Wednesday, April 15, 2009

TO ALL FACEBOOKERS AND TWITTERERS!



These are the days of Facebook and Twitter! Young and old are dragged into wanting more friends on their own sites to outdo each other. CNN recently has actor Ashton Kutcher challenging them for a first million Twitter followers (currently CNN is leading slightly). Twitter, which allows users to swap messages and links of 140-characters or less, It is something like instant news smses flashed on the Internet linking friends and followers all over the world. Now, everyone wants to have a say and wish everyone "hears" it. If you plot and slog in your blog, you want hot hits! Someone commented, it is a hip playground for those with an overinflated sense of self-importance.


Someone asked me once, "why should I start a Facebook account?" I replied rather unconvincingly then, "To influence friends for the better." Now, I do believe that. It is not for show that I have more friends than you. But how many Facebookers or Twitterers really want to influence people for the better when all they want is to "show-off" or for celebrities like Kutcher or Britney Spears, to make more money or become more famous?


"Ever worry that the ever-increasing barrage of status updates from Facebook, Twitter, and every other real-time, hey-look-what-I’m-doing-and-look-what-happened-just-this-very-second service may be outstripping your brain’s capacity to process them?" Scientists seem to believe that. In other words, we are simply overloaded to process properly.


They even suggested that Twitter could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering. Before we can process properly and learn, pops up another scenario and issue. Multitasking to the extreme can cause numbness to the brains.


So, to bloggers, twitterers, facebookers, please do it to influence people for the better. Don't add on to the misery already aplenty in this world. Also watch out that you Net savvy people, don't simply add things for our cluttered brains to work overtime. We don't get paid for it, you know.

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