Facebook to Phased Book

So why does FB irk me so much ? I can think of many reasons. Because - I don't have time, don't have the patience, don't have any interest at all. Just to name a few. Or I am falling behind the social media wave. Come to think of it, I access facebook out of peer pressure. Everyone's there, so I have to be there too. When I don't have anything else to do in life, I access FB. And it is not surprising that FB is slowly losing its charm. The age old human psyche is affecting FB too. Boredom ...

Facebook's stocks have taken a beating and the entire IPO seems like a farce now. Essentially FB is entirely relying on its users' time as capital for their stocks. As soon as boredom sets in, time spent on FB will vanish, and so will FB. Why is twitter still so tweet? Because its short and 140 sweet. It gives you a platform to be crisp, short, yet cryptic. While with FB, your whole life is out in the open. I don't use twitter myself a lot, but I prefer something shorter, lighter and faster. Its like the sms service on internet. Time spent is less, so boredom doesn't ever set in.

I still don't understand how it pays to reveal your life for everyone else to see. It invites trouble when you are not even aware. It is amusing, in the number of photos and humorous lines everyone shares. But when the shares and updates from everyone becomes a deluge, it becomes a burden to sift through them all. How many updates really matter? Do you care about updates from all your 500 friends? Or just the 100? Isn't social media just another way of shunning calls and even messaging?

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What a hiatus ...

I was so used to blogging, it really feels astonishing how long I have been away from this activity. Well, all this for very many obvious reasons ... and the signs of which began in April 2010. The almost unthinkable (up until then atleast) happened. Yes, I was tied into a unison for life. And the yield of it came around in January this year. If its too cryptic, forgive me :)

By now the internet has been facebooked into submission. I have been so far away from real world, that I have been away from many spicy stories, news headlines, atleast from a detailing aspect. And of course, the responsibilities at home kept increasing, and has now become a full time activity. What with little fingers and all :)

Still, I need to make an extra effort to restart those fond activities - blogging, photography, etc. Have stayed too far away and inertia has set in badly. Here is a fresh attempt - all over again. Hopefully I can turnover quick enough to feel happy and satisified at my blogging efforts. Hopefully India's censorship standards are still not as strict as those in China!

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India a Ban-Anna Republic?

A bill supposed to free up India of its corruption menace. Or a man's obsession to be a national hero. The Lokpal bill has been in the backburner for decades together. But it looked like the right time to push the agenda, with a government reeling under heavy corruption scams - the 2G scam and the CWG scam especially. Anna Hazare has taken up the case of acute corruption in India, but has lost his focus completely. What cannot be refused here is his mass popularity and support.

The 74 year old Hazare, claimed that this was the second freedom struggle. In conjunction with the day of his fast being immediately after India's Independence Day, August 15. What baffled me is that, India's freedom struggle fructified on August 15, 1947, when Hazare was just 7 years old. Not sure how he could have been part of that freedom struggle? Was he just senile or trying to trump up the post Independence Day fervour in India? At 74 without a family to support, his motivation for such a noble cause is indeed commendable.

What became alarming and disturbing was the method used to shove his Lokpal bill form down the Government's throat. Anna doesn't have to announce his fast was not unto death. Keeping his age in mind, any fast beyond 5 days is literally a fast unto death in itself. Having had the Baba Ramdev incident of midnight eviction fresh in mind, it was easy for Anna to force his way into getting nationwide support when he was sent to Tihar Jail. While all what the government did was arrest him to prevent any untoward incident. Anna reached out to the masses by his tech savvy self, by playing up his video, vowing to push the Jan Lokpal bill (his own draft of the Lokpal Bill).

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