"Give me some time/ make a new name/ let’s open our eyes/ to a brand new day..." - this song by Ryan Star was popularized as the theme song of "Lie to Me"- an american tv series. But how many of us has not ever felt the urge to change everything? Getting a new start, new personality, and new attitude? Whether a backbencher nobody wanted to become the smart kid of his new school or a 'rascal' wanted to become the humble boy in his new area where every uncle there will know him by his "Asslamualaikum Uncle" greeting.
While it may be tough for a ‘tom boy’ to become all ‘girly girl’ 24/7 in real life, the internet is a place where one may choose to become whatever she pleases to be. Think about facebook, have you noticed how many of your school friends seem so much different there? Have they changed in reality? Are they all poets now swimming in the ocean of feelings? Is one of your friends really fighting along the line of fire? Is that h4wt girl really his new gf? And that's not the end of it. There is a ton of places in the internet where you may become a part of a community, make new friends, make up a whole new identity and maybe meet them in real life someday too. Facebook, flickr, deviantart, twitter, myspace, blogger, wordpress, somewhereinblog are just to name a few popular places.
So now you can be anyone, and even be multiple persons at a time. If you are that bad, you may even have a different face, name, occupation or whatever. You can pretend to be a student of IBA (if you are not in reality) so that many young boys and girls ask you "How did you take preparation vaiya? Please help us!"
But it is not always that simple. As recently fortune magazine published an article which claimed that there were around 100 scientists’ and journalists’ fake facebook profiles, all of them very active and realistic, having real big names as their friends. Here is how they did it, they impersonated one real person, and then added someone who knows him or her, then impersonated that person in another profile. As these people were all connected professionally (all of them were working in biotech industry), it was easy for the imposter to fool them. Some say that this was an attempt to get important information from them about their research that they would only tell to the ‘friends’ about.
Another news published in Guardian claimed that US’s private intelligence companies are using software that help people to simultaneously maintain up to 10 fake profiles. These people will blog, chat and twitter in foreign languages like Arabic, Urdu etc and spread pro-American propaganda. This is an attempt to regain USA’s image worldwide. If they targeted English speaking audience that could face legal problems in USA and UK, for this reason all the employed people will be impersonating foreigners and targeting them in their language.
There are success stories of internet personalities too. Take Adam Young for example, he, as he describes himself, is an introverted person and could not talk with people easily. His loneliness pushed his creativity to the edge as he made great songs on his laptop computer, being the single songwriter, composer and vocalist of his band. He uploaded his songs to myspace and those became hits as more than a million people downloaded the songs in days. He soon caught the attention of a recording company and struck a deal for publishing his albums. Now he is very much known by his band Owl City.
There was one survey that claimed that among every 10 ‘online women’, 8 of them were ‘men’ in reality. That is just weird. If you ask me, what to do about it - my answer is that I have no idea. All I can say is that there are a lot of real people in that online world of ours. Presenting themselves the way they always wanted to but could not for a lot of reasons. But these realities don’t matter anymore to them. Because now they are making an impact on others lives through their art, photo, articles and songs. Like all tools, how good or bad it is depends on how you use it. I am going to finish with a poetry I wrote some time ago.
Tell me what you think of this issue.)
References:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/24/facebook-privacy-herper-business-media-facebook.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Young
While it may be tough for a ‘tom boy’ to become all ‘girly girl’ 24/7 in real life, the internet is a place where one may choose to become whatever she pleases to be. Think about facebook, have you noticed how many of your school friends seem so much different there? Have they changed in reality? Are they all poets now swimming in the ocean of feelings? Is one of your friends really fighting along the line of fire? Is that h4wt girl really his new gf? And that's not the end of it. There is a ton of places in the internet where you may become a part of a community, make new friends, make up a whole new identity and maybe meet them in real life someday too. Facebook, flickr, deviantart, twitter, myspace, blogger, wordpress, somewhereinblog are just to name a few popular places.
So now you can be anyone, and even be multiple persons at a time. If you are that bad, you may even have a different face, name, occupation or whatever. You can pretend to be a student of IBA (if you are not in reality) so that many young boys and girls ask you "How did you take preparation vaiya? Please help us!"
But it is not always that simple. As recently fortune magazine published an article which claimed that there were around 100 scientists’ and journalists’ fake facebook profiles, all of them very active and realistic, having real big names as their friends. Here is how they did it, they impersonated one real person, and then added someone who knows him or her, then impersonated that person in another profile. As these people were all connected professionally (all of them were working in biotech industry), it was easy for the imposter to fool them. Some say that this was an attempt to get important information from them about their research that they would only tell to the ‘friends’ about.
Another news published in Guardian claimed that US’s private intelligence companies are using software that help people to simultaneously maintain up to 10 fake profiles. These people will blog, chat and twitter in foreign languages like Arabic, Urdu etc and spread pro-American propaganda. This is an attempt to regain USA’s image worldwide. If they targeted English speaking audience that could face legal problems in USA and UK, for this reason all the employed people will be impersonating foreigners and targeting them in their language.
There are success stories of internet personalities too. Take Adam Young for example, he, as he describes himself, is an introverted person and could not talk with people easily. His loneliness pushed his creativity to the edge as he made great songs on his laptop computer, being the single songwriter, composer and vocalist of his band. He uploaded his songs to myspace and those became hits as more than a million people downloaded the songs in days. He soon caught the attention of a recording company and struck a deal for publishing his albums. Now he is very much known by his band Owl City.
There was one survey that claimed that among every 10 ‘online women’, 8 of them were ‘men’ in reality. That is just weird. If you ask me, what to do about it - my answer is that I have no idea. All I can say is that there are a lot of real people in that online world of ours. Presenting themselves the way they always wanted to but could not for a lot of reasons. But these realities don’t matter anymore to them. Because now they are making an impact on others lives through their art, photo, articles and songs. Like all tools, how good or bad it is depends on how you use it. I am going to finish with a poetry I wrote some time ago.
Baa Baa Black Sheep
Have you FB account
Yes sir, yes sir
I have three accounts.
One for the friends,
One for the family,
Another is a fake ID, where
I am a tiger really.
(Does this sound familiar?Tell me what you think of this issue.)
References:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/24/facebook-privacy-herper-business-media-facebook.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Young