?Buy a phone which supports Wassap,? said a student friend and added, ?Then we can be in regular touch.?
On another day I heard another student friend telling one of her classmates, ?Join Wassap. Its easy to be in touch with it.?
On both occasions the same jingle rang in my mind, the jingle of the Airtel ad which has the line, ?Internnet hai toh friendship hai.?
On my birthday last year, to my surprise, a dear friend who had not been in touch for long called at the stroke of midnight. I asked my friend why was she absconding from my world and my friend after giving a series of explanation on how hectic work is and what not said, ?I have a BB now so I do not even come on gtalk.?
That was the first time the jingle had hit me on my head.
Why these incidents that I quote disturb me is because not just that our relationships are operating only in virtual space and are becoming technologically driven but how relationships are being defined by technology and how the condition of our times has pushed relationships to a level where relationships also become a tool to sell products and inject consumerism, in the hands of a market driven society.
By equating the idea of friendship with a product what has been done is that first of all products are being sold in the wrapper of friendship making the human quality of friendship a tool to sell and then making friendship depend on the item being sold. So what happens is that eventually the wrapper gets its value only because of what is wrapped inside and wrapper becomes a dependent on the item being sold though in the beginning, it was only a tool to sell the product.
Mixing the need of man- human touch- and greed- material requirements- what market has done is disturbing. Edward Bernays in his book Propaganda had said that better than selling a piano by going to the customers and asking them to buy the piano is to create a situation like say, creating a belief that piano is a marker of a standard house, and make the customers themselves come to the seller and by their own will buy a piano. In a similar fashion the slogan ?Internet hai toh friendship hai,? has created the <rather voiced the already existing> mindset that certain products are necessary for maintaining relationships. So with that mindset in operation now for the sake of those relationships the products are being sold and advertising happen by word of mouth method.
These products are very class specific. So what happens, also, is that our social circles become too restricted to a particular class. If I don?t have a BB or on Wassap I will, slowly, I will move out of your social circle and if you are not an internet literate you will slowly move out of my social circle. These products, without our knowing, marks its own inclusion and exclusion which is class driven.
What market driven society has done to us, is beyond our imagination. It reveals its ugly face when we feel an emotional loss and suddenly realize that the loss, to a great extent, was caused because of not buying a product. But to blame those ?friends? who want you to be on Wassap or buy a BB to be in touch also appears meaning less. You are asked to ?upgarde? yourself because market has equated the idea of friendship and some products.
Source: http://acrazymindseye.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/internet-hai-toh-friendship-hai/
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