Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Is Orkut fun or what?
Normally I am a little put off by the whole digital community thing. Rarely does anythign good come out of it. Sometimes it's fun in a perverse way because you get to mess with people and do role playing and set up little mad scientist social experiments... but Orkut is not good for that... so I wasn't really interested...
But people forced me to sign up. Every third day I would get an invite.. so what the hell... signed up... didn't check my account for weeks... then people would SMS me from different continents asking me to check my "scrapbook"
But now I have gotten into it somewhat...It's fascinating... like one MASSIVe collection of weirdos. That's why it's so different from other online communties. There you only get a relatively small selection of weirdos...talking back and forth and reconfirming their weirdoness.... but in Orkut... you have almost EVERY single weirdo there is in the world... flying scraps all over the place. It's stunning to watch.
Couple of things I have learned from Orkut.
1. That six degrees of separation thing I saw in a Will Smith movie once is actualy true. You pick out any profile at random. And just look at the collection of names on top. There are usually less than 6 links between and them. Amazing! Never actually thought it worked.
2. When you lose track of some people... from childhood... you know... they go away... and somehow you think they fell off the planet and died... they didn't actually. Imagine that. They're all still here! It's amazing the kind of people I have reconnected with. A kid that used to carpool with me in the second grade. Showed up at my birthday and bodhi smeared red cake icing on his cheeks. This guy who was with us for 2 years in school. Used to be fascinating with WWII and would bring an entire tiffin carrier (you know.. the ones with 5 bowls linked together... the stainless steel ones) in a orange basket... to eat during recess. They're all still alive!
3. Don't post pictures of yourself with topless women on Orkut. Your relatives are on it too (What kind of a weirdo collection would it be.. if it didn't have MY relatives on it)..
4. Thou shalt scrap everybody constantly.... otherwise they take it very personally.
5. Thou shalt not scrap in their own book.... but open up other people's books... tediously one by one... and scrap there...
6. As much as we denounce labels, as soon as we join Orkut we attach about 50 of them to ourselves. The whole communities thing. We just have them. We never post in most of them (coz they are all in friggin brazilian anyway), and we don't read the messages (same reason), but we still keep joining them rapidly. Just for the little pictures.
7. Reet knows almost EVERY single person I know...
Things I haven't learnt:
1. What do the little numbers next to the names mean? Is a bigger number better or worse. How can I get the numbers up (or down)? It's a competition thing isn't it?
2. Why guys have pictures of male celebrities as their profile pics. That has to be the single most gayest thing to do. What? You are trying to fool people into believing you are John Abraham? Does anybody fall for that? If you are just trying to chat with hot brazilian females, atleast make an effort to have a real looking fake picture. Find a friend who is good looking, take snaps of him and put them up. And if you are NOT trying to get hottie Brazlian chicks to talk to you... and you have Bikram Saluja as your display pic.. well.. have to break it you.. but you are a poof..
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9:19 PM
