Difference of opinions

NB: Long rant ahead.

People are meant to be different, aren’t they? There are so many varieties in every species in this world. If everyone had the same characteristics, this would have been a different world altogether. Every human being need not be the same, though the processes and life they go through in their lifetime is the same. But still, social media has turned out to be a virtual battle field where people judge, criticize and bash up each other because of the behaviour.

Sharing, Likes and Tweets:
Facebook wisely created the concept of Pages for business purposes. I remember adding one of my school friend, and she had started a store. All the updates from her feed was the promotion of her business, clogging my timeline. By the time it tested my patience, and before I could turn her notifications off, she wisely created a Facebook Page for her promotions. If she had not, how could I convey to her, that though I appreciate that you have become an entrepreneur for which I am whole heartedly glad about, I am not interested in her business pictures. The same applies to my tweets too. I rarely would take part in “promotions” but would happily “share” your blog posts, if I liked them. Its not discrimination as such, but my way of handling and organizing my online social accounts.

There are these contests, where in you need to “like” the page, or “tweet” about it to take part in them. Is it so hard to understand that they are marketing gimmicks? It maybe useful for a business but for a friend feed? If I am your friend, does it mean I need to “like” every single post of yours? When I like a post or page, it means I truly liked the post from my heart, and not for promotion sake.
In the same way, many people including me, used the twitter favorites as a bookmarking option like the starred labels in Gmail. But nowadays, I come to hear, they are used like the “Likes” in Facebook, to acknowledge the replies, or to say “I agree”. So does it mean, if I don’t favourite or retweet your tweet , I am discriminating? I am not.

Similarly, there is a reason why I haven’t connected Twitter to Facebook or Instagram or Foursquare automatically. The same reason why there are categories, labels , frequencies, lists and many other jargons, to post your feed into.

If you still want to leverage social media, like the Facebook Pages, create a separate accounts in twitter and pinterest for sharing your works.

Respect the pace:
There are people who never are active on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. They prefer the traditional way of keeping in touch by calling friends. To keep pace with the generation, if at all, they joined the social media bandwagon, do we need to pressurize them to use all the social media, like you do? If they are not tech-savvy, I would introduce them to the technologies, give them the useful info, but never force them or make fun of why they are not taking the advantages. They may or may not join the race, but let them do at their pace.

Some people, including my near and dear ones, choose not to reply either in Whatsapp or Twitter or Facebook or Gmail or blog comments. They may have either forgotten or missed the message or felt that it should be conveyed directly. By expecting them to reply, we are building up a standard or rules to which if they don’t conform, they lose our respect and trust and even friendship! Ideally, we should let them be themselves. But this is one aspect of expectations where I still fail to ignore.

Respect the opinions:
Every parent and every child is different, and that’s why there are various methods of parenting. Long back, spanking children was common, and no one ever bad-mouthed such women for what they did. Nowadays, even yelling is a big no, and if we do accidentally, people start bashing on you in the social media. The fact is that, when you already owned up on your deeds in a public forum, it means you already feel guilty about it. Do other women need to advice her again, or should console her, that it happens to them too, and provide suggestions to not happen it again?

There were articles on motherhood, where the author strongly voiced her opinion not to overrate motherhood bliss, because its like any other relationship. This was followed by other articles which opposed the author brutally for writing what she felt. Agreed, mother hood is a sensitive topic since it deals with women, who are so sensitive themselves that they cannot read an article without a pinch of salt. This is what sometimes creates the same-sex battle.

And then there are the wars between followers of Homeopathy and Allopathy, like Google and Apple or Windows and Linux. Enough said. Only the wise leave such battleground to make way for the ignorant people to fight for.

Similarly, there was a time when I felt down, and posted about feeling lonely, in a forum, in the hope that people will suggest ways to move forward and come out of it. Though there were mostly sensible replies, some of them were too harsh . Empathy is indeed hard to find, while sympathy is abundant.

Social Pressure:
Have you heard any interview in which the celebrities and politicians does not blame the media? To some extent, its true, because media hype has huge impact these days, both for better and the worse news. If the news and media channels has to work 24×7 they would need to blow up some silly matters to fill in the gaps. It will definitely matter only when people cannot take the criticisms after a certain extent and end up harming their life.

Long back, students did fail, but now, the suicide rates have increased if the marks gets lower by even one mark. People are now more connected to each other in both virtual and real worlds which builds the expectations and standards of living to unreachable heights. Any failure or bad news spreads as easy as fire, leading to unavoidable confrontation. And unless, people are strong within themselves to face the blows and glares, they easily succumb to the external pressure.