09 Sep 2007, ST
By Colin Goh
ASKED the Wife, looking over my shoulder at my laptop screen: 'Who are all these people poking you?'
Now, there are contexts in which being asked such a question by one's spouse could land one in serious trouble. Thankfully, she was only referring to the list of people poking me (virtually) on Facebook.
Okay, I know that to some of my older readers (hi Mum, hi Dad!), the preceding sentence must have seemed like complete gobbledygook. And just a few weeks ago, I would have regarded it as gibberish, too.
Facebook, as probably every young person in Singapore knows, is a website where users post information about themselves such as their photos, lists of their favourite movies, upcoming events, and short sentences about what they're doing right now. They then link their page to those of their 'friends', thus creating a social network.
In some ways, Facebook heralds the decline of the blog generation. Who really cares about one's meandering opinions on current affairs? By being part social network, part online scrapbook, Facebook brings out both one's inner narcissist and inner kaypoh at the same time - the two dominant impulses of all surfers.
I'd studiously avoided joining these social networking sites for the past two years or so, whether it was LinkedIn, MySpace or any number of corporate/professional equivalents, despite constantly being invited. They just seemed too deliberate to me. I always felt like I was at some e-schmoozefest, handing out virtual namecards and making cyber small talk.
But I was forced to join Facebook recently because only then could I view some photos my cousin had uploaded. I dutifully filled out the information (I still don't know why - ever the good Singaporean, I guess) and even uploaded a photo of myself, and next thing I knew, I was a user.
And it was fascinating. Because I soon found out that there were so many people I knew who were users, too - people my age, not just teens - and who had been merrily posting selected details of their lives online. Facebook didn't seem as schmoozy as the professional networking sites, as most of the activities were informal, if not downright bizarre.
My 'friends' were transforming themselves into zombies and biting each other. I'd get notifications that so-and-so had thrown a sheep at such-and-such. Alvin Tan of The Necessary Stage bought me a virtual drink (thanks, Alvin, it was virtually refreshing), while others invited me to join causes which ranged from 'Support Independent Film' to 'Bush Haters Unite'.
And, of course, there was the 'poke' function, which is like some form of virtual nudge to get another's attention. 'Poke', of course, is a term with sexual connotations, and I'm very lucky the Wife is extremely broad-minded. (I learnt from Wikipedia that some do construe the 'poke' as a sexual advance, and that there's now a Facebook group called 'Enough with the Poking, Let's Just Have Sex,' which has over 200,000 members.)
'Does being poked make someone a Pokemon?' I asked the Wife, only half in jest. Because whatever we were all doing on Facebook seemed like some sort of weird game, and the players a cutesy, wacky, cartoonish version of ourselves, from the pithy updates we'd post about what we're doing at any given point in time, to the virtual toys we'd give each other.
Of course, sometimes, real world considerations can creep in. What if that annoying jerk you've been trying to avoid since secondary school, or worse, your psycho ex-girlfriend, sends you a 'friend' request? Will you deny it? Just leave it hanging there in your sidebar to be reminded of it each time you log on?
Or will you be a better person in cyberspace than you are in real life and just accept them, letting bygones be bygones? After all, many of us are certainly pretending to be wittier, cooler, and smarter versions of ourselves online, just by judiciously editing what we choose to share or not.
I don't know. When the Web first arose, many wrote about how it would make it more difficult to hide secrets, and in some ways this is true. But it has also made it easier to fabricate stuff about ourselves too - to the point where we even inhabit whole other personas and existences, whether on our blogs or on sites like Facebook and Second Life.
I know that even in 'real' life, we're selective about what we want to project, too. But this impulse seems heightened online, and I often wonder, when we encounter each other, how much of the real person we're actually glimpsing, or if, with all the picking and choosing, all we're seeing is our very own Pikachu.
By Colin Goh
ASKED the Wife, looking over my shoulder at my laptop screen: 'Who are all these people poking you?'
Now, there are contexts in which being asked such a question by one's spouse could land one in serious trouble. Thankfully, she was only referring to the list of people poking me (virtually) on Facebook.
Okay, I know that to some of my older readers (hi Mum, hi Dad!), the preceding sentence must have seemed like complete gobbledygook. And just a few weeks ago, I would have regarded it as gibberish, too.
Facebook, as probably every young person in Singapore knows, is a website where users post information about themselves such as their photos, lists of their favourite movies, upcoming events, and short sentences about what they're doing right now. They then link their page to those of their 'friends', thus creating a social network.
In some ways, Facebook heralds the decline of the blog generation. Who really cares about one's meandering opinions on current affairs? By being part social network, part online scrapbook, Facebook brings out both one's inner narcissist and inner kaypoh at the same time - the two dominant impulses of all surfers.
I'd studiously avoided joining these social networking sites for the past two years or so, whether it was LinkedIn, MySpace or any number of corporate/professional equivalents, despite constantly being invited. They just seemed too deliberate to me. I always felt like I was at some e-schmoozefest, handing out virtual namecards and making cyber small talk.
But I was forced to join Facebook recently because only then could I view some photos my cousin had uploaded. I dutifully filled out the information (I still don't know why - ever the good Singaporean, I guess) and even uploaded a photo of myself, and next thing I knew, I was a user.
And it was fascinating. Because I soon found out that there were so many people I knew who were users, too - people my age, not just teens - and who had been merrily posting selected details of their lives online. Facebook didn't seem as schmoozy as the professional networking sites, as most of the activities were informal, if not downright bizarre.
My 'friends' were transforming themselves into zombies and biting each other. I'd get notifications that so-and-so had thrown a sheep at such-and-such. Alvin Tan of The Necessary Stage bought me a virtual drink (thanks, Alvin, it was virtually refreshing), while others invited me to join causes which ranged from 'Support Independent Film' to 'Bush Haters Unite'.
And, of course, there was the 'poke' function, which is like some form of virtual nudge to get another's attention. 'Poke', of course, is a term with sexual connotations, and I'm very lucky the Wife is extremely broad-minded. (I learnt from Wikipedia that some do construe the 'poke' as a sexual advance, and that there's now a Facebook group called 'Enough with the Poking, Let's Just Have Sex,' which has over 200,000 members.)
'Does being poked make someone a Pokemon?' I asked the Wife, only half in jest. Because whatever we were all doing on Facebook seemed like some sort of weird game, and the players a cutesy, wacky, cartoonish version of ourselves, from the pithy updates we'd post about what we're doing at any given point in time, to the virtual toys we'd give each other.
Of course, sometimes, real world considerations can creep in. What if that annoying jerk you've been trying to avoid since secondary school, or worse, your psycho ex-girlfriend, sends you a 'friend' request? Will you deny it? Just leave it hanging there in your sidebar to be reminded of it each time you log on?
Or will you be a better person in cyberspace than you are in real life and just accept them, letting bygones be bygones? After all, many of us are certainly pretending to be wittier, cooler, and smarter versions of ourselves online, just by judiciously editing what we choose to share or not.
I don't know. When the Web first arose, many wrote about how it would make it more difficult to hide secrets, and in some ways this is true. But it has also made it easier to fabricate stuff about ourselves too - to the point where we even inhabit whole other personas and existences, whether on our blogs or on sites like Facebook and Second Life.
I know that even in 'real' life, we're selective about what we want to project, too. But this impulse seems heightened online, and I often wonder, when we encounter each other, how much of the real person we're actually glimpsing, or if, with all the picking and choosing, all we're seeing is our very own Pikachu.
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