Permissive voyeurism.

In this day and age when communication has been reduced to opening our laptops and logging into a social networking site, which updates us on who is doing what, where they are doing it, who they are doing it with and how they are feeling. ( Yes the sentence is laced with innuendo.) We are permitting people to look into our lives. We are practically inviting these people to our virtual homes and letting them inspect the varying elements of our life which we have voluntarily shared with them. Hence the phrase “permissive voyeurism”.

We may not talk to every one of our “friends” on the site. We may not even know those people. We use discretion and add strangers on our pages and thereby we are letting these people into our lives. These people who constitute our “friends”, “followers” get a glimpse of how we think and our life style and our whereabouts and close friend circle.

So when I bump into an acquaintance who greets me with,

“ Hey convey my congratulations to your brother.”

Me: What for?

A: He got married no?

Me: He did. But how do you know that? I’m pretty sure I didn’t invite you. (Yes, I’m raspy. Like you didn’t already know that about me.)

A: Facebook update da.

Me: Ah…

Yes, I am taken by surprise when a person who is not even someone I spoke to when I was in close quarters being a student in the same classroom knows about my brothers shaadi. Because I haven’t put up any pictures neither did I dedicate any status messages to him and my sister in law. This is where you are hearing about it from me first hand i.e if you weren’t already invited to the big fat wedding.

It is a bit unnerving that information is so easily accessible. But I accepted their friend request didn’t I?

But now that CMS has crept into our already not so private world of social networking. I sigh at all the trouble I took to change privacy settings and making those painful lists and putting those people on restricted mode and blocking those slimy people from knowing of my existence only to be told that the government can access any information of mine including private conversations which were meant to be between me and the other person.

I hit my forehead hard, because we are a country with no proper privacy laws and we are all being subjected to microscopic scrutiny which is absolutely unacceptable in a democracy. But we weren’t really a democracy to begin with were we?

What will the government achieve with CMS? I wonder...

Will the politicians be sad that the general mass has other things to talk about other than scheming and plotting against them? That the junta like to just ramble on about their favorite recipe or the intricate details of their bowel movements perhaps… you never know what amuses people and what subject takes prominence.

Two teenagers talking dirty to each other in a chat room. Two business men setting up a meeting. Lawyer and client exchanging encrypted mail. The examples are numerous.

There is a reason why people have sex within the confines of a room. There is a reason why corporations have meeting rooms and chambers sans cctv they want to ensure secrecy. There is a reason for NDA’s too.

If the government sees no fault with CMS and thinks that they are right they shouldn’t be upset about people doing things openly on the streets. I mean why restrict the viewing to a certain group in the country let the whole world be the audience as well as the actors. It’ll make Babel from the Bible seem like an innocent description of chaos that’ll ensue.

The only good thing that can come out of CMS is that people will be forced to interact face to face. Which doesn’t seem so bad no?

No I don’t support CMS.

In other news: DAFT PUNK!