Thursday, September 17, 2009

Idiot’s Guide to understanding Online Behaviour




Before I begin let me make two things clear.

First there are people and then there are their online avatars. People behave quite differently when they are in the cyber world.

Second I have nothing against any of these, some of my best friends are amongst them.

The Chatanovas/Chaterellas – These people are the Casanovas / Cinderellas of the cyber world. They won’t even say ‘hi’ to you when you see them in person but they are ‘all words’ when online. They will ping you and start chatting which can only end when you excuse yourself. Normally at a loss of words face-to-face, they are quite witty and even flirting when chatting online.

The Cassandras – They are your friendly neighbour doomsday announcers. They feel it’s their responsibility to educate you of the health risk of mobile phones, beware you of AIDS needle stabbing people, the incredible way to alert police by entering your PIN in reverse etc. They are also the ones to stuff inspiring quotes like “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm” down your throats. Whoa! Just lay off.

The Obscurist – These people are the ones who write status updates/message like – “I am very....”, “Today was very bad but thank god I....”, “Abhishek is very happy because....” or even worse like – “Da da da ....”, “Aaargh”, “My mind is MR”, “DD didn’t know she....". Please, you may think that you appear very enigmatic and deep by this but in reality you appear to be a moron who doesn’t know his right hand from your left. Either write what you meant to say or shut up. Nobody is interested.

The fad riders – They will write whatever is ‘IN’ right now. Like “Rest in peace King of pop”, “Well played Federer”, “Amazing race Raikkonen”. Even if they never heard MJ's songs or probably thought him as a child abusing psycho they think his death should be put into a status update. Please they are enough news sites on the web. If I wanna know I will read that and not your idiotic updates.

The attention seekers – They are full of sad stories about themselves. Mostly girls are the culprits in this case with status messages like – “I am very sad today :-(” “I am missing you very much :-(” “Bad day in office, I wanna go home” “Having a terrible head ache. It hurts”, “Waan” or the killer, just a “:-( “. Well I would have sympathised with you if you hadn’t splashed your plight all over the cyberspace. Now you are just looking for attention.

The Perennially busy-bees – These people always have a red dot next to their name and are always busy. Status messages include the plain and simple “busy” or the more exotic variations like “Busy busy busy”, “Do not disturb... Very very busy”, “Working, do not disturb under any circumstances”. Well, if you are SO busy then why the hell don’t you sign out ? It does not show that you have a life, just issues.

The cry-it-louds – These are active on social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook and feel it’s completely ok to tell the world things like – “Rohit was late again, he doesn’t love me” , “My sweety pie is here and I am going to kiss him”, “I miss my Jaanu”, “I love her so much but why she doesn’t love me”. Probably she doesn’t because of your ranting like these and total lack of sense that these things are private and meant to stay that way.

The serial-Frandshippers – Just because you sat near them in the bus means that you two are friends for life to them. These are the people who have above 500 “friends” and continuously troll the sites looking for anybody they recognize. Mostly IT engineers with no work and a free internet. They are also the ones who send out friend requests to random girls with pick-up lines – “Hey nice Pic. Can be we freinds?” or “Hi Aarti looking cute... Wanna have fraandships with me?” Uggghh... Creepy!

The blow-by-blowers – They tell it like it is. Courtesy mobile phones – “I am in a queue to see The Dark Knight. I am still in a queue. I am bored of being in a queue. I am wondering whether to give up being in a queue and go home. I have decided to go home. I am on the bus wondering if I should have stayed in the queue.” I wish you were under the bus rather than in it. B**w me !

The spreaders-of-love – These people feel it’s perfectly alright to spit out hate messages like – “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”, "Anurag isn't really that impressed with idiots who don't realize how idiotic they are.", " Fucking assholes need to mind their fucking business”. Don’t curse the world here, seek psychiatric help.

The Careless Commentators – Ever found out that your last night –drunk- Salman Khan
imitating -shirtless photo has been uploaded on the SNS (Social Networking Site), and you face tagged, complete with a comment like – “LOL, he was so drunk”? They are to be blamed for this. They are also to be blamed (more appropriately drawn and quartered) for comments like – “Oh who is this hot chick with you in this pic?” or “Oh my god look at Shruti’s legs in this pic, they are yumm” Dude! If you can read this so can she! And public forum anyone?

The Bore-me-to-deaths – There is no dull moment for these people. Facts like “I am very sleepy”, “Today I ate 3 Muuli paranthas for lunch”, “in the evening planning to go to India Gate” seem like a must-know for everyone to them. They are probably trying to tell the world that they are still alive.

The lyricist – No explanation required. Probably the most harmless of the lot. They are the ones who keep their about me, status messages /status updates in the form of song’s lyrics. Retards!

English killers ‘Awesome. Super fucking cool. Amazing. Incredible. Sexy’. All of their sentences begin and end with these words only and they use LOL as a punctuation mark. English language has its shortcomings, please respect them.

Quiz takers – And my favourite. The useless quiz takers on Facebook. They want to know when will they die, what is the first letter of the name of their love, what kind of lover they are, what their birthday says about them, how much naughty are they and what is their love percentage. And they take Facebook as a perfectly credible source. In the end they also feel that world should know about this and publish it. I can only think of one solution. Death by firing squad !

Sane – And lastly the rare and dying breed, the normal people.

P.S. – The author although thinks he is part of the last group but there is plenty of evidence linking him with all of the above.

P.P.S - Stereotyping is a fool's way to understand the world better

P.P.P.S - By talking to people and looking in Retrospect I realized that I have left out one important case. The case of a Girl putting lyrics from a song or putting up a arbit quote from the web and the Guys going ga-ga over it. They 'like' it, and start pouring in comments like - "Oh how beautiful quote", "Hey nice quote", "Oh this is no nice. this really suits you", "Wow this is so touching" and then there'll be one guy who will think of this as an opportunity to start a conversation and put in "Hi Swati how are you". Guys ! Stop being so desperate.

COMING SOON - THE IDIOTS GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING B-SCHOOLERS

9 comments:

  1. A rather insightful little piece there. Safe to say everyone of us has been one of that list at some point in our lives.. :D

    But that's the point isn't it. Some people evolve, some never do. One of my friends is faster at changing her Orkut name than the TOI's RSS feed (for sports updates). She has been that way since she got an internet connection, which was roughly 4 years ago. Then there was this guy who, after watching "Ironman" wrote on his status message on FB, "IRONMAN: Intoxicating film".. Seriously, intoxicating..?

    But you forgot the most irritating of the lot. The L337-5P34K guys. They'll write stuff that no one wants to understand. They just say it to sound uber cool n hep!

    EG:

    "w00tz manz thatz so cool!"

    "i haff so many frendz"

    "lolz d00dz"

    "h4xx0r (this actually means hacker)"

    They write "the" as "teh" (intentionally!).
    "friends" as "frendz"
    "me" as "meeh" or "meh"

    and more..

    They'll even randomly press shift while typing sO tHaT iT lOoKs sOmEtHinG LiKe tHiS. It's painful for the eyes.

    The best part is that they actually assume that everyone would understand what they're saying, even when they're writing turd..

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree. I know people who change their names from "Varun frendship is life" to "Varun having fun" and and the likes on orkut every other day.

    Plus there are people who think the best wishes are conveyed by writing
    ATB
    BB
    GN
    TC

    (All the Best)
    (Bye Bye)
    (Good Night)
    (Take Care)

    If they feel writing 5 letters is too much of a hassle I am really sure of sincerity of their wishes either.

    But the first prize goes to -
    LOLz !
    I mean what is LOLz? LOL is laughing out loud, probably if a person is particularly jovial he could laugh out loud a little longer but what is LOLz? It's beyond my limited comprehension.

    ReplyDelete
  3. pretty sarcastic stuff ,but bro u have missed out few things:

    1. Since u ve talkd abt ppl's behaviour on social networking sites as well, u ve missed d ones who have pics of bollywood celebrities as their profile pics,or their albums are flooded wd such pics

    2.PLus there are ppl (do i need to mention here) who alwaz have dere current music track as the status msg ,and d music is mostly house or hip hop (so wannabe)

    plus d big question is if we stick to all this sane-insane, stff DEN ALL D FUN is GONE,
    chats or social ntwrking sites shud have no "present status" sort of ting

    ReplyDelete
  4. http://ec.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/incaseoffire.gif

    :D

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Prateek - Sarcasm and me? How can you even say like that ? And ya I didn't remember the bollywood pics people, not too much of them around me.

    And I agree that otherwise there would no fun, of course we need these people to make fun of ;-)

    @Akhil - Read this, it actually happened
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6155017/Trapped-girls-updated-Facebook-instead-of-calling-police.html

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think you couldve also looked at the Professional-Gamers...who spend most part of their professional life, sittin b4 d office computer "beating their own scores" n "challenging friends" to Farmville or Mafia wars or Bouncing balls (uhhmm...ppl actually want themselves to b associated smthing calld that??) or Sorority Life..

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  7. @Manaswita - Ya they are category too but Bouncing Balls ? Really ? And I haven't come across many of them personally, so I kinda overlooked them.

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  8. U kiddin me? Half of IMI is composed of professional gamers, atleast would be ones...going by their current obsession with FB games... :p

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  9. LOL... No I am assuming the people from India's first corporate sponsored B-School whose placement are better than IIM's are only doing it because they are 'vella' right now. And will switch to productive work when they are given some.

    All sarcasm is intended :-P

    ReplyDelete

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