The Adventurism of Social Media

“Social networking sites are bloody suckers for Internet users,” blasted one of my old school cronies. He may be right on his own context. And why shouldn't he retort that way when his wife, an ad professional in a reputed agency, dated her boss regularly in rendezvous decided well in advance in cryptic parlance over different social media. Then she, in all her resounding conscience, smarted up to the occasion in the pretext of certain professional engagements with her clients. Sounds quite banal and inappropriate. I felt pity for this poor chap when he narrated his sordid saga to me last week. I couldn't stop laughing for the simple reason that how immature was my poor friend in jumping to the conclusion and blaming his wife's escapade to the ill impact of social media in entirety. Well, that's another nondescript instance like a pesky item number in a well-packaged movie. But on a serious note, social media had nothing to do with the misfortune of my friend, it's another social aberration that may happen anywhere in any society. It could even have happened without the presence of social media.

The biggest gift of social media is collaboration and reach. A decade before when netizens started using email and chat as collaborative tools, the communication process was two-way – the sender and the receiver; however, with the surge of social media, the real collaboration or multi-way communication became possible. For example, someone twits on any issue, it reaches out to the entire community, and that's the beauty of social media which empowers its avid users with a platform to collaborate on anything and everything under the sun. This is another pillar representing the free speech in a democratic world. The impact can't be marginalized by justifying its effects on social dynamics. The entire world is opening, in a sense that the floodgates of information from billions of social media posts is reaching out to the empowered, decisive consumers in a big way. Imagine how the Wikileak's adventurous journey in digging out the gravel of bureaucratic red tapes and informing the facts hidden behind the sinister design of ruling class hegemony across the nations. This is just the beginning of a new age information war, the next episode would be more dramatic, powerful, and effusive to sweep away the entire human race to a point where the war of words could be more powerful than the impact of a nuclear bomb.