Yes or no? I'd say yes if you asked me... The reasons are very simple... just read on.....
With the increasing ease by which we get hooked up with our friends online via social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster, Myspace and so on, the world is getting smaller as we soon come to realise that our friend knows another friend of ours which we all do not know in the beginning.
And so you can see that we're all becoming very interconnected in one way or the other and this brings me to my topic of discussion for the day : Is Cyber-Connectivity Hindering Free Speech? Why would I say this? Now, if you could just lend me your imagination for the next few mins... I'd be able to show you how do I arrive at this statement.
Scenario 1 :
You're on Facebook(FB) and you have your best friend, David and John in your circle of FB Friends. David had unknowingly done something which pissed you off. You posted an angry 'Status Update' in FB which goes like "Screw you David! Don't you know how to be on time for the important meeting?"
What can possibly happen? Either David logs in and sees the post or John sees it and inform David. You're screwed either way... Alternatively, you can keep the anger to yourself and tell no one about it.
Scenario 2 :
You've got a blog (like what I've got here) and you think you could write freely because you think you had stayed anonymous by not revealing your name, photos and other related tell-tales details. But you had your friend reading your blog too because you shared the URL with them. Supposedly you need to bitch about your friend in the blog yet you're worried that he/she may come across the blog and read about it.
As a result, you wrote a watered-down version of the rant or you maybe even omitted it altogether and wrote something else totally un-related.
End of the day, what I'm trying to drive at is that with inter-connectivity nowadays, I felt that we're holding back our real feelings for fear of offending the peoples around us. Is this a good or bad phenomenon? I used to be an advocate of "If I dare to post it online, I'm not afraid of its repercussions" but recently, I've noticed that I've mellowed down somewhat and each time I need to rant online, I would think twice, thrice before acting... Something is holding me back, I'm losing my 'baptism of fire'!!
Someone please tell me what to do......
With the increasing ease by which we get hooked up with our friends online via social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster, Myspace and so on, the world is getting smaller as we soon come to realise that our friend knows another friend of ours which we all do not know in the beginning.
And so you can see that we're all becoming very interconnected in one way or the other and this brings me to my topic of discussion for the day : Is Cyber-Connectivity Hindering Free Speech? Why would I say this? Now, if you could just lend me your imagination for the next few mins... I'd be able to show you how do I arrive at this statement.
Scenario 1 :
You're on Facebook(FB) and you have your best friend, David and John in your circle of FB Friends. David had unknowingly done something which pissed you off. You posted an angry 'Status Update' in FB which goes like "Screw you David! Don't you know how to be on time for the important meeting?"
What can possibly happen? Either David logs in and sees the post or John sees it and inform David. You're screwed either way... Alternatively, you can keep the anger to yourself and tell no one about it.
Scenario 2 :
You've got a blog (like what I've got here) and you think you could write freely because you think you had stayed anonymous by not revealing your name, photos and other related tell-tales details. But you had your friend reading your blog too because you shared the URL with them. Supposedly you need to bitch about your friend in the blog yet you're worried that he/she may come across the blog and read about it.
As a result, you wrote a watered-down version of the rant or you maybe even omitted it altogether and wrote something else totally un-related.
End of the day, what I'm trying to drive at is that with inter-connectivity nowadays, I felt that we're holding back our real feelings for fear of offending the peoples around us. Is this a good or bad phenomenon? I used to be an advocate of "If I dare to post it online, I'm not afraid of its repercussions" but recently, I've noticed that I've mellowed down somewhat and each time I need to rant online, I would think twice, thrice before acting... Something is holding me back, I'm losing my 'baptism of fire'!!
Someone please tell me what to do......
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6 comments:
If you're ranting about something or someone, if you don't feel right saying it in front of them, you should really not say it at all in the first place. Ranting about things behind people's back, is simply an act of gossip. If you think that rant of yours can be relayed to the originator, then what's wrong with posting it online and let the whole world read about it. Unless you have a sense of guilt and therefore it might have been a wrong thing to do after all??
i do agree with wat you said... fully.
but then again, sometimes the originator may not like to hear what you have to say abt him/her.... and if you simply say it, it may affect the relationship but sometimes, u just have this strong urge to want to say it
Same concept with "gossiping"... you can say anything you want but if it ever gets back to the originator it may affect the relationship as well. The good thing about writing it out in the net is that the originator is reading the story directly from comparing with gossip where it's from others who would have probably fabricated the story a lot worse that it's originally told. I think the reason why people "gossip" is also because there's a strong urge to rant about something. But whether is it right or wrong, I think that's up to your conscience... :)
in the first place, is the orginator even going to know that his doings will be ranted online in here? if i, as the writer, knows he might read it because he knows my blog, would i even want to write it here?
If you don't want the originator to read about it, that probably means that you are indeed saying something that might offend the originator therefore ranting it out to your friends (gossiping) or on the net doesn't really make much different. As there is always a possibility where it will get back to the originator.
So I think the question is not whether the originator will be able to read it but should you or should you not have rant about it to others in the first place? If the answer from your heart is yes, then I don't see what's wrong with posting it online. Whether the originator reads it or not, it will not make a different to the fact that you're true to your heart, therefore who reads it, doesn't make a difference to you.
i guess the keywords here are 'true to your heart'... and that i'm somewhat guilty of recently.
:(
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