaar then nobody will use Orkut ”, added Afzal.
“But isn’t Orkut a social netwroking site where you can get in touch with lost friends from school and college and stay connected with people you know”, I thought out loud. What a clumpsy thought!Duh! Obviously I was thinking wrong, cos all the people who come under the ‘Orkut addicts’ community use it for ulterior motives, profile hoping being the most common.
Orkut invaded my space back in college, and this networking site is presumed to be the brainwave of a strange guy who answers to the call of Orkut Buyukkkoten-somethign, what a highly laughabale and strange name I say. I reckon he started all this cos he was somebody who was extremely lonely, somebody who didn’t have friends all through his school and college days cos nobody could get his name right and took more than a couple of seconds tryin to get the pronounciation. This is what I presume would have happened.

*A game of hide and seek in the 60’s*
Kid A :: “..98,99,100, All ready im opening my eyes”
Orkut (thinking to himself) :: “If I jump from the corner of the bush and make ash for the dabba point, im sure to beat him”


With this brave thought he dashes to the pole or dabba spot, the denner(that’s wht the main guy was called) sees Orkut from the corner of his eye and runs in from the other direction,all the while pullin out his hair tryin to recollect his name.


Orkut (exclaiming with great joy):: “Dabba dabba dabba, you loose”
Kid A :: “Die fiend, die, I reached the spot before u did, but your name didn’t roll out of my tongue that’s why I didn’t hit dabba”
Orkut (oblivious of everything):: “Dabba dabba dabba”
Kid A :: “ &%^(*$, screw you, im going home”

Having being tortured by his friends since early childhood, Orkut lived a rather sad and solitary life. To win back his lost childhood and all the joys of hanging around with friends he decides to start a networking site. Jobless Brazilians and Indians lend support in this nobel cause and start scraping each other in the name of “friendship” and the rest as they say is a mystery, sorry history! When I started ‘orkuting’, it was more like a competiton. “That bitch has two friends and 5 scraps more than me, dammit, I better improve my stance here” was my only recurring thought, so I started hunting down lost friends like the end of the world was drawing close and scraping “Hi” to anybody and everybody who was online even if I had scraped them 10 “Hey” the past 3 min! Soon it got addictive, and by addictive I mean tallying scraps and friend requests every nanosecond! There is a downside to this fun way of holding on to friendship, your life is a open book. People prying through scraps and the albums can get a good amount of information about the person in question. Ok I admit even I have done that nosey thing! If the person is the straight-from-the-shoulder types you even have information of his/her eye or hair color and also relationship status, so if you honest and reveal that you are single, you’ll find a filthy lot of people with their sickeningly derogatory english asking you for “fraindship and to get in touch with the baasht friand available”. Shucks! This popularity led to the mushrooming of lot other networking sites like Facebook, where you can give a ‘hug’ to any stranger and your friends accquitances will automatically become your friends. This type of networking is indeed a good way to stay in touch with people ‘you know’ from different corners of the world and also a fun way to stay in touch with people you really don’t care a rats fart, like that guy in school who got away with ass licking all the teachers.

What kicked me off into writing this stuff is when I read an article in the paper which said that on Facebook any online purchases you do on the net will be intimated to your friends, so if you swipe that credit card and decide to duck into a bar of chocolates that information will be relayed to all your friends on the face of this earth. Christ Jesus, some random guy telling me im fat enough and those calories in the choc would just add onto my weight would be the last thing I would want to hear! Till the epidemic lasts revel in it but don't start looking at people as virtual objects, a human touch will do you more good then a virtual hug!