Sunday 8 July 2012

As Real As It Gets

This article of mine appeared in the 'Augmented Reality' issue of the 'Digital Natives with a Cause?' newsletter on Page 13. Here is the link:  http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dn-newsletter-may-2012.pdf
I am posting the unedited version here - I think my original draft had fewer grammatical mistakes! I hope you enjoy reading this and I look forward to hearing what you have to say...


When I was in standard XI, I broke my leg and was confined to the bedroom for more than three months owing to my inability to walk. It was at that time of severe boredom and extreme loneliness that I stumbled upon the wonderful online world. I have never labelled myself as a ‘tech-savvy’ person. My visits to different sites that the Internet allowed me to access had, earlier, been limited to checking my e-mails periodically and using MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger to chat with my school friends or family members. After my fracture, I discovered that there is a limit to things one can watch on television and there is only a certain amount of books one can possess and finish reading at one point of time. My friends were busy with school-work, tuitions and suddenly I was no more a part of their world. I could only spend time with people if they chose to come home and meet me. At first, I had a lot of visitors but gradually, their frequencies and numbers started dwindling. Desperately looking for ways to spend time and maintain some contact with civilazation, I launched Google’s search engine and stumbled upon the world of online discussion-forums and groups where people from all across the world meet to talk on subjects pertaining to their common interest. From that day onwards, it seemed that my Fairy Godmother had waved her magical wand and suddenly time had started flying for me! I could while away time chatting with new people – it gave me an opportunity to know more about the view-points of people from different age-groups, different locations and different life-styles. I have always been fond of writing and it was an online friend, who, one day, introduced me to the world of blogging. Blogging not only gave me a platform to share my thoughts with others but it also gave me a chance to see what others had to say about them. Soon, I became a regular visitor of this online virtual world and some of the people I met, there, I ended up meeting in real-life as well.

I am not sure that I can call the world of the Internet a ‘virtual’ world. I am a real person and even when I am online, I would like to be considered as someone with a real existence. As I write this, I am reminded of Jacques Derrida and his statements on multiple realities. Derrida had questioned the very notion of what is reality – according to him, the very history of Western thought was based on opposition: good v/s evil, man v/s woman, mind v/s matter, black v/s white. Moreover, these oppositions were hierarchical with the second term being a corruption of the first. But how appropriate are these oppositions?  The opposite of good, in my opinion, is ‘not good’ – if we cannot define a person as being ‘good’, it is not necessary that the person can be labelled as ‘evil’. The opposite of evil is, therefore,  ‘not evil’ – a person may not be evil but he need not be good either! In the same manner, I feel it is wrong to juxtapose the real world against the virtual world.

For argument’s sake, I am going to use the terms ‘real world’ and ‘virtual world’ to explore the various facets of these two different realities. The so-called virtual world, today, is a society of its own harbouring a wide web of social interactions and relationships. Just like we are surrounded by all kinds of people in the real world, there are people of various backgrounds inhabiting the virtual world as well. In the real world, we meet people, exchange ideas, spend time together, talk about the incidents of our daily life…We do that in the virtual world as well! With lack of playgrounds in the urban centres of our country, children and adolescents restrict themselves to playing indoor games and today, online gaming is a popular phenomena with more and more people having access to gaming consoles like XBOX 360, Playstation 3 and Wii. In the real world, we all try garnering contacts to get work done, look out for jobs or get any kind of help; the virtual world is no different with people making use of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and many more to gather more human capital in the name of friends, followers and business contacts. People exercise their Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression in the real world by saying what they feel like in front of people. They do the same online on different platforms and are able to reach out to a wider mass of audience. Just like there are certain norms and values in the real world which the people are expected to follow, the people who are accessing the virtual world are also expected to adhere to a certain code of conduct. As time passes, the needs of the people change and if a society is not able to meet the changing requirements of the people, it crumbles and falls and is replaced by another. We see a similar trend happening in the virtual world as well.
At this point I would like to pose the question: Exactly how different is the real world from the virtual world?

I am a person with various identities – I am a woman; I am a counsellor; I am a resident of Mumbai – there are so many things that define me. I have many relationships; to name a few - I am a loving sister, a faithful friend and a dutiful daughter. We all have stories to share about how we met a particular person. We meet people at book-stores, in classrooms, at work…Similarly, we meet people online. Why is it that only the section of people who we met online get labelled as ‘virtual friends’? Isn’t our friendship with them as real to us as our other relationships. Do all ‘online friends’ have no significance at all in our daily, everyday life? Haven’t we at some point of the day or the other - say, on our way to work - thought about a particular friend and what he is upto even if he is someone we know in the virtual space. I, personally, would not like to have a non-real existence in the life of another person. I do not like being thought of as a virtual entity. I am no ghost who just lurks around in the online spaces from time to time! Why, then, would I deny somebody else a real place in my life?

So, is there really a distinction between the virtual world and the real one? Well, not for me, at least!

18 comments:

  1. The line separating the real and virtual world is soon disappearing! Nice writing Divya:)

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    1. Thanks Rahul :) :)
      The line is indeed disappearing :)

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  2. that's a very interesting line of thought that you've put here. Agree that virtual world can be as real as the real world. And the relationships formed are very much real. If someone is in touch with the real world as much as or more than the virtual, there is no danger of turning into a recluse who is unable to converse in a face-to-face meeting.

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    1. As long as you can peacefully co-exist in both the worlds, everything is going to turn out to be just fine :)

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  3. Well it seems you have just changed my perspective towards the "virtual world" and the friends out there. Very well articulated.
    P.S a newbie here. found u while blog hopping.

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    1. Wow! I am glad I could bring about a change in perspective with just this one post :) :) Glad you stumbled upon this space :) Welcome to the blogging world :) Hope to see you here more often :)

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  4. That was a thought provoking post Divya!
    After coming into the blogging world, I have made some really good friends. Getting to know and interact with some truly wonderful people whom we may not have come to know otherwise is a real big boon here ..
    But people sometimes hide their true identity in the virtual world .. I recently heard of something called an 'online avatar' where people are given a platform to project themselves as what they dream to be rather than what they are ..
    If we dream to be something, we should just be that. Projecting ourselves to be something other than what we are is dangerous to our real self ..
    And I also feel platforms like Facebook have made people self obsessive ..
    I also belong to your age group and we happen to part of a generation that was exposed to books and reading, playing outdoors as much as the internet .. The internet came in later in life ..
    But what about today's children who have the attractions of online gaming etc as against a hard copy of a book or meeting up and playing with friends? I don't know how they will turn out be unless very carefully parented ..

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    1. I have made many good friends myself in the cyber-space :) :) It is a wonderful place to meet people :) :)
      I don't really believe that people hide their 'true identity' in the virtual world - I think we all have multiple identities and never are they all at play at the same time...Perhaps, some choose to cloak other identities when on this online forum - It gives you a chance to turn your fantasy world into somewhat 'real' and while it can be dangerous, it is not altogether a bad thing :) (that is my personal opinion)...

      I think every generation worries what is going to happen to the one that is coming up next..our grandparents worried about our parents...parents worried about us and now we feel things were so good at our times but what is going to happen to the coming generation...Don't worry :) Everyone turns out to be just fine :)

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  5. Interesting post Divya, though online gaming and gaming forums are another realm in the virtual world. In my opinion making friends online can vary based on how you want it to be. A lot of people blog or tweet under assumed names and later through emails or DMs do reveal their real names to a select few . Definitely, I would be more comfortable interacting with someone who has a name and or a photo. But ultimately, I would gravitate towards those people whose thoughts, etc are in sync with me, with whom I form a connection of a kind. I would not be too worried if the relationship does not evolve to the real world. That is also not possible all the time.

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    1. True :) But aren't the same rules at play even in the real world? We don't go and share everything with everyone and there are only a select few we feel safe interacting with :) The criteria may differ across settings but the human need for wanting more than the required level and disappointment at not being able to achieve it is a universal occurrence, Don't you think?

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  6. Nice post...

    http://apparitionofmine.blogspot.in/
    http://meandwords.blogspot.in/

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    1. Thanks :) :) I shall drop by your blogs soon :)

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  7. Nohthing in this world is black or white ,there's always a fine shade of grey seperating the two and so is our juggle between these two worlds..Keep penning and Congratulations Divya for getting published.

    Its always more exciting to read the un-edited versions of a story!!
    Following you ..keep in touch!

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    1. Thank You :) :)
      I agree with you that nothing in the world is black or white but it is disheartening to see the whole world trying to classify everything as one or the other...I wish we'd all do away with such dichotomies!

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  8. Very thoughtful post! I have never differentiated between a real world or virtual world.. There are limitations to both the worlds..

    Nice post :) and congratulation for getting published :)

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    1. There are limitations to everything :) There are advantages of everything...Differentiation between one world and another is always a tedious and (according to me) a futile thing to do...You never know where one ends and when the other one begins :)

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