Orkut – did I get social networking right!?

I was actively involved in researching about Web 2.0 and social networking a couple of years ago. Little did I realize that this so called social networking is indeed a sticky web, and one has to pull themselves out of it to get a life; pun intended. Well, I created an account with Orkut when one of my friends, who happened to be an ace Orkutteer, sent me an invitation. Let me start with the definitions so that it will be easier for me to use certain words with ease around this article.

Definitions:
Orkuttant – A person or thing that is a member of Orkut
Orkutteer – A person or thing that is not just a member of Orkut, but very active on the same – An Ace!
Orkutting – intransitive verb – example: he Orkuts
Orkuttance – The quality or state of being in Orkut

Ahem, enough of these definitions; now let me get to the actual thing. When I became an Orkuttant, the first thing I wrote was a small note, which in Orkut is called as scrap, to my friend who made me an Orkuttant. So reads my first scrap, “wassup buddy, hwz work?”. FYI, he was in the seventh floor and I was in the sixth floor on the same building. I used technology to the fullest extent that the message got routed via a huge Google server farm in the US to the old creaky CRT monitor at my friend’s desk – whoaaa, my first successful Orkut scrap!

Just like we tend to explore more of our new mobile phone or music system, I was virtually loitering across the vast expanse of Orkut lands, weaving through regions, religions, political preferences, culture, you name it… Finally, came back to my friend’s profile, clicked on his friends list and added those known faces to my profile. Most of the time, when I added someone, I just had to wait for less than thirty minutes to see the confirmation that the other person has accepted my friendship request – probably, ‘guess they were all in Orkuttance!

I added friends, deleted, and made new friends and business contacts. It didn’t stop there, I uploaded photos (as ‘m a photography enthusiast – see my gallery..) and created swanky profile pics. At that time, Orkut didn’t have that many privacy options, and anybody can peep into everyone’s album/scrapbook.

I guess any social networking site not infested with porn is not a truly-socially-network-able platform. I came across those trillions of communities dedicated to gay sex, women seeking only women (guys @#$% off), Chennai dating, Delhi dating, aunty lovers, so on and so forth. I used to get random friend requests from guys (‘m straight though!) looking for guys….ufff, gimme a break! I mean, I wouldn’t mind getting random friend requests from sexy girls, but again I’ll never know whether that Orkuteer is really a girl or a guy. I did come across quite a few extremely well-mannered people’s profiles – I click on albums and I get this bitmap image yelling at me ‘stop looking at others albums and go get a life you loser‘. OK OK, got it babe. If you don’t have any photos in your album why do you have to post such an image with a nasty message? well, I got your character!

Very recently, Orkut empowered its users to selectively apply privacy filters – allowing only friends or friends of friends, and excluding strangers. Well, people would’ve been happy with e-mail as the social networking medium, I believe. Why does one need a social platform to stay private? This is where the meaning of social networking becomes oxymoronic; or should I say ‘selective social networking‘ ?

When a social networking site gets famous, it’s the hackers play ground! I started getting broadcast messages from my friends asking me to ‘do this’, ‘click on this and see what happens next’, and so on. I, out of curiosity, did click on one such mischief message that read “simply copy and paste ‘this’ link and see what happens next…” Voila, I instantaneously became a member of various sex and hate releated Orkut communities (38 communities to be exact, and I should be using ‘Alas’ instead of ‘Voila’!!). I took the pains of deleting them one by one, and answering to the confirmation messages as and when I clicked on ‘unjoin’ – what a labor!

Finally, after 19 months of being an Orkuteer lost in sheer Orkuttance, I decided to bid adieu to this beautiful social networking thing…………….and, get a life!

Tags: orkut, privacy, social networking

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