New Media Nightmares

“All the world’s a stage” is an oft quoted line, yet only sometime in the past decade has the  prophetic quality of this Shakespearean quote been realized.  We now live in the world where not only is the entire world a stage, the entire world is the audience too.  This stage is what is known as Web2.0. So many extol the virtues of living in a world made smaller and brought closer together by technology, the internet and social media. People far away can stay in touch, voice their opinions and generate truckloads of content. How awesome! Or is it?

Three-quarters of all mobile phone users in Singapore own a Smartphone. Two hundred million- that’s 200,000,000- tweets are sent out into the vastness of cyberspace every day. Between the two facts I find myself feeling like a subject under observation so much of the time! I wonder while I cross the road to get to the bus stop every morning, inevitably in a rush to get to office on time, whether someone will click a picture and post it online admonishing me for jaywalking. Then somebody will put a name to the face and everywhere I go I will be recognized as THE jaywalker. (Or when I’m on the train and busy reading the day’s news on my phone and don’t notice the pregnant woman and offer her my seat if someone will tweet and/or facebook obscenities aimed at me.)

In my defense the zebra crossing is pretty far away and the roads are empty that early in the morning. Not to forget the fact that I grew up in India at a time when zebra crossings were all but non-existent and crossing roads with heavy traffic was a daily occurrence. While that by no means precludes death by speeding car, I have plenty of practice and trust my eyesight. So I still cross the road the way I know I’m not supposed to everyday and worry about internet infamy on a regular basis. It’s exhausting at times to feel like you’re always being watched. I often wish that I either didn’t care or there were social contracts which implicitly restored personal privacy by not indulging in such broadcasting. Unfortunately neither the former, nor the latter is likely to happen.

The general lack of privacy is a love child fathered by the internet era and mothered by social media (or vice-versa if you please. And a little bit incestuous as social media and the internet definitely have a familial relation. Anyway). Some people become global sensations overnight with youtube videos with millions of views or with a kiss in the middle of a riot. Others get caught in the act and face the wrath of millions of people they’ve never met and will never meet. Any social contract which protects a person from ridicule for getting caught digging their nose on a bus would preclude the person from making millions off a random youtube video of his kid biting his finger. Therefore, I will keep on wishing  for temporary invisibility when jaywalking and hoping that when I meet a person who appears to like me I don’t find a tweet later on proclaiming me the bitch of the decade/century/millenium or something to that effect (one, I do not talk from experience as far as the latter  goes. Two, isn’t it much better to just say it and not have to spend hours with a person you don’t want to spend hours with?!)

I once told a friend who is a fairly strong believer in the power of social media that I thought that the dark side of social media was pretty sinister. Little did I know that one day I would come to mean that literally after I had a nightmare about being ostracized in the new media-verse (I don’t have the faintest recollection as to the cause of said ostracism. Really).  He was fairly certain I didn’t have a valid case. Every time the thought of unknowingly being on someone else’s social media broadcast channel, be it in good or bad light, crosses my mind I think I have a good case. Not to say that he doesn’t. Just that I do too. Classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide.