Hyper-pseudo-network

Netizens are undoubtedly bitten by the social networking bug. I have always been wondering what makes anybody cling to facebook or twitter at 12 midnight on a weekend. As part of their jobs, techies spend almost 80% of their day in front of their monitors. With ubiquitous social networking sites, it is not hard for the IT folks to stay up-to-date on a friend's marriage or a close relative's promotion or a neighbour's admission into a grad school.

I was looking at a cartoon strip which makes fun of a faked tweet on an earth quake at some corner in the world, which creates panic more than the actual incident. I should agree that the world's become smaller and we are going more and more global. We are in an age when dates over yahoo messenger are turning into marriages and talks over VOIPs causing terrorist attacks!

Where does all this lead us to is the question I asked myself.

Some facts
1) We look at our IM as just another action item and ignore most of the times. Half the times I ping someone, I'm not sure I'll get a response.
2) Our responsiveness on our social network is limited to an exciting update -Perhaps a stolen mobile or a nauseating dinner - from some X, whom we have almost forgotten.
3) Warm greets like "Hi, how do you do?" or "Howz life?" start sounding very boring and of course, we ignore them.
4) Greetings on a birthday or a festival look perfectly artificial with a greetings.com or some other site you don't even know of and with sign up links more than the greeting message.
5) We prefer spending time over these pages more than talking over phone or paying a visit.


Techies do live in a different world full of online conferences, meeting minutes, new friend requests, milestones, newly released block-busters, cafeterias, VPNs, reimbursements and most important of all craving desperately to get to the real world on social network.

Ok, what now? Why am I up against it?
One main reason is the commitment we show to our contacts. It's easier to say lot of things from far, unseen than be there and offer our shoulder. Being a frequent visitor to the networking sites myself, I can confidently say I don't ping a quarter of contacts on my friend's list. Most of my responses are limited to a thumbs up mark, which says "I like it!".

Are we escapists? Am I?