When we speak of social networking, what are the few things that come to our minds? Facebook…? MySpace…? Twitter…? Orkut…? I think there is an endless list of such social networking websites. If I start listing them one by one, it will take up all my hosting space. So, do you think social networking is limited to a few neat looking websites who want to know everything I do from the morning until the moment I sleep? What happened to the times when people physically met and socialized? Every new day, a new social app/website is being created.. to do what? To make our already plugged lives more bizarre? So what is this concept of social networking? A fad, trend or just another bandwagon to hop on? I know that networking has its own advantages, but do you think that telling my friends what I ate, what I am reading, or how much I slept will make any difference in their lives? Oh yes, it will certainly make a difference to someone who wants to steal my information.

When I was little, I used to be very shy of making new friends. I used to tell my mom if I wanted to befriend someone in the neighborhood, and then she helped me out. But what now? Anyone can just sit on the computer and add a thousand friends to his already long list of the so-called friends, without even knowing that there can be a stalker, a murderer or even a rapist in that queue. But hey, its all part of the social networking gimmick! Isn’t it? Let me socialize some more and one fine day..oops.. I am dead.

Don’t you think that we are already missing our lives between e-mails, cellphones, blogs, Internet, instant messaging that now we have to resort to these lame social networking websites. Now, we have more ways of getting in touch with each other but we are spending less time in actual communication. Someone comes along every few months and launches a new social networking website. For heaven’s sake, aren’t there too many already? I played around with Cell phones a lot when they first came out. You know what? I like to be unreachable. Gather up your thoughts and send me an e-mail, please.

To actually quote the benefits of such social networking websites, let me describe them to you. I do not have accounts on any social networking websites except Orkut where my intent was to find my old school friends as its a website specially targeted for Indian audience. I did manage to find some of my old school friends but guess what? After a few scrap exchanges and acting surprised (I can’t even say if that surprise was genuine), everything came back to ground zero. To add to my misery, I even thought of calling up one of my “very good” high-school buddies. So, when I called him, he was busy in some very important meeting with his client. He did recognize me, so I expected at least a callback for courtesy sake! But nothing. And this is what I learned from this incident – Life goes on and I am a fool! Now, I am even planning to delete that account which I hold on Orkut. I’ve never felt anything missing in my life without these social networking websites. Then again, I’m a person who likes privacy and it seems, these days, I am greatly outnumbered.

A new trend that is developing nowadays with every social website copying each other, is the use of applications. So, what are these applications? Stupid flash games, countdown timers, IQ tests, chat applications… No thanks! I guess I will just watch the grass grow in my lawn or maybe look at a wall all day. To my amusement, I recently found out that people are making a lot of money developing and selling these retarded applications. So why don’t you give it a try? Maybe this is your path to the hall of rich jerks!

You think this is a rant on social networking websites? You are right. It is. I have even made a new category in my blog called “rants”

Update : While constructing the picture for this particular post, I went to Myspace.com website to steal their logo and what do I see? They have a corny header graphic on their homepage that says :- Sign-up just got shorter! See for yourself, how desperate they have become (do they have any members left anymore?? And.. what is that white splash.. LOL) :-