Friday, April 25, 2008

Spikeology

We leave bits of us behind. Our thoughts, words and actions. Leaving a mark on the world immediately around us. No, I’m not talking about shedded skin and nail trimmings.

There are a variety of roles to play and a number of masks to wear. You never quite know which mask you are wearing until it becomes a part of your regular face. Then it becomes difficult to actually open up. Tell anybody, “You are wearing a mask. This is not the real you” and chances are you are on your way to roadside astrology fame and fortune. Either that or some sluggish stagehand superglued your current expression – wood, paint et al.

Many of us walk with smiles so frozen it’s a wonder the temperature doesn’t drop to sub arctic levels. Or with tempers so flaring, your goose is cooked for the next few weeks. Then there are the lifestylists, radiating more joy than a lampshade will cover. Hmm… I can imagine quite a few people who’d look better with a lampshade on.

Sometimes it’s easier to wear a mask than to actually be yourself. Of course, it’s easier to talk to strangers than to real life people. Now you know the reason behind the success of gossip columns. Only now they are called “Survival strategies”, “Life’s lessons”, or “How to freeze your mother in law with a K look”. No, seriously, it’s much easier to open up to a random person imagining your anonymity preserved than to pour your heart out to the people who truly can make a difference. What difference can a few bits of advice or concern make? Pun intended.

So we discuss everything under the sun with our netizens. Those cyberians who “connect” to life with their yard long wires dangling out of their hardware. Some of them are wireless. In real life too.

And then one fine day you realize that your online existence has crawled into your offline one. Some of us just log in to the net. Most of us live there. We spend our time chatting up folks, talking into the wee hours of the morning or the pee hours of the night, playing games and hearing tales of woe until you realize your own life has become nothing more than the page of a gossip column. Your every move discussed threadbare. Your every thought processed by a billion minds, or worse, stored in a search engine server. And a malicious pleasure in trying to get inside someone’s mindspace. Whatever happened to trying to get into somebody’s pants in real life?!

We are so empty of true human contact that we resort to emptying our already depleted bowels of emotion over these wireless lines, not realizing that the person or persons to whom we are venting to get affected. They absorb our personalities to such an extent that they can almost predict our next thought. Then we get scared and move back. And find some other pot to put our steam into.

Life needs the milk of human kindness. Too bad it’s processed and packaged these days. Fat free.

12 comments:

lil vavz said...

It's easier to vent out on a stranger cause you can be sure that his/her opinion about you, be it negative or positive, will not affect you whatsoever.

But there are times you lose control and get close to a person. Then the thought of losing the person becomes a worry. Walls are built. Distances are made. All in fear that your true self might chase him/her away.

dreamy said...

'Those cyberians who “connect” to life with their yard long wires dangling out of their hardware.'

Yes.
I live here.

Unknown said...

nicely articulated blog....

strangers becoming friends.... isn't how the society works....

we make new relationships... give it a chance to bloom.... enjoy it... thats life...

Unknown said...

That was interresting, but then again, in a way all that we are ...is what we imput to our brain, be it in real life "contact" or in cyberspace.its all information, and the ability to select and change that information to our pleasure made the "gosts" of cyberspace a reality.More and more we will begin to have 2 lives, we will trade the masks of day to day to an "avatar"...Pretty grim isnt it...

Unknown said...

Life is nothing but endless number of pages in a library revealing ........nothing.

The sum total of our life's sinosoidal wave after n number of cycles is always.....zero.

We cannot forever remain in roller coaster ride....we always have to get down...what remains is ... the memory of the thrill....
..
...
So enjoy everything on the way..
crests and troughs,
pleasure and pain,
love and hatred,
complements and criticism

.....alike

Enjoy voices
remaining angry..

littlelooney said...

i m sorry to sound dumb but i din get the title...spikeology?!?!

wee hours of the morning...pee hrs of the night?!?!

heehee:D...nice blog

Reems. said...

That's like some virtual reality.
Barks and bites together.And then...

"Are you hurt?"

Nice shell,this is.Dark enough for the not-so-daring.

Processed Milk for Programmed Men.Fair enough!

Llama said...

Virtual life is addictive. I'm currently trying half-heartedly to quit. Don't think I will though.

Nice post.

And "I can imagine quite a few people who’d look better with a lampshade on"... Heehee.

I like the idea of people walking around wearing lampshades. :D

~Moo-lah Buz!nezzz~ said...

Try leaving ur comp and going for random trips and long walks....it helps!!!
I do that all the time.

Macadamia The Nut said...

*Of course, it’s easier to talk to strangers than to real life people.*

Who'd know better than you Arka.

Angry Voices said...

@ Vavz: It's the losing a person that ignites worries.

@ Dreamy: Marriage online is like living in a single IP address

@ Nav: life goes on. Irrespective.

@ Viper: reincarnations online are nothing more than our desire to be many people

@ Raybans: some rollercoasters have memories attached, others puke

@ Nazneen: spiked up psychology :P

@ Reems: do programmed men have sprite with their milk? :P

@ Poojo: How about pillowcases and paperbags and litterboxes :|

@ Moolah: tried. failed. rebooted. disconnected. blogged about it. I'm hopeless.

@ Macadamia: some strangers become so close, that real life folks become strangers. Who'd know that better indeed.

causticji said...

I won't completely disagree with the random people thing. But then again, the major drawback is that they have no idea about the characters involved and most, if not all of the times, providing the flashback sequence is way too time-consuming and painstaking. And that's the worst part - the random person can't do anything about the situation.

Oh but it is easy to sport a facade, although it might be argued that it the human tendency that is the facade/fasaad of all of man-unkind's problems.