Today access to internet is considered a fundamental right and social network is a way of life.
Anything that you share undoubtedly, enhances the fun.
It is not uncommon to see someone reading Asterix comics in a library with a dead pan expression. I remember the Asterix fan club we had at the academy, where anything funny or even not so funny was enjoyed with uninhibited and raucous laughter. hey, look at that Roman … kya naam chhant ke rakha hai ya .. comments and likes keep flowing on every page, every frame, in the book.
Earlier families were large and when a new issue of a magazine arrived , we were at least two of us reading at one time (rapid reading was a necessity) and another waiting in the line. When TV entered the living room, it was a scheduled community activity, what with a solitary channel and the few extremely popular programs. Sharing, liking and commenting were so spontaneous and in real time, that it was hardly perceived.
Today, we watch TV programs , play games , read poetry, or listen to music, mostly alone and on the computer screen. To share anything with like minded people, we instinctively look for the like or share button. The advantage is that ‘Atlas has shrunk’ and we can reach across to any netizen, and the disadvantage is that we have forgotten the warmth of real sharing. The present generation won’t even know the feeling.
Life in the cyber world is not just sharing ideas and feelings. There is vanity, sycophancy , office politics and even mischievous and dangerous exercises as it happened recently in Pune and Mumbai, resulting in attack on people from the North East.
Whatever be, we have reached the stage of living in a cyber community, switching on and off, as it suits us. Let a thousand sites grow and a million blogs blossom.