Exposing Ourselves On The Internet

For me its so addictive because i get to communicate and share my views with so many people. I also get relatively famous and 'known'. And then, since im preparing for my MBA, i also get to know so much from the net.

In due time, the virtual world is becoming the real world. With online communities coming in in a big way, it is probably time for us to realise that it is no longer "Virtual".

What about people who WANT privacy? Should they not go online, or recognize there is no such thing as privacy any more?

Excellent essay. you should submit this as a guest column in your local newspaper. I'm sure they'd print it!

where have you been? the internet was like that a couple of years ago too, chances are you just didn't get it.. maybe you should leave it for this generation and go back to patronising your children?

I enjoy the control... the control of choosing exactly what my 20,000/day visitors see and do. I can tell them to sign up to my forum (about 100/day will do that), or view ads, or even porn, or anything. At any moment I can instantly change my website and do whatever I want. And since my site just isn't big enough, nobody would ever know or care. But it's big enough to control a certain amount of people.

I do not divide aspects as off line and online.

I want to discuss on a topic and I can get common interest group people on a forum better than any gathering I can muster.

I can speak with my brother over skype.

I can watch some thing online on hear to live stream.

They are all services and services will grow, yes. But how is listening to music via the net or reading the newspaper (one which I might not have access to in physical form if the net wasn't there) different from an activity we do without the internet?

The internet is a service, a tool. A means to an end.

It may mean you become more obvious to the entire world but weren't you obvious to the world already in a lot of respects? People could scan your phone number through a telephone directory. People could find out about you through a slam book entry you wrote for a friend. The internet makes things more accessible.

the objective to talk/chat/write is to get listeners. we want everybody to listen and to "follow" us and agree with our opinions.

people want to get popular, want to gain respect wherever they go. want to appear superior than others.

i guess this is the "nature" of human. human love "control"!!!

Talking heads, virtual gurus, online scamsters...

The web is a place where one can be oneself, bcoz nobody knows u, hence thre is no pressure to follow social pressures, or be politically correct.

"Control", "power", "popularity" - those are the key words. Everyone is King (or Queen) on the net.

Privacy is an interesting and highly sensitive issue on the Internet. What do the ones looking for privacy do? Now thats a tough question. I guess they should decide what part of their lives they are willing to expose...

Ofcourse the convenience that the net offers cannot be ignored.

Also check out this article - http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/02/21/myspace.dangers.ap/index.html?section=cnn_mostpopular

I'd agree with one of the comments that it isnt virtual anymore. For all the freedom of expression and "being myself" theories, we still project whatever is acceptable. Our thoughts are programmed to write about things that would please the visitors and hence increase the hit counter figure. After a point,we arnt ourselves-we are what our readers want us to be.

The Internet has become an extension of our real lives.

Begin by asking: why do I (you) have ads on my site if I do not give a hoot how many hits I get? See? We may be ego crazed but you are in it for $$$$$

If we could see our audit trails through cyberspace, how similar or different would they be to our life's trails?

I'm afraid I have to agree with n00b's comment, specifically his/her statement of, "the internet was like that a couple of years ago too". Here's a little debunking.

The auction site eBay has been around since 1995. As for socializing sites, Friendster was up in 2002, and MySpace, in 2003. Actually, I'd consider forums and mIRC to be places where you could socialize or get together with like-minded people as well, which would put socializing on-line to be available since 1995 (or even earlier if you bring in BBSes).

Now, on blogging and blogs; people have been blogging long before the word "blog" even existed. At its core, a blog is simply a homepage dedicated to journal entries or the like.

I'm pretty sure the other examples of on-line services/activities listed (shop, earn, transfer money, sms, share photos) could be easily proven to have existed for much longer than a couple of years.

Sabarish's "The days and nights that we spend feeling truly alone seem to be increasing, inspite of being active on all these sites and making new friends every day!" also made me frown in disagreement. Perhaps using "being" instead of "feeling" would make more sense, unless one was supposed to infer that "being active on all these sites" was a direct result of "feeling truly lonely"? (Sorry about this particular paragraph. My English is not very good and I tend to interpret things rather differently, hence this paragraph.)