Online Friendship

I am quite active in the online world. I have two blogs. I am on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Tumblr..you name it, I am there…except on Myspace. People may criticize “online friendship” as to be devoid of trust, full of false claims, a sign of having no “real” life etc. I admit there are lots and lots of people out there who cheat , deceive and lie on the Internet and one must always exercise caution while making new acquaintances on Internet.And I am just talking about friendship. Online love is all together a different ballgame.

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Blogs vs Social Networking Websites

Blogosphere is a place where various types of personalities meet through their blogs but it is better than social networking sites and  chat rooms. Chat rooms are mostly filled with dumb jerks or perverts or desperate guys with girl ids!!  Social networking websites have their own set of problems like fake profiles, misuse of personal information etc.

A Tinge of Narcissism

So boys and girls, uncles and aunties; I’m back!! In case you have not noticed my absence [ 😦 ] I was busy giving tests over last few days and I have read very few posts during that time. Even if I did, I may not have commented at that time. So if you are missing my comment (I hope so!) on your post, I will read it asap and comment soon. Few exciting things also happened during this time which encouraged my blogging confidence and I was itching to write a post expressing my gratitude with just a tinge of narcissism. 😛

# 1. My post on the different categories of students in any class, with a title sounding like a chapter of biology textbook “Classification of Students” got featured on DesiPundit.com. Thank you so very much Lekhni, for considering my post worthy enough to be contributed to DesiPundit.

# 2. A very old blogger (not age wise!) with like 513 readers reading his blog feed and a faculty of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Abi (or Mr. T. A. Abinandanan) has mentioned me and two of my posts – “Education Boom or Education Doom?” and “All In A Day’s Work” in his post about links. Thank you very much Sir for taking the time to read my posts and finding them worthy of mention.

Blogging Friendship and Titles

I have been writing about various aspects of the act of blogging. In last few days another aspect that struck me was the friendship we form, friends we make via blogging. Recent bomb blasts in Ahmedabad & Bangalore where some of my blogger friends live and mysterious disappearance of a fellow blogger/chat friend from Internet are also the reasons behind this post as they made me feel genuine concern towards them. Blogosphere is the meeting place of alike minds and sometimes even clashing ones but it always scores over social networking sites and even chat rooms. Chatrooms are mostly filled with dumb jerks or perverts or guys pretending to be girls!! There is quite a lot of hesitation to trust enough to be a friend in the first place and to extend the friendship to real life like exchanging phone numbers or even meeting. Social networking websites are facing their own set of problems like fake profiles, misuse of personal information and even murder. Whereas in blogosphere we get an idea of the blogger’s thoughts and persona as a person from his/her posts and more so when he/she uses real identity. I believe one can’t carry a facade of one’s personality for so long. Its not possible to sustain an image of what you are not in your writings for long. And then if we meet someone of our mental wavelength & liking, we can befriend them. Its easy to interact with such known persons and if we feel comfortable enough, one can exchange phone numbers easily. Then bloggers even meet up with each other personally or in bloggers’ meet and enjoy. [In some extreme cases like Nikhil experienced it can grow into blogoromance too!! 😛 😆 ] One may not understand the concept of online friendship at all or may do an unfair comparison with real life friendship. Blogging friendship of course has its limits and may not achieve that depth and “being there” stuff like the real thing but it does provide something which we strive for – some light hearted chit-chat, little concern, a smile on our faces and relaxation of mind. And even a good argument stimulates the mind!! Now for the fun part. On this day I award my blogging friends (whose blogs I read most) with titles according to my perception. 😀 And there is a Mr. Best Blogger and Ms. Best Blogger too!! *Drumrolls*