I'm a guy who used to sit a lot of time in-front of internet everyday. It almost made me think that I exist only in the internet. I behave different when I am in the internet. Some of my friends thought that I am chatting a lot and some others believed that I am learning a lot of things through internet. In reality, I was doing nothing, just sitting idle watching some TV series or movies. I think, many of us believe that our young generation is misguided by internet. But, I want to say one thing "'internet' is not always a bad word".
My life is severely influenced or affected by internet. There used to be a time when I used to blame myself for sitting infront of a computer for long hours. But, internet has changed a lot of things in my life for sure. I've been using blogger for the last 4 years and it is an achievement that I'm recognized or famous among people I do not know. It was always a good thing to know that there are people who like my thoughts and in a sense, I believe that I've improved a lot in my language just because of this blog. I've been thinking a lot about blogging though I write less. Internet was always an arena of knowledge and thought provoker in my life. Today, I use internet whenever I have some doubts about anything. To be frank, google made others believe that I am smarter than I look. If someone asks me a doubt in anything, all I used to do is to google it. I'm their big fan!!
Internet is a very vast thing and I feel quite natural to see the dark side of using internet.Misusing such a great opportunity is what I really meant. At some point, I believed that I've forgotten how to behave in the normal world just because of this internet addiction and I felt so sad about it. But, I believe that I've realized some facts about this addiction. This addiction happens when we make this internet more private and personal than it has to be. I like to meet new people, make friendship and share thoughts and internet is the best place to do it. I never got bored of using internet in my life. I always had something to do here and I consider it as a good thing.
What makes internet bad? We are making this too personal in a virtual world. Meeting people in internet is simpler now. I have a lot of friends whom I do not know and I do not believe that I am going to have an opportunity to chat with them. I really do not want them to get disappointed if they like to see my status updates and shared items in their home page. My social networking profiles are full of acquaintances or strangers and I have no problem in their presence except for a huge number in the friends list. Nothing in this internet is true or honest. Why should I be honest here? No one should care what I do here, because there is no reason to. I can comfortably type ":(" by laughing too hard, I can think of a programming code to type "hmm" in my chat box on every 20 seconds and do something else so as to make the person at the other end believe that I really listen to what they are saying, I can use google translator to make others believe that I know a lot of languages. Anything can be faked including our intentions and interests. I will not be entertained if I happened to meet a person with my photo as his profile photo just because I am cuter than him. It is not so difficult to find a 'completely open' photo album of cute girls (preferably strangers) so that you can download them and make your own fake profile. These things must feel weird to all of us. I think, these things made some of us believe that we have nothing believable in this internet.
I do not know whether I take this thing personal or not, but I would like to see internet as a place where I can meet anonymous people and share my knowledge. Actually, I have a weird idea in my mind today. What if I could make a online place where you could never use your name or photo in your profile. Being anonymous seems to be a good idea for me. "I do not know you and you do not know me. So, let us be friends." looks like a great idea that can avoid addictions as well. What would you do if there were no facebook or orkut or internet itself?
Raghu
