Sunday, January 1, 2017

Social Media and challenges of sharing contents

A bunch of old colleagues from a common cadre recently met over a batch party and thought of forming a What's App group initially with the understood objective of saying Hi and Hello to each other. .One of our colleagues with certain accomplishments by way of posts in social media chose to be the self appointed Group Administer (GA).

The group expectedly had some teething troubles as different participants looked towards each other with different colour shades.It also appeared that over the years people had developed different likes and dislikes.It also needed some efforts to impress upon the GA that personal prejudice should not come in way of adding group members.

In any organised line of service a bunch of individuals starts together on a common platform but things do not  stay as  such. A career in civil services offers myriad opportunities for interacting with high and mighty.Your growth over the years depends on your individual PR skills and in some cases ability to package you extra curricular achievements with attractive wrapping papers.With passage of time some figures come to present themselves through  such optical illusions as towering personalities and their shortcomings as men of substance tend to get concealed, the seniority or merit takes a backseat.

Like other segments of society our group also had fair share of  generous hearted souls who enjoy the habit of massaging the egos of such optically magnified caricatures while other group members frown upon such achievers and their admirers. When such people come together to form a social networking group situation expectedly did get a bit chaotic.

At the initial stage the Group appeared to be periodically dormant as well as hyperactive since participants in their anxiety to register their presence passed on whatever contents they could lay their hands on.While one colleague had great enchantment with ancient wisdom on medical science of highest order.In between the group post had sprinkling of Sanskrit poems with preachings in name of humanity.While I consider all such preachers on untested medical wisdom as cheats, some would be willing to wade through rivers of blood to support such homely  preachings on lifestyle techniques.

Sometimes a participants in the group  has  a tendency to project himself as  master of several languages and a person with literary achievements.  Therefore  his writing start from  exotic languages and are accompanied by  translations  in various other languages.  While the practice happens to be useless waste of time and energy also for the reason that  the passages posted  are sometimes not  self written but  apparently copied from  twitter or  other sources yet there are other who fall head over heels for such erudite renditions .

The first genuine difference cropped up when a colleague posted a joke on behaviour of college girls. The Pahlaj Nihlani of Group i.e. the Group Administrator was up with red flag with " Dignity of Women Violated"  boldly embossed.The Group Administrator a bit overwhelmed with his sense of responsibility and fearing the pitfalls of "irresponsible talk" even in a closed group appeared to be  exercised.Fires were quickly doused and in the name of of group unity and our love and affection for each other. The group continues to roll on.