Facebook outlet of personality disorder or releasing bottled up emotions

April 09, 2012

A critic of social networking sites like Facebook, for all these years I had my reasons to feel it is bringing the evil side of human behavioural disorder. Uncontrolled nature of the medium often incites people to use the virtual world as a punching bag, something that many of us need in the real world to vent out anger and frustration. As a result, I often come across cuss words, half-baked perspective and ignorant rant that can spoil the taste of any decent society. More often than not I end up meeting fake faces with a holier-than-thou persona where pseudo identity gets exposed immediately after a meet up in real world. 

No wonder, my initial euphoria of networking with old forgotten acquaintances and newly found like-minded people soon turned out to be taste spoiler. It is not that I stopped adding more friends; rather it remained an on-going process in order to understand the behavioural disorder of the society at large from a psychological perspective. Of course, in this social networking spree, many exposed and not-up-to-the-class crowd got deleted and blocked on a regular basis. Nevertheless I carried on with the necessary evil in social media, though with a critical approach.

However, the writer in me and more importantly the critic in me often had this introspection about the cost-benefit factor of social networking.  After all, sharing of literary taste and socio-political concerns was less and internet hooliganism was more on offer. Every other comment seemed to be coming out of a fit of rage. A subdued society that India has been, there has suddenly been a rush for activism and often “rebel without a cause” in the virtual world. 

Added to the fact, I also found the other side of what I call misguided personality where people seemed to be exploring what they are surely of incapable of achieving in real life. Most conspicuous has been the quest for a political career by viciously abusing the governments and the powers-to-be. Many of such people seem to genuinely believe that it is a platform for transformation and social change.

All this left a very basic question that whether Facebook was proving to be an agent of lawless society. How to deal with an outlet of personality disorder? Whether there is a psychological side of the medium that needed to be thoroughly researched? Whether Facebook is making everyone a communicator for all the wrong reasons? What are the long terms social benefits and imbalances of the virtual world?

However, what made me question my own conviction now, if not change it completely, is some personal experiences where I was introspecting whether my own outburst on the Facebook was in sync with my belief and ideology. Of late, Facebook by default proved to be my alter ego as well where my subconscious mind was driving me to vent out my anger and frustration. But the critic in me was constantly questioning whether this impulsive urge to update my state of mind so bluntly could have been avoided? 

Going through some crisis in life when I needed an avenue to vent my anger, with nobody around, Facebook was there. Of course, my frustration and anger never defied my intellect or literary taste. But then, I ended up doing something of which I have been critic over the years. So, now I have come to realise that in the fast lane of loneliness that the life in a metro offers, Facebook and many other virtual-social platforms are also acting like stress busters. 

In an honest observation, I had bottled up emotion for months that was asking to be released. And before I could regain my intellectual self, the anger, frustration and depression in me got an outlet with Facebook updates. And I must admit here that this release of bottled up emotion had its therapeutic effect as well. Have I ended up doing the same of which I had been a bitter critic? 

I am trying to delve much deeper to understand this dichotomy of social media and shaping up of personality. Hopefully, I come out with some more conclusive results. If not, at least I have initiated a debate which many psychologists would love to discuss—whether Facebook is an outlet for personality disorders or releasing bottled up emotions. Well, till the time more conclusive results are found, Facebook seems to continue as an alter ego for many like me. 

Social netwroking is a blind date that needs precaution

Jan 22, 2010

As if a Facebook status update or a Tweet with bad language, half baked perspective and ignorant rant was not enough. One of the recent relationship invites make me wonder whether social media is the new haven for all the disgruntled souls. I can conveniently ignore the overt advertisements inviting blind dates on various networking sites, but am clueless with some weird, strange quirks that let you into places you aren’t supposed to go. How can one fall in love with me just over couple of days of online friendship? It seems organized criminals are using one’s personal information shared on social networking sites in increasingly sophisticated ways to target victims.
Social media even without these gangs can never be a safe zone in a society where conflict resolution is more about compromising than collaborating. I often come across peculiar thought process that seem to shout at your face- “I don’t like your status updates/tweets anymore, not because your or mine literary tastes or social concerns have suddenly changed. My grouse is more with your snub to the common friend in the network who is more close to me.” All this makes me wonder whether we need a primary school of social networking to remind us that we are grown ups now. It is true that social networking is also about community building. But this close knit bonding for the right reasons often turn into wrong reasons when there is an element of subtle lobbying in the process. 
In a free virtual world with no guidelines or regulations, we are getting used to see something online that makes us mad, find something offensive online repetitively nowadays. Bad language, cuss words, half-baked perspective, ignorant rant and much more that often gets to the nerves to react. Somehow I am learning to live with this reality that very much like the real life; problem with opinion online is that everyone has it. Perhaps even Lord Keene could not anticipate that in days to come everybody will be an expert on everything.
For a person like me with firm grounding in conventional means of communication, the conscious decision to switch to new online vehicles—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook was not based on its decency level any way. The experience of close friends over Orkoot was enough to suggest how a networking site can be a catalyst to behavior pattern shift in a virtual world. But then it was a need to take the clients’ presence to the new age tools. Something that Track2Media Consulting has done quite successfully over the last couple of years.
Over a period of time I started realizing the need of this necessary evil called social media, both at a personal and professional level. I have written extensively over the pros and cons of networking over the medium. I also keep telling the students of mass communication, with whom I interact as guest faculty in some institutes and universities that it is a necessary evil. Precaution is a must if you want to play safe. 
Professionally as a brand communication expert and as an activist at personal level, my caustic, sarcastic and angry response is often not in sync with the opportunity cost of ignoring it. I often allow myself to get offended and outraged, and the activist in me just can’t resist giving it back to the offence. Though, of late, I have started questioning myself whether the person has been worth my reaction. Has my reaction only given him credibility? Still by and large I don’t care for the cost-benefit analysis of my reputation in a world where, as they say, those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter. Social media is big enough for all kinds of characters to stay and engage.
After all, social media is like a blind date. You can only wish that she turns out to be a hot chick. On your part you get your basics right and arrive in style in a blind date. Again you can only hope this date with hot chick doesn’t get goofed up. But if the prayers are not answered, who cares. And who would like to carry the blind date analogy to its logical, ridiculous extreme? If the conversation online is not right, or if the other person carries a placard suggesting he/she is the best, you just communicate for a while and walk your way, without any plans of engaging yourself.
I treat my online relationship in a similar way, and any interaction beyond this is always a slow and steady process. Handling a relationship is fragile and nurturing the respect takes its own time and judgment. It hardly matters if my friends’ list changes completely over a period of time, particularly in the event of failure to agree to disagree. As a matter of principle in my now almost two years of social & professional networking online, I have never asked someone for personal information. I have exchanged phone numbers only when regular online interaction has led to some common meeting grounds and the other person feels like connecting with me at a personal or professional level.
I have also never asked a virtual friend of the opposite sex to show me her real picture as to how she looks like. I have also never removed someone from the friends list just because her real face is not visible on the site. I have rather respected the individual choice of the person to be there online the way she wants to be. Her decision to keep anonymous might be guided by her desire to play safe in a world where photographs of even celebrities are morphed with nude pictures nowadays. Who am I to intrude into someone’s safety zones, just because she added me as a friend? For me these personal details matter if we become close enough to think of meeting outside the virtual zones. But such friendships are few and far between.
In general I am nowadays careful with who my friends are; they could turn out to be my worst enemies. There are some wonderful people whom I have met online and with whom I have interacted and built a relationship. However, there are also other people who misrepresent who they are and what their intentions are. In order to be safe, some of my female friends don’t put their real pix and personal details to be known to all. After all, they need to be constantly cognizant about who they trust and what they divulge online. It is important not to trust online connections before building a strong and solid foundation in the relationship.
Being safe in the world of social media is a choice that should not offend genuine people in the friend list at all. We have the example of Steve Boggan who discovered about the past life of his girlfriend of 12 years, Suzanne Halam, just by using the internet. It took just one hour for internet experts to find out almost every private detail of this woman's life. That includes her friends, education, embarrassing pictures, former boyfriends and long-forgotten relatives.
This happened because, in common with millions of people in Britain, Suzanne was using the social networking sites Facebook and Friends Reunited, and had signed up to the business networking site LinkedIn and Flickr, the photo-sharing website. Armed with this information, criminals could have also used her identity to commit fraud or resurrect minute details of her past, her movements and friendships to lure her into scams or even dangerous liaisons. It could have been used to con her into revealing her bank details and credit card numbers.
After all, even the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, a man not known for worrying about internet surfers’ privacy, suggested recently that young people might want to change their identities in the future in order to separate themselves from a past lived too openly on the internet.
The relationship invite that I received was thoroughly investigated by my e-sister (I found this kiddo online). She found objectionable stuff over there and hence asked me to block it. But I realized how these criminal gangs are carefully fishing for victims online. In the past, they would have sent out thousands and thousands of spam emails in a scattergun fashion — and many still do. These are called phishing scams where you are awarded millions of $ for having used the email. Some of them invite fake requests from banks asking people to confirm their account details, passwords and so on. The hope is that, once in a while, someone would be silly enough to reply.
Fortunately, I was not silly, will never be so. A love affair over couple of days of online friendship? Oh! Give me a break. Instinctively I am now addicted with social media and professionally it has benefitted me as well. Therefore, it is no longer a matter of choice to stay connected, but the need as well. However, being less than couple of years old on the social networking sites, I am fast learning the nuances of the medium. I hope the learning curve makes me careful in selection of friends/contacts in future, benefits Track2Media Consulting in its business and goads the mass communication students in the right direction with my shared experiences.