Observations

I generally don't post in such quick succession, but I have time on my hands today, and my thoughts are flowing rather erratically, so I decided to channelise them in a post. :-)
I hate social networking sites. I've tried out almost all of them- Myspace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut...and none of the experiences have been very pleasant. Yet, I maintain my Orkut account for the sole reason that my friends are very keen on using Orkut.
But much as I hate them all, I cannot deny the fact that these networking sites do provide some recreation and food for thought. Today I'm going to share with you a few observations about Orkut.
On Orkut you get all sorts of weirdos. There are of course those people who will send friendship requests out of the blue. I got one such request (before I changed my settings so only people who know my email address can send requests -yes, you can do that in your Settings), and an accompanying scrap: “Please please please make friends with me.” At least the grammar of that one was tolerable. Some will spell friendship as “fraandship” and so on and so forth, but I guess you have all heard a lot about it (and probably also faced it, specially if you're a girl), so I won't harp on that. Instead, let's take a fresh look at new groups of weirdos.
1. There is the kind that doesn't seem to know where they belong. You know, there's this section on your profile that you have to fill up- it's about your location. And some people will go like “Kolkata/Pune”. Okay, we all understand what that means. You're either in Kolkata or in Pune- I suppose one is your home, the other is your workplace or something like that. But do you have to mention both places in that “location”. It asks you where you are located, and nothing more than that. And since you can't be located at two places at the same time (come on, I've never yet met anyone who's ubiquitous, have you?), why do you have to mention the names of both places?
2. Now there is the kind that is so eternally lovesick. They write all sorts of long, long, long essays (yes, essays) in the 'About Me' section, speaking of how someone broke their hearts and so on and so forth. They will join communities like
- “The Problem with Love is...”
- “Love Kills”
- “Why Do I Still Love You?”
- “Nothing Hurts like Love”
- ”Don't hurt me, I'm already dead”
- “Living in Silent Pain”
- “So Much Pain Behind These Eyes”
- “Broken Hearts” (tagline: “god will you let her know that I love her so when there's no one there that she's not alone? just close her eyes and let her know my heart is beating with hers”. No comments.)
Seriously, these communities are all for desperados. I can't imagine anybody sane who'd want to make a public display of their emotions to this horrible extent.
3. And then there are the philosophical weirdos who join communities like
- “What's the Meaning of Life?”
- “Dreams”
- “Blood” (tagline: “for those who love the juice of life”)
- “Tears”
I visited one of these communities to see what they actually do. And there are threads like this on the Forum: “Hi. Want to learn Indian flute?” (1 post); “Torpedo SMS anonimo gratis!” (1 post in God-knows-what-language); “Earn Money through TREKPAY” (16 posts), etc. Almost no thread has more than a hundred posts, and the thread that does have more posts is actually a game totally unrelated to what the community is about.
4. Then there are people who will form stupid communities like this: “This is Not A Community”. Accompanied by a picture that says: “This is Not A Picture”. Community description: “THIS IS NOT A DESCRIPTION. So Let's NOT Get Together, NOT Make Friends, In This
Non-Beautiful, Non-Smart, NON- EXISTING Community. NOT A WARNING : People Who Do Not Spam Will Not Be Banned!!! Please Do Not See: Do Not Read The Community Policies Before Not Posting!!!!!!!” Incidentally, it has 63 270 members.
And this: “I joined too many communities!” (18 516 members). Community description: “The goal of this community is to help Orkut users who joined too much communities.
We are here to discuss about this problem, and possible solutions.
If you can't read all communities you subscribed to, if you can't remember all communities you joined... come here: you'll find help. This community is not intended to spam new communities.
It aims to help people in leaving other communities, or to let them discuss this problem.”
And this: “?”. Community description: 102 question marks. Number of members is 1337.
Then there are communities that promote profanity. “Now WTF” has a strength of 7079. “Bangla Khisti” has a strength of 7209. (If you must know, the word “khisti” in colloquial Bengali means profanity.) “What the Fuck!!!” has 1072 members. I don't see what is so great about using swearwords in every sentence you speak.
5. And lastly, there are morbid people with twisted minds. I've posted something about this earlier. (Click here and here). These people really, really, really need a psychiatrist. They will put up all sorts of gruesome pictures of their hands bleeding where they have slashed their wrists, and so on. There are even communities for them. Pro-suicide groups, I'm tempted to think. One such community is “Die for Love” (it has a picture of a person slashing their wrist) and- would you imagine!- it has 19, 563 members who all need help. The community description goes: “I sit in the park where I dwell for this girl I love so well. She took my heart away from me, now she wants to set me free. I see a boy on her lap she says things to him she never said to me. I ran home to cry on my bed not a word to mother was said father came home late that night. He looked at me from left to right.. he saw me hanging from a rope he took his knife to cut me down and on my dress a note was found: dig my grave dig it deep/ dig my grave from head to feet/ and on the top place a dove/ and remember this, I died for Love.” Pathetic.
I feel so sorry for all these people. Orkut really needs to keep a tab on such communities. And parents need to know which communities their children are joining.

If you have your own observations about social networking sites, you might want to share them in the Comments section.
Till my next post, keep visiting.