Face book...No-Face book

There was once a tsunami..and probably every news channel on earth was covering it. There was an earth quake in China, again this was covered extensively on the news. Same story with Katrina and all her cousins visiting Uncle Sam's house...And with the new age of (well..not so new, but sounds nice to call it that) internet news links, every bit of news was available to every individual who had even the slowest dial up connection.

But...why do I strongly feel that even during these trying times, ( at least for the few who found themselves in the middle of the disasters) there were more hits on Facebook than on any of these news channels' links? I don't have the statistics to prove it, but I am sure most of you would agree with me, when I say well this is the new attitude of the world.

Religiously promoting their 'not-so-real' identities (I do not want to hurt anyone by calling it fake :) ) on facebook, and begin blissfully ignorant about everything else, is the latest passion. Its what most people have decided 'begin cool' is all about. 

Take Mr.Somebody for example. He will wake up everyday trying to come up with a witty and smart 'status message' that draws the maximum comments from all his friends and maybe friends of friends too. My my, what a useful use of time this is.

Hey, I'm no saint. I am on facebook too. I registered a couple of months back, for 'un-cool' reasons of wanting to find a roommate. But I did join nevertheless. I never did find a roomie, but did find a whole lot of my school friends, whom I had not spoken to or been in touch with for ages. That made me happy....for a while. Not so happy that after the initial 'hey what u been up to?' and such, we are back to being 'not in touch' with each other. Basically all I achieved was to assert my existence (maybe not too favorable for some). 

So, I was under the illusion that I could keep in touch with all of them, and that there will be a lot of conversations...never happened. So, i decided I will start a topic for discussion. I posted on my 'status' a link to a news article on the recent 'ethical' behaviour of the Sri Rama Sene. And wow did that draw comments and a discussion.. I got all of one comment from my cousin. That discouraged me enough to forget facebook for a while. 

Then it was time for a new experiment. I posted a status message 'Smitha has no clue who posted this status message...she is really very busy'. Yes my intention was not to be very intellectually stimulating :) Well guess what, I was flooded with comments. See what I mean? This is where the priorities of the world lies. I know I am talking about a very small subset of my acquaintances , but I am sure this is mirrored everywhere in the world when I look through all the directions conversations take on facebook.

Just to set the tone straight, I am not here to go facebook-bashing. I am just giving my thoughts about current priorities and attitudes that we are seeing. I am also not really calling out for a revolution or 'Come lets change the world' movement. I am just saying... :D

Curious to see if i get comments on this one...