Let's Celebrate Lurkers' Day

How about celebrating Facebook Lurkers' Day? On that day nobody will post anything anywhere on Facebook. Everyone will only lurk on other friends' fb pages and groups. In this day and age of social media, a Lurkers Day is so apt. Celebration will be online and worldwide. The idea is to create awareness about the existence of the poor silent souls known as Lurkers.

This day the vociferous, the narcissistic, the vocal amongst us who keep clattering away at the keyboard, shall refrain from posting our witty remarks and high quality images, and experience the feelings of our friends who lurk. We shall experience their feelings of lurk and weightlessness as we silently float in cyberspace along walls, on the edge of groups, occasionally stumbling on the mass of words and sharp image corners. Traveling along our friends' timelines, we shall silently absorb facts about our friends' history, geography, political leanings, sleeping hours, the smarmy images they share, and what they do for fun.

How will we know that people lurked? Well, nobody will post anything. And since no one can stay away from facebook for even an hour, they will have no option but to lurk!

This idea can be expanded to organize Blog Lurkers' Day, Yahoogroups Lurkers' Day and so on.

Facebook: recent or top stories?

Facebook keeps showing you those wall posts that are pushed to the TOP (i.e. massively liked and commented on) in preference to others, unless you specifically choose 'MOST RECENTLY' and refresh that choice every two days. This must be fb’s way of promoting those who spend all their time chatting-shatting on fb instead of doing anything useful. The downside for us is that we tend to miss out on the updates from our genuine friends that might interest us more than the regurgitated and recycled pearls-of-wisdom images floating to the top.

To outsmart fb, do this:

-On 'Home' page, just below the update status box, to the right, is an option in smart grey letters- 'sort:'

-Click on it and you'll find 2 options- Recent, Top. Click on the one you need.

-Check every few days. In all probability, the RECENT option will have mysteriously changed to TOP. In which case, repeat this exercise. 

 

Productive use of social networks

I keep reading about the how people's lives have been ruined and people- young and old - going into depression due to facebook use.

Well, it depends on how you use facebook. Or any networking site for that matter. Used correctly, social networks such as facebook or linkedin or twitter are a boon for people who wish to find more real life friends. For that you have to understand how difficult it was to get in touch with new people in the pre-internet era.

Simple suggested guidelines for productive use of a social network:

• Use it to make friends from your city or locality who you can meet in real life or take up common activities with. 
• Use it to build business contacts or employment purposes. 
• Apply a bit of common sense, maturity, and a little restraint while building these new online relationships. 
• Be careful about the kind of remarks you make or information you share. 
• If it is a forum such as yahoogroup, be polite to its members while posting on the forum.
• Interact with the person and find out if he/she is genuine and not just a facade or a persona, before agreeing to meet face-to-face.  
• Do not believe all those fantastic things people put up on FB. That is just 1% of their life story. Much of it is fantasy too. 
• Be natural and normal in your own responses to others. There is no need to put up a fake front if you wish to move some of these friendships to the real world. 
• Ideally agree to meet in a small group rather than a one-on-one in case you are not sure of someone.
• DO NOT neglect your existing real life friends and good relations (if you have any).

There may be more such dos and donts. I have just stated a few top-of-the-mind ones here.

Happy facebooking!