tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post3134447153461616325..comments2024-03-27T13:58:06.458+05:30Comments on Suvro Chatterjee bemused: orkut, anyone?Suvro Chatterjeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01027202980259279420noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-63224377622166563872010-12-02T10:25:07.166+05:302010-12-02T10:25:07.166+05:30Two and a half years down the line, I have another...Two and a half years down the line, I have another grouch to add to the list: I said I am glad that so many people I used to know have gotten back in touch via the net; now I see that many of them have chosen to fall out of touch again. So the net changes nothing (except for making people more flighty and frivolous, perhaps, since they don't have to come up with face to face explanations): those who really care to stay in touch don't need it, because they will find some way, hi-tech or otherwise; others don't matter!Suvro Chatterjeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01027202980259279420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-13420458247146382462008-05-09T19:12:00.000+05:302008-05-09T19:12:00.000+05:30I found this post really amusing and so very apt t...I found this post really amusing and so very apt too. I gave up on Orkut communities long ago. I have felt that some folks use these as some sort of status symbol. It's often like an advertisement that says, "see I work in IBM" or something similar. once inside the community, all one comes across, are silly games and meaningless discussions. <BR/><BR/>SumithaSumihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14502830803591429142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-52593849154485539322008-04-28T08:27:00.000+05:302008-04-28T08:27:00.000+05:30Dear Sir, I could not have agreed more with point ...Dear Sir, <BR/>I could not have agreed more with point 4. For me, orkut is an address book. One thing for sure, and I am sure many would concur, it brings a pleasant smile, when you meet a friend/batchmate after a long time.Kalyanjithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07964984217161975396noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-7663708065832827712008-04-28T02:06:00.000+05:302008-04-28T02:06:00.000+05:30While I agree with what you and others have alread...While I agree with what you and others have already said on this issue, I will say a few things.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Orkut is not that bad a site if-- and here's the important thing-- one knows how to keep things under control. If one knows whom to allow in as friends, what to tolerate from co-members and just where to stop mindlessness. Like many other youngsters, I allowed a lot of people in as "friends" at one point of time-- and then I was disgusted to see that no one really cared about anything worthwhile. Then, in a fit of rage, I deleted a whole lot of these unnecessary chaps off my friend list. I myself, perhaps, did "waste" some time in talking with some close friends, and I even do so now; but then there's not much harm done there if I know that I've had enough for a day.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Another thing: there are a few sensible communities on orkut, "The Good Life!" being one of course. Maybe these are too far and few between but then so are the good things in the real world. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Speaking for myself, orkut has at least helped me in quite some ways.<BR/>1. It has helped me develop my writing skills. Thanks to discussions on your forum, and debate-cum-discussions on certain other book, music and movie forums.<BR/><BR/>2. Has got me in regular touch with some classmates I liked in school and then lost connection with.<BR/><BR/>3. Most importantly, has widened my horizons regarding books, movies, and especially music. All thanks to a few people who are very versatile in experimenting with these and are ever eager to give honest recommendations.<BR/><BR/><BR/>All said and done, I think it's best if one suits himself/herself well. Some do not like the public nature of the site-- which though may be varied to some extent-- is at the very least open to all "friends". That's one of the several reasons why a very close friend of mine left orkut a couple of weeks after joining it.<BR/><BR/>Regards.Sudipto Basuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00272783734959529945noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-894383542063804182008-04-26T15:19:00.000+05:302008-04-26T15:19:00.000+05:30Sir, you have taken a really good decision by allo...Sir, you have taken a really good decision by allowing only friends to post comments on your scrapbook, and allowing people to become your friends only after they have read your profile, and have sent you a mail that they have read your profile and they are really interested in being your friend, regardless of whether they know you beforehand or not. In this way, you can really avoid a lot of nuisance. I have sent you a mail about this.Subhadip Duttahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14537752464444407628noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-43187327684235119162008-04-26T09:00:00.000+05:302008-04-26T09:00:00.000+05:30Sir,I guess I was one of the few who got you into ...Sir,<BR/><BR/>I guess I was one of the few who got you into this. I had warned you sufficiently early not to take things literally in orkut. It's pretty much analogous to the current image of the society- people besotted with increasing number of friends(read acquaintances or haven't met or don't even know, when I saw these options on orkut that was some laugh that I had) /scraps/membership in communities and the like. I don't blame them, considering that the majority of the people who do that are probably youngsters who look at this as another sort of "fun"(?!) <BR/>Personally I found orkut a good way of keeping in touch with basically all my classmates from school and now from college. There was one point of time, I won't lie, when it was an efficient way of killing time from checking out girls to making futile efforts to pour sense into India/ Pakistan, Arab/Israeli conflict based communities( and then giving up) to discussing movies of Ray and Kurosawa. Of late, I hardly get the time to visit orkut, sometimes I leave a message or two on "The good life", at others reminisce by looking at the albums of some of my friends.<BR/>I believe there's a lot of dirt in orkut and it has become quite useless to me now, but now and then some old friend says hi and I feel good about it. <BR/>Just as you said, that you are on orkut to promote the blog, I guess that's the price you pay for maintaining the hope that you can get a few actually good thinkers to engage in conversation in the community. If you don't aspire to publicize it anymore and are content to continue with the few odd members of "The good Life" who actually participate vehemently, I believe Google Groups would be a good option.<BR/>I remember there was a standard way of writing essays before I came to your class, whenever you were describing something you mentioned its advantages, disadvantages and ended with "It's up to us to choose the good from the bad and make good use of it". I guess the same holds for the internet, orkut and the like. Unfortunately most of us can't or don't want to make good use of it. <BR/>As for Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they have seen to it that you have hundreds of possible options to explore from gmail, gtalk, calendar, google earth to orkut. Social networking sites are for the society, and this is the choice of the society. Now if the society can't come up with better things than photos of people bathing in underwear and useless advertisements, then I guess they couldn't be bothered. As for me, I prefer to turn phlegmatic. By the way, blogger.com is also owned by Google and I guess you and me atleast, not to mention the several others who have replied before me and after the other posts make good use of it.Ankanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13034503005201396240noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-5059906727972889422008-04-25T12:07:00.000+05:302008-04-25T12:07:00.000+05:30Sir,While it is sadly true that Orkut is a frivolo...Sir,<BR/><BR/>While it is sadly true that Orkut is a frivolous social web-community that is best suited for mindless bantering, I am afraid that you might not find anything better than this sort of stuff nowadays. Folks are too busy presently (at least, they try to make a sincere pretension of it) and they refrain from doing anything more serious than posting irritating mindless scraps like "Hi Dude, whazzzup?". Now, only a website that quizzes the IQ and general knowledge of people before admitting them in can be a worthy stuff to sign into, but going by the moronic level of common public nowadays, even that kind of a site shall have abysmally low number of members.<BR/><BR/><BR/>I have made a few interesting observations regarding Orkut-<BR/><BR/>1. A majority of the people use the words "I am a cool dude" in their self-description without realising how uninteresting and demeaning it sounds. Even more irritating is the fact that they consider something as stupid as 'sms-text' to be a style statement, and they must do it for the sake of keeping themselves 'in'. Tell them about it, and they either scoff at your social unawareness or write you off with the title of an 'antel'.<BR/><BR/>2. I am not sure why some girls write "I bite strangers" in order to keep the lecherous guys at bay. There are better and more tactful ways to ignore such sort of people, ladies: You certainly don't need to sound so pre-medeival in an attempt to shoo off "i wanna make frenship with you" types. Equally mystifying is the fact that I find many girls indiscriminately sending requests for friendship to unknown persons (without bothering to write a self-introduction, not to mention) all day long. Leave it, I never understand girls anyway.<BR/><BR/><BR/>3. Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai might turn green with envy to know that there are thousands of their look-alikes in India. The 'modern', young generation of India has still not come out of the pre-historic, rubbish idea that looks are absolutely critical to one's character, and the fact that they post the pictures of Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta in their profile is a sure measure of how inconfident they are- supposedly they post such pictures so that others might get impressed and interested!<BR/><BR/><BR/>However, inspite of all it's vices, I am thankful to Orkut- I was able to find many of my old school friends with it's aid. I am also grateful to Orkut that I could establish a connection with you, Sir, a teacher with whom I didn't have the privilege of interacting much in my school days.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Bye and Take care.<BR/><BR/>JoydeepAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-41105891937587139722008-04-25T09:39:00.000+05:302008-04-25T09:39:00.000+05:30I'll say just one thing for now, Ankush: you obvio...I'll say just one thing for now, Ankush: you obviously did not read my point number four carefully enough, or just didn't get it. If I allow obscene jokes in my classes in order to become more 'popular', or don't dare to scold my pupils for bad behaviour for fear of many of them leaving, how can I still claim that I am not responsible for the standard of my classes going to the dogs?... that would be shameless escapism, and that is what I accuse orkut's administrators of.Suvro Chatterjeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01027202980259279420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-4852184197964935022008-04-25T02:39:00.000+05:302008-04-25T02:39:00.000+05:30An interesting post! I would agree with some of yo...An interesting post! I would agree with some of your points but not all. First of all, we can't criticize internet or orkut or Google brothers for having a pool of fools in the world. The type of interaction on orkut is just a reflection of the common talks between people (common people using internet) in their daily lives. So, orkut or for that matter any other site/online service, can't affect the kind of talks people are interested in, it just promotes the same.<BR/><BR/>As far as sharing ideas, thoughts and experiences is concerned, I personally feel, orkut is not designed for that exactly (blogging is!). Orkut claims to be a social networking site. And probably (and sadly) intellectual stuff is not a part of social meetings (including online meetings).<BR/><BR/>"Till date I think I have invited only three to become my friends here: all the rest requested to join. If I had not rejected numerous requests, that number would have been more than 500 by now" Sorry Sir, but I didn't get the plus-side in this statement .<BR/><BR/>One by one comments on your points:<BR/>1. Probably the reason behind the majority of youngsters on orkut is the recent rise in the use of internet, which elderly people are not used to. Yes, most common scrap on orkut would be "Hey, wassup" (sometimes abbreviated shorter to sup). I also don't understand the reason for the disillusionment that such language makes someone cool. In India, as such the average level of the written communication skills of a person are not good (probably due to the type of education system and social structure, even my father never understand the point behind reading non-academic books and thus never encourage me to.) and the communication through internet (which has to be in English) is making it even worse by frequent use of colloquial and abbreviated language. I personally don't like people writing abbreviations for every second word (ttyl - talk to you later!), but probably thats how languages evolve (congratulations became congrats and now congs, facsimile became fax).<BR/><BR/>2. Communities ain't just popular on Orkut. Again, they might be useful for meeting old friends. But, I have seen people having joined hundreds of communities but rarely visiting any of them. Most of them are used to demonstrate their personalities (I like sleeping in the classroom, So much pain behind these eyes!). The one like Good Life may an exception, but in general we can't expect.<BR/><BR/>3. Quite right. Again the same reason, people around us are too ostentatious and pretentious. I have seen people working hard to increase their scrap/friend/fan counts and people and putting their emotions on public display.<BR/><BR/>4. I feel that Google is trying hard to remove spams from orkut (it introduced many privacy options)<BR/><BR/>5. Again, probably orkut IS meant for such kind.<BR/><BR/>6&7. Can't say anything<BR/><BR/>8. I felt the same thing. But, you can see, when people visit your profile, the about me is not much of an interest to them. Personally, even I don't find anything appropriate and worth to write in about me of such a website.<BR/><BR/>9. Again, in my opinion, as a discussion forum blogging would be much better place, or some other service of worth may come up in the future.<BR/><BR/>Looking forward to some more discussion here.<BR/>AnkushAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-17763305426981587442008-04-24T21:21:00.000+05:302008-04-24T21:21:00.000+05:30Dear Suvroda,If you recollect, I was a rather late...Dear Suvroda,<BR/>If you recollect, I was a rather latecomer in the Orkut world. I came in sometimes last July solely to get a feel of today's X-gen(or is it Y, or Z) and their thoughts and feelings. Being a member of innumerable mailing list I already had a feel of what so-called social networking was mostly about. That is why I restricted myself solely to business networkings. <BR/>The main driving force behind such sites like Orkut, is a sense of today's generation to be "in", "happening", "cool" and "belong". Since you are my English teacher, I would be greatful if you could explain to me what the previous set of words mean. My experience showed me hollow minds, surprisingly even in such serious (well that is what I thought) groups like politics in West Bengal. The conversation you find there is only about hurtling the worst of personal abuses at the political leaders. It has been ages since I logged in to Orkut anyway. <BR/>I also saw a sense of tremendous insecurity among the users. And that is what keeps Orkut going I suppose. The fact that you stated 18,346 scraps displays that. This is only the fact, the reason being insecurity.<BR/>Another issue is doubting others and a hope of achieving something by cheating and fooling everybody, that strikes me in Orkut. Cheating is sweet and achieving something through it is even sweeter. And that is why you see people, when they want to get introduced to someone of opposite sex; the first question they ask is "Is it your real name?" and not "Hi I am so and so". <BR/>But as far as Larry Page and Schmidt is concerned, I do not have any dearth of respect for them. They just decided to capitalise on certain social aspects and they achieved it, same as Bill Gates or any other tycoons of our time. Please remember Suvroda, it is not business, it is a rat eat rat dog eat dog oworld out there, and they also need to kill everybody before others kill them.santanu Chatterjeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04872511193052035151noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-19883068347805824472008-04-24T18:28:00.000+05:302008-04-24T18:28:00.000+05:30Suvro da, I'll keep my comment short for now. The ...Suvro da, I'll keep my comment short for now. The Dalai Lama quote that you end off with is priceless. And one really can see it all around. <BR/>Hi-tech machines and chat rooms and facebook and orkut, and mobiles, and all. It's quite bizarre to see five young people walking into to a lovely sunlit restaurant to share some time and a meal together - and all of them will after seven minutes be chatting on their cell phones! It still disgusts me at a level. Holmes' response would be "Fools!" - while The Dalai Lama would gently interject with his grin lighting up his eyes, and utter a sharp "Foolish!"<BR/>As for your thought that you will leave as soon as there is a better alternative - I couldn't agree more.<BR/>'Language and Literature' was one fine community that was/is very interesting, and although I left the community (for absolutely personal reasons) folks there were always having sensible, sensitive, and articulate, and meaningful discussions.<BR/>As for the 'foolish' people on orkut - the members most likely make up a microcosm of the world, so that's that. <BR/>I've got an interesting theory regarding the age characteristics of participants in your community. But I think you already know the possible reasons, so I'll end my comment here, although one could muse for awhile but ultimately it comes back to waiting for a qualitatively better opening, me thinks.<BR/>Thank you, and Take care.Shilpihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03106170029106184978noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-32003471808843770942008-04-24T14:46:00.000+05:302008-04-24T14:46:00.000+05:30Sir, you blend comedy and seriousness with startli...Sir, you blend comedy and seriousness with startling effect, my views in this arena are perfectly according to you.<BR/><BR/>Even i had received a negative response, after sending you a 'friend-request', but let me tell you:i have never felt neglected, you have always been so very responsible in replying.<BR/><BR/>And lastly, i would wish that you find a better social networking community, but that is actually going to be very difficult,because, a bit of idiocy amalgamated with flamboyance is what today's world demands, or else you are lost!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-81796613686743981552008-04-24T14:18:00.000+05:302008-04-24T14:18:00.000+05:30Dear Suvroda,I have exactly similar experience wit...Dear Suvroda,<BR/><BR/>I have exactly similar experience with Orkut. In fact, initially I wrote a huge profile of myself in order to attract attention of like minded individuals but soon I found out it is extremely difficult. I also joined host of communities but found out other than the quizzing community (and now of course Good Life)none of the communities are worth participating.<BR/><BR/>Therefore, for me orkut got restricted to being a site where I can keep in touch with people I already knew. I reduced my profile that is why because I saw no point.<BR/><BR/>These days, other than Good Life I don't visit any community on orkut.<BR/><BR/>I don't delete my account because through orkut I got back in touch with you and similarly with many friends.<BR/><BR/>Regards<BR/>TanmoyAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com