Just an ‘Accept’ away

This whole social networking thing that everyone’s on about?

“You have updated your status at 4.15 pm, 4.16 pm and 4.18 pm...But what did you do at 4.17 pm?”

The general opinion is that it is perfect for us Indians. The subcontinent has even been called the spiritual home of networking.

Makes sense.

As a people, we have distinctly heightened herd instincts; being constantly connected is never an irritant; we willingly share intimate details about ourselves with any/everyone and, equally, are unfazed while asking total strangers very personal questions. What’s seen as ‘being nosy’ elsewhere, becomes guileless warmth here.

Words like ‘boundaries’ and ‘space’ (physical, psychological, emotional... whatever) are re-defined with charming insouciance, and no detail of any life is too trivial or immaterial.

Remember way back, when aunts typically went visiting at odd times in the day, opening conversations with a (Warning: Literal translation ahead): “In your house, what cooking?”

Anthropologists and such-like learned folk, trace this back to Humankind’s past.

To primate time. (Yeah, it’s hard to resist making jokes at this point.) A time when survival depended on staying alert to changing relationships – the whole ‘Friend – Unfriend’ bit.

Well, that’s very scholarly, but being told of this is merely yet another ancestor-inherited bit of programming must be a slight downer for Gen-Right-Now.

There’s really nothing new under the sun... only thinking makes it so.