Facebook or book of invisible faces?

Today the brand equity of Facebook is almost at par with the brands which fulfill our basic necessities of life. Not having a Facebook account is as good as not having an email id or a mobile number. This forum is considered to be the only platform whereby you can be connected with your acquaintances. It hardly matters that you are active/inactive user, visit Facebook 10 times a day or once in 10 days, know how it works/not even aware of basic functionalities. All that matters is that you ought to have a Facebook account which allows you to peep inside someone’s personal space to the extent someone’s personal life is at display.

From the user perspective, the domain of Facebook is huge and everyone uses it the way they perceive it to be. For some it’s the medium to be updated of what their friends and family are upto, for some it’s the forum to let everyone know what they are upto, for few it’s meant to share important updates on their journey/work/achievements and for few it’s for posting for the sake of posting. In all above scenarios one thing is common which is to let the world know of the things which they might not have known otherwise.

While users use it in different ways, the real objective/face of Facebook is way beyond our imagination. Sometime back everyone used to wonder as to how this is a listed entity with market capitalization of more than $100 billion and what’s their source of income. The only source of revenue common public were aware of was the advertisement income. The users could see small icons of few brands in the right hand corner of the home page based on the options they selected while creating their profile. A Layman never bothered to reconcile the revenue which could have earned with advertisement on the home page and their actual revenue.

We all should be mindful of the fact that the creator of Facebook is the one who at the age of 19 had 4k emails, pictures and addresses of everyone connected to Harvard. After gaining access to this vital information, he called all of them as dumb f***s for sharing it just like that. You can now imagine the ideology and the principles which would have laid as a foundation to create Facebook. The only difference is that now the numbers are magnified from 4k to 2.2 billion. So basically all your personal information, preferences, the sites you visit, the places you travel and the personal conversation you make is tracked round the clock without your knowledge but may be with your permission which is embedded in the settings and not known to 95% of the users.

Just imagine how is it possible that you visited any site, say for online shopping, when you were not logged in to Facebook but when you log in Facebook later on, you see all the products you scanned on the home page. Magic, isn’t it? The worse is that Facebook tracks all the internet users even when they don’t have a Facebook account. Facebook is also alleged to track WhatsApp conversations and use it for generating advertisement income.  So the moral of the story is that if you are an internet user, you are tracked for everything by someone whom you don’t even know. Isn’t that scary? Well the reality is that all of this is just a drop in the ocean. The magnitude of the real issue and some of the allegations on Facebook is quite grave and can shock you to the core.

After tons of apologies by Facebook in last decade, The Cambridge Analytica fiasco alone is expected to affect 87 million users where their personal information is alleged to be misused for political elections. Steve Bannon who was the campaign manager for Trump’s 2016 presidential election had served as a board member for Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica is said to be a Company which uses data to change audience behavior. They use data to target voters with hyper specific appeals which is known as psychographic modelling. Although the networking baron Zuckerberg says that it was done without his knowledge but so far his responses have not been convincing at all. Being the CEO of Facebook, he was unaware of the basic functioning of the entity and preferred to stay mum on most of the questions which itself indicates the existence of smoke and mirrors.

Data privacy has been the biggest threat for ever mushrooming digital world. Automation and digitization are the buzzwords today but it’s important to keep our eyes opened for the floodgate of risks this platform is exposed to. We tend to demean those who don’t embrace technology but we should also factor in their apprehensions which are not apprehensions anymore. No matter what will be the outcome of countless severe allegations on Facebook but surely it had invisible faces which were always existing, busy in minting money and laughing at their users. Next time when you share your personal information on any digital forum, think twice on your expectations of data privacy, check countless options under settings and surely don’t be too possessive about it as there will always be a threat of invisible faces watching, monitoring and tracking you in every possible way!!!

Shoebite, an invisible scar in the soul

As per the internet definition of shoebite, it’s is an ugly sore that occurs on the foot after wearing new or ill-fitting shoes (new or ill-fitting shoes brush and rub against the skin, causing friction that eventually results in inflammation, pain and swelling). If I reread the definition by replacing shoe with people, the whole description sounds very familiar and close to something we come across very frequently. So in real life, an ugly sore occurs in our soul when ill-fitting people rub against our equation/relationship which causes friction and eventually results in pain, broken heart and sometimes permanent scars in our soul.

We all know that practically it’s impossible to keep everyone (with whom we interact/meet/work or who are indispensable part of our journey) happy all the time. To this point there is no issue as this is something we brace ourselves for and don’t find it unusual. The surprise comes when someone we trust or the ones in our close circle (by any means, not necessarily the blood relationships) do something/act unexpectedly which is way beyond the boundaries of our imagination/anticipation. Such instances surely resonate in our minds where we try to introspect and find an answer but are unable to do so.

Although the real issue is not the gravity of the act done by someone but is the expectations we develop unconsciously with everyone which differs in magnitude based on the equation we share with each individual. Someone rightly said, “Serenity comes when we trade expectations for acceptance”. If we think logically, anyone will behave/do what they are supposed to or what they are, so what is there to be surprised or get affected. If it’s just the fact that we got to know another shade of an individual out of the 50 shades then the emotional churn should stop with a surprise. It shouldn’t go to the level of feeling sad, heart broken or not able to come out of thinking about the incident hundred times a day.

This is a very common emotion we all go through almost on a daily basis but it’s high time for us to introspect and work on ourselves. We have to understand and acknowledge the fact that each individual is unique and there is no way any person can think/act the way we image it to be. The real secret of happiness is low expectations. We have to learn keeping very low/no expectations from everyone around us and peace will follow automatically. Even if we have some level of expectation, it has to be flexed based on different scenarios as how an individual reacts in a particular scenario differs significantly. As long as we accept the person the way he/she is rather than magically imagining their behavior to sync with our preconceived framework, life will be quite simple and pleasing.

Most of the people I have come across have got great fetish for shoes. With all enthusiasm and sparkle in our eyes we buy new footwear and reserve it for special occasion expecting it to complement with our look. But alas, the glister it had under LED clad rooftop fizzles the moment it starts biting. Can we blame the shoe/brand for this? May be not, as we should have been wise enough to factor in this common behavior. That’s exactly the ask in real life too with different people. We can surely avoid shoebite with different people if we wish to do so. We simply have to make provision for the unforeseen behavior and keep the horizon of your thoughts wider so that other emotions don’t coincide and make invisible scars in our soul!!!