Anybody Out There?

What boredom does to people!? As the world is shrinking due to so many communication mediums that we have but at the same time its also making people indulge in this virtual world soo much that they can end up alone.  There are people who are online 24X7 due to work or personal 'commitments'.  This is definately true for some teenagers now a days who spend a lot of time connecting with friends and hardly talk to family in the same house.  They spend hours playing games on Facebook, virtually poking people, commenting on statuses and what not.  We have B'day reminders popping up and with wish them in that portal and forget to wish them when we meet in person! [It happenned to me :(]

Ages ago (don't intend to make anyone sound ancient) there was the concept of pen friends and I guess somewhere it must still exist.   People would write / exchange letters - Yes, handwritten letters would be posted in the red mailbox! Then there would be the long wait for a reply.  OK I'm not that old but while I was growing up I had read about pen friends and it did not make sense to me to write a letter to a random stranger in some other part of the world. 

Anybody remember the time when Yahoo Messenger was the cool thing? Chat rooms used to have real people you could chat to. Now its just lecherous predators out there with dummy IDs I think. In those days (I think now I sound old) I did make couple of good real friends and I'm still in touch with one friend from those days :P I know of a friend who met his wife in one of those chat rooms :) Did your first e-mail IDs have weird name which you thought was cool at the time and the accounts were in either Rediff, Yahoo or Hotmail?

Coming back to virtual social networking - It is letting geographically distant people connect but may be it is pulling us away from those who are physically around us. Friends sitting next to each other ping or e-mail each other.  Wishing someone on a social site is more important that actually talking to them. When we worry about our virtual pets because we have not seen them could be a warning bell that something is seriously wrong and we need to go get a REAL life. There is however, a growing number of people who are living in the virtual world more than the real world. I had read a report about the virtual world account holders and that maximum users are from the developed nations.  It is also true that the numbers people living alone is also growing in these countries.  It said that some individuals have even made money in the virtual world using virtual money.  Virtual worlds are becoming our extended dreams worlds where anything is possible, escape realities or to just indulge in a little narcissism.  Human beings are social animals and we need to be heard, spoken to and acknowledged. I guess people speak to strangers in a hope that may be they will find someone like themselves or may be they just need to be heard sometimes.

I was randomly googling and found what this person said described exactly why I write:

I choose to write because it's perfect for me. It's an escape, a place I can go to hide. It's a friend, when I feel out casted from everyone else. It's a journal, when the only story I can tell is my own. It's a book, when I need to be somewhere else. It's control, when I feel so out of control. It's healing, when everything seems pretty messed up. And it's fun, when life is just flat-out boring."

— Alysha Speer