Articles
Internet friendships & the modern age of communications
communication for the masses. Along with all this technologies are some new
styles of friendships. Cyber Friends are they real or just an illusion of
friendship??
Becoming friend with someone online is getting more popular than ever
before. Full blown relationship can be had if you’re that way inclined, with
some even eventually getting married which all started off from meeting
and talking regularly online.
We have chat rooms like Hi5, Tagged, and Fan Box etc. Major giant’s sites such as My Space, Twitter and Face book. These sites have hundreds of millions of members who contact each other.... major networking! Some people have 6000 or more friends on
their friends list, but stay in contact with maybe only150 of those if that...... seems to be regular practice! After the initial note of thanks for adding them, unless it’s a general info send out to all type advertising, there's generally
not much if any further personal contact in most cases. It’s really the case with face book. People seeing your name on someone else’s friends list then adding, afterwards your bombarded with events everyday from a person who have no time for you to even to say hello. The same is done now by text with a lot of the promoters.
Still some wonderful friendships are formed everyday and plenty great links made with some lovely good people on the internet.
The trouble is how do you tell whose who and what's real! It must be said
that it's within this type of arena that the word 'Friend' can have its
lease amount of meaning! The good thing about this system is people are
out there advertising their skills and businesses. The bad is some people
are pretending, having great presented shop front windows, but not much
stock inside! Many people create a world for themselves with a webpage where they becomes Kings & Queens of that page, and use it as a kind of escape from reality of their real lives.......Very often after a time these sorts get carried away. They become caught up in their own created false hype, believing that they're like real life celebrities! Just as stardom can be short lived- destroying the less grounded individuals without a plan B, if care is not taken, activities on websites can lead you into a breakdown.
Talk is cheap and easy, but if your a non pretentious person
whose use to backing things up with action, you can become very disappointed
with people you spent time talking with, that's if you get too carried away
with the fantasy about everyone you become friends with being perfect!
Being on a mission to promote yourself, skills or goods is great, because
it’s classed as being enterprising, and why not as everyone should be having
a go at doing their best for themselves. Not everyone is up front like
that.......pretending to be someone's friend online is one of the most
common ways of using people there is out there. It should be easy to
tell..... If you talk with a person for ages about themselves and what their
doing, and they disappear fast or you get no reply when it’s about yourself,
you should recognize what their about. In these times of greed &
selfishness, a genuine person who checks up on you to see how you are and
don't really want anything from you is hard to find. Besides on Face book &
My Space, when you change your profile picture, all of a sudden everyone seems to remembers
you............asking how you are! People can get easily caught-up in what's really nothing more than an illusion of friendship, foolishly believing that the 1000s of people on their friends list really care about them. You have some people collecting as many people that they can by add them, to give the impression of massive popularity but don't know 95% of the people they've added!!
It’s not unusual for people to steal someone else's photos and pretending to
be them...get all the mail that's intended for that person as well as the
business, links, praises and everything else, very common! There's various
Stars, Models, Actor's even ordinary people that have many imitators. The
internet can be highly deceptive dangerous place with business or
friendships, for instance it as been document that Face Book is suppose to
be the world’s number one source for identity fraudsters. So many problems has been caused from people putting out information about themselves that got them into problem with others that are involved in there real lives.
People sitting up all day & night on their computer like it’s a job, getting emotional and arguing with people that they haven't even met before is not unusual as it can all become highly addictive. Developing a friendship on the Net has its plus and minuses. For one in the comfort of a chair, people can be what they want to be,
say what they like about themselves, use words and pictures in a convincing manner and get away with a lot. .
This is not always executed sensibly. Girls who present themselves on a bed
in a thong should not be complaining to their friends that 'all the men are
no good......they just want to sleep with me'. Nether should guys who
promote an image of having loads of money be surprised at attracting pure
Gold Diggers!!
After talking with a person everyday online, when you meet up it can
sometimes feel a little bit strange if you have high expectation and don't
read between the lines. In the real world things are different......it’s live
and real, no pretences! People have undisclosed personal habits! Its eye
contact & body language you can’t lie so easily. There not a lot that can
compensate for judging the tone in a persons voice or the expression on
their face when they say certain things. If it’s in the case of relying on a
stranger’s word to hook you up or a serous relationship.......in other words,
it’s best not to show off to the world or plan the wedding before you meet
the person Lol. In one case a lady showed up at an Airport in another country dressed in a wedding dress, expecting to meet & marry the man she's been talking to for the pass several years. After waiting around dressed up for five hours, she was informed that it’s all a con. As it transpired after investigations, the man of her dreams turned out to be a Con Artist who conned her out of $25.000...... Put on top of that, the picture of the man she became accustomed to was one of four false identities that he used to con ladies.
Having said that there are people I have travelled far to meet for business,
and others who came all their way to England, I've found them to be much
better in many ways in real life than what they present themselves to be on
line! So it can work both ways. There are various steps that can be taken to
cut down on the time wasters, such as filtering out and making your page
private, it give you a chance to check out people before allowing them into
your domain, my preferred option, although not used much for those who want
to be viewed by millions but is available for My Space users.
What's noticeable to the older generation, is the eroding away of people
skills, that are the one on one, face to face type communication. Family
members and friends send each other pictures and emails, and don't feel the
need to go and see each other any more, because they feel they already know
everything what's going on in the other person's lives? The habit these days
of sending a text message, and feeling that's all that's needed, instead of
phoning and fully explain things.... behaving as thou calling is an extreme.
We seem to be living in a plasticized synthetic age, where everything must
be automated, quick cheap and easily available to us at our convenience.
Fast food instead of cooked meals, watching DVDs at home replacing going to
Cinemas, artificial music made by machines and not individual Musicians. The
downloads of music has completely reduced the amount of people going out for
the night to hear music and mixing with others.
Doing your shopping, some people even buy houses online without even going
to visit them. The excitement of going out meeting and talking to people,
seeking and choosing seems to be old fashion, and some people wonder why
so many people are becoming robotic & fake. We are quickly sliding more
and more away from the human feel & touch. Is it my imagination or is all this modern inventions making people all more isolated.
These days it seem to be all about conveniences......as it become the same way with friends?.... it don't seem to matter you don't meet up and some of the new people maybe not that real,
it’s just easier to talk sitting at ah computer.
Text messaging cost pennies, Face book & MySpace is free!...linking up with your
so-call friends incur expenses & time. Sorry to say the truth is.........it seems the majority of people showing each other so much love online, are really not that into each other enough where their willing to spend anything........how real is that!
Because of the simplicity of emailing, texting, sending videos over the
phone etc many people are finding it hard to express themselves live. I was
in a house the other day where they had a power cut for an hour, the mother
was so glad she said it was the first time the family sat together in the
same room for ages, playing games and talking under candle light. The net is
here to stay and I don't think we've seen anything yet with the change in
habits of communicating with people. Many so-called third word countries I visited
have poor internet & general communication systems, but have held on to values
& traditional good habits that breed more down to earth realistic societies of people.
This present systems of contact we have now will probably all be antiquated
not before long, with virtual reality technology & the advancements in
computerization, in the future you'll be able to create the person you want with the simplest of ease. I can imagine some young people telling me 'email no man that's whack caveman style.......just transport yourself'.....Watch this space!
Kenny Passley