Mommy and Me

The Great "Mommy and Me" Tandem
(David P. Peralta and Achoot Cuyegkeng, Ph.D.)

"Actually, that blogs is what we older people would like to understand. Kasi in a sense, a blog is like a diary that you keep. Eh in blogs, you post that diary online for everybody to see. So, yeah, it's a bit invasion of privacy..."

- Ma'am Cuyegkeng

 

It actually makes sense, that thing about blogs becoming an invasion of privacy. You post something, and people see it online - whether you are popular or not. Although you can set privacy settings to contain visitors and viewer content, may ilan ring pagkakataon wherein you'd want to keep all information open. Kasi admittedly, nakaka-boost ng morale ang maraming visitors at audience. Alam mong hindi ka nag-iisa, at alam mong may sumusubaybay sa buhay mo.

But I love what Ma'am Cuyegkeng said. It actually captures the sentiment of people who decide to flit from social networking site to another social networking site in hopes of finding a true 'home' in the cyberspace. I, for example, decided to move to LiveJournal because I see that my Multiply site is getting too much attention. In more ways than one, I can't be myself in my Multiply site because there's this silent rule that you have to please fellow Multiply users lest you lose audience and/or suffer ostracism...online.

The world of social networking is a very complex thing. It actually started (at least from me) when Friendster became a hit. I remember it was a Christmas day when I first opened my Friendster account. And from a measly 10 contacts, it grew to 65++. When Multiply became the hit, I hopped in its bandwagon. Now I have 165 contacts in Multiply - pretty low if you'd ask me. In this changing world, however, if you don't make your presence felt, you're as good as being air.

I am a Communication major. I just became interested in Chemistry because of its centrality in everyday life. And as a Comm major, part of what we deal with is New Media - or the changes interfaces of communication in the modern world. Social Networking sites are part of this phenomenon, and somehow somewhere I want to ask: does identity performance happen in places such as Facebook and MySpace? Why are they doing this? It seems like a question unworthy of an answer, but research shows that it does happen in more ways than one.

That's why I 'left' Multiply. To establish my own personal space characterized by those who really care and would not scorn me for posting negativity online. Because even as we say that the marks of personal space is the good and bad, we really can't shrug the fact that we don't want the bad stuff. Kasi nga, sometimes, in the race for audience popularity, naga-identity performance na yung iba. Mahirap siyang i-explain, pero nangyayari talaga.

So in a sense, blogs can really be dangerous along the way. But all these things naman are taken in consideration before plunging to the blogosphere. After all, economics still proves that competition yields better products. Kaya nandyan yung race for the best blogging site which is... [I don't know!]

Mayroong mga risks talaga na involved in today's technology. And we all have to be pretty aware of that. The only question talaga to consider is this: are we ready to face the question of technology as identity stealer?