Catalyst Test

Catalyst Issue 18

Test

Clash of the Titans : Public Vs Private

After much observations, I realised that blogs with personal comments have more hits and are much more engaging than blogs like this one. I can put myself in readers shoes and i totally hace the same inclination to read personal blogs rather than argumental blogs like this. However, i just don’t feel secure and comfortable about blogging about personal stuff. I had the experience of that and I am still blogging about personal stuff, but on a private blog, tucked away in the depths of privacy settings. And what I mean about personal blogs are more towards those that touch on close-to-the-heart feelings and emotional rantings.

I had the experience of being stalked by someone through the blog – my aunt. I was quite grateful that it was my aunt and not someone that i totally do not know. What she did was to read my blog almost everyday and report my postings to my dad through email! How hilarious is that?! Of course i don’t post entries every single day. As a response to that, she’ll email my dad or msg me asking me why I did not update my blog yet. Isn’t that extremely ridiculous?

To me a personal blog is an entirely different world away from reality where we can find solace in, a bottom-less bucket to pour our unwanted emotions into and lock it away out of sight. Its also a place where you’ll go after many years to laugh at the silly crap that you once worried about and emo-ed about. I poured sad feelings, anger and disappointment about two times a month on average. My personal blog didn’t have happy thoughts or images. It was dark and gloomy. The other side of me (i hope). Yet my aunt had the impression that I was depressed all the time and wrote to my dad, citing that I was what? SUCIDAL. Which part of me looks like it? LOL.

That’s the outcome of having a personal blog made available to the whole online community. Now I keep it PRIVATE.

Read my NM1101E readings today afternoon. What was it about again? Oh, something to do with interpersonal relationships and social interactions. Which made me wonder, how different are the people online and offline. I knew of a junior that had online and offline personalities worlds apart. He was rather introverted when dealing with face to face interactions, but was super talkative during MSN conversations. Surveys brought up findings that people active in online interactions would most probably be active in their offline relationships, but clearly it wasn’t the case for my junior.

Many a times people tend to go online to find their ideal self. To jump out of the skin they were born in, to be someone or even something that knows no limits. Often, people explore their other suppressed personality online, like in the case of my junior, being more open to people. They take advantage of the lack of cues, which in face-to-face interactions refer to the body language. Probably due to their lower self confidence of their body language, they prefer the absence of cues, erasing a major factor of how people can judge them. Now, without cues, they would then be able to express themselves freely without being occupied with how others look at them. For me, I would prefer face-to-face conversations. Sitting in front of a computer without seeing the other person is way too boring for me. Talk and no action is meaningless. It has taken the ‘action’ out of ‘interACTION’. Don’t blame me for the lameness, I’m sleepy. Then you’ll ask me why do I still bother to chat with people online? Simple. Its just a short extension of our interaction offline. Or perhaps, it can also be the start of more interaction offline. And anyways, everyone’s doing it. So why be the odd one out? =P

Attention seekers

People are extremely conflicted beings. On one hand, they yearn for attention from the masses, yet on the other, they view privacy critically. We share photos and personal information on social networking portals such as Facebook, Friendster and blogs with the main motive of letting others know about what we have done and what we are going about in our personal lives. We do not tell our target audience about our lives personally but secretly harbour the hope that they will come around your Facebook page to take a look at your lives. We want people to know yet we do not take the initiative to tell them. Blocking public access to your online page cuts down the number of people that have the knowledge of the happenings in your lives. But when we have cut down that number to a meagre few, wouldn’t it be easier to just update them personally or just send them the pictures instead of hoping that they will one day drop by your online profile page.

I feel that new media has a huge part to play in creating the desire in us to share such intimate information with the public. In the past when there weren’t any computers and the Internet wasn’t even born, people still had the initiative to catch up with each other face-to-face over a cup of tea. Right now, you feel that you know a person and his/her life when in actual fact, you’ve only scanned through their Facebook photos. So tell me, what is the definition of friends in our modern world?

Isolated from the world

I’m personally experiencing the exact phenomenon described in one of those Monday new media lectures – the over-reliance on new media and their systems. Left my house today WITHOUT my precious diamond. As in handphone (it’s a HTC diamond anyway.) It was my first time leaving home without it and it feels horrible. The sudden detachment from the communications world, isolated from others. It made me think about how it would be like for the people in the past.

Have man and machines integrated into one so much until we have developed such a strong reliance on them? It makes us question whether machines and new media have made us slaves to them instead of us being their masters. Back before the rampant existence of technology and new media among our society, we did not have to think about the possibilities of anything going wrong just because on was uncontactable , simply because everyone was just as uncontactable as the rest.

So has the developments of technology turned into a bane instead of its original intention of a boon? I believe we cannot fully blame the progress of technology on such a phenomenon. We have been on the road for progress and striving for the main aim of making life better from the very beginning of mankind.

The Spread of Scandals

The speed at which news spread these days is astounding, supported by the rapid developments in new media. News, especially scandals, spread faster than it had in the past. Take for example the Jack Neo scandal. Within days, everyone is talking about it and commenting about it in more ways than one. Each day, a new allegation springs up and is reported through various different mediums with the news spreading through the Internet at the fastest rate.

Besides the common knowledge among the people, we as outsiders are also able to comment on the issue and voice our views through the exact same medium used to convey the news. And this is exactly what I am doing right now. New media gives the sense that we too, are heavily involved to the extent that Jack Neo himself feels obliged to apologise to the public. I would like to ask this question : What has his scandals got to do with us?