I bumped into one of my classmates at tuition just now, we're not really close and I hardly ever talk to him in school except for when i'm collecting the class fees where i HAD TO. Anyway, we caught a glimpse of each other but i immediately looked away and pretended not to know him. He came over and stood beside me for a moment before breaking the silence. "Hi!" I have to admit I was caught off guard, though I managed to pull myself back together and blabbered one of the worst, most unconvincing lie i have ever made. "Oh hi, i didn't see you there." I don't think he bought it, considering he saw me saw him.
I was utterly disappointed in myself. So we're not the best of friends, but still, we were classmates for almost 5 months now! And yet i treated him like a COMPLETE STRANGER! How could I?! I realized it wasn't just me, many people nowadays are losing the art of real, face to face conversations. I think the problem lies in people's reliability in technology. Since the dawn of social networking websites, people rely so much on them to communicate with one another that eventually, they forget how to engage in face to face conversations. People can have so much to say to their so called "friends" on Facebook or Twitter, but when both of them actually meet for real, it's like they don't even know each other. I hear some even have virtual dates with their girlfriends via social networking websites. I mean what do they do? Spam flirts and kiss poke each other's homepages!?
I'm not gonna lie, even my once modest Facebook has become a sizeable beast. A testament to the power of hyper-connectivity, 300 photos, 500 friends, over 1000+ wall postings and hundreds if not thousands of hours WASTED. I'm not proclaiming that social networking websites are a bad thing, in fact they in some ways defined my social existence, but taking it overboard like tweeting someone 5 feet away is just too much. What I hate most about myself is that i do that sometimes, you know, using social networks as a conversation medium. I guess knowing the fact that both people are separated by microwave signals and phone lines does makes me feel a tad more comfortable and confident, maybe you feel that way too, but that doesn't qualify as an excuse for avoiding real conversations.
It's sad seeing people of my generation wasting so much time maintaining their online persona and forgetting the joy that real interaction brings. Matthew, one of the students who participated in the Social Experiment said: "I think people would be happier if they spent LESS time online. After the week my friends and i went on Facebook and realized that we didn't really miss anything."
I guess it's only fair enough to end this post by saying that social networking have indeed, without a doubt brought about much convenience to our world. But is it really worth giving up a good old face-to-face talk? I'm not asking you to choose between the two, i'm just asking you to give real conversations a chance.
