The Coming of Age of the Social Network

I have trashed some of the annoying elements of social networks, and mildly joked about Orkut in an earlier post. Of course, whether the 'humour' actually came through is entirely up to the readers. But these days I have seen stuff going on in social networks that are genuinely exciting.

In fact I should be saying social network. (Emphasis on the singular)

Facebook is making great strides in becoming a much more useful place for people. Yes, the social network can actually be a place where time can be spent productively. Recently Facebook launched the 'Marketplace' that allowed members of local networks to sell second hand stuff. More like Craigslist. The Texas A&M network posted on campus job openings on Marketplace.

Semester Endings and Blogical Distractions

Just so that I stay clear of accusations of 'internalizing' content, the word 'Blogical' was spotted by me in the excellent Blogical Conclusion movie review blog by Baradwaj Rangan. You are welcome to hop over and run through his archives. Anyway, now that it's out of my system let me move on to the exciting things happening on the personal front.

The Curse of the Social Network

I am not a very 'social' person. I take time to start talking or initiate conversations. Once past the initiation stages, my talkative instincts take over and then the pain dawns on the unfortunate listener. But I am not very social to begin with, although that hasn't stopped me from having over 200 friends on my Orkut list.

Some badly outdated observations

 

A couple of days back I got to learn something that that went like a dart through my heart.

It would need another 15 days before I can reunite with my hard disk. I have already spent more than two weeks without it, now that I fail to realize how I actually managed all that. But the prospect of facing another fortnight without my best ‘friend’ seems grimmer than anything else. So, the last movie that I watched seemed an eternity ago when I desperately went to watch not one, but four movies in a row. This included a three-hour-plus docu/movie called ‘Munich’ and a two-hour plus (and what I can safely term, over-hyped) movie called ‘Leon’. Yes, they are pretty old flicks. But so is the length of the gap between my two posts, though I may be excused this time for the lack of a hard disk.

 

Getting back to where I intend to take this rant, ‘Munich’ has only helped affirm my faith in Speilberg as a cinematic giant when it comes to handling movies of as large a scale as this, or a sensitive, controversy ridden subject as explosive as either this or ‘Schindler’s List’ for that matter. While at the hands of lesser directors, Schindler’s List could have very easily sunk into oblivion, due to the monumental task one might be up against at the editing table, while Munich would have been no less intimidating. A task that is more about the direction and screenplay rather than the other relatively minor detail called editing. It could have so easily been reduced to a mere commercial revenge flick that could have made the majority cross-section of people remark: Wow! These Mossad guys rock! But we learn as Stevie reveals to us during the course of his magnum opus through the expressions of the Israeli-accented-ever-improving Eric Bana (though I had a feeling he let his American accent slip in from time to time.), that there are underlying elements far more important than just one-upmanship and revenge. After the aberration that was The War of the Worlds, he seems to have found his touch handling the subject of his heart - Jews and Israel. Leon, unfortunately does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath of Munich so I’ll leave it at that. You could watch it for the cute face of Natalie Portman, who by the way is a 12 year old girl in the movie.

 

On to other affairs, one of the most unnecessary and self defeating feature of Orkut is that a user is allowed to edit his name field. Agreed, when you search for your friend XYZ without knowing his new name his profile will still show up, but my question is why on earth would someone want to change his name unless he has REALLY changed his name such as our very own SuniEl Shetty or RitEIsh Deshmukh. An example of what I am trying to drive at is that of a guy with a pretty good name of his own changing to something like “I m a Rebel (Loose Control)”. Yes that is his new name on Orkut. Not only does it look bad, it also displays his inability to differentiate between ‘Loose’ and ‘Lose’

 

The other irritating thing that came on view over the past month is Hindi commentary in football matches. It is the latest thing in ESPN-Star’s long line of products of idea droughts witnessed in recent years. The droughts it seems is increasing with every passing year. One of the early cases in point being the infamous Shaz and Waz shows and Waz Akram hosting fooball locker room. The least of the problems with the commentator is his uncanny ability to confuse one player (as little known as Raul of Real Madrid) with another. Pray the Hindi commentary does not haunt the World Cup.

 

That would be the end of what has been a progressively negative post. Would retire for now, to return with brighter things to say, some other day.