Orkut

Lately I've been spending a lot of time on Orkut. Not that I've been bitten by the scrapping bug, but just that I have absolutely nothing to do. I find myself staring at the Firefox window and my fingers involuntarily guide the mouse to the Orkut bookmark and click it.

Once logged in, I find myself absolutely clueless about what to do. In spite of being pretty high on the frustoo scale, I don't really like the idea of surfing through profiles of supposedly pretty girls. Neither do I like to spy on people by reading their scraps. But, it is quite surprising to find people careless enough to exchange very personal information using scraps. Cell-phone numbers, addresses, working hours, plans for the night and what not!

Though I must accept that reading through insanely hilarious "i'm kool", "i'm sexy" 'about me's (some fellow described himself as koool, frandly and CORNY ?!@#$* WTF?) and make-you-pee-while-laughing 'i wanna mak franship wid u... plzz accpt ma rqst' kind of scraps is a pretty good way to pass time.

Orkut's actual intention was to help people keep in touch with friends and old acquaintances. But I think it has in fact done exactly the opposite. Real people with whom you had conversations have been reduced to little icons on the friends list. Friends who'd send you mails sharing things happening in their lives have become those obscure acquaintances who drop in that occassional 'hi! 'ssup?' scrap and even you won't care to say more than 'hey! i'm good. how're you doing?' in your reply.

Orkut made maintaining contact too easy, and that seems to have spoiled all the fun. We've started rating our friends-haven't met(how can someone you've never met be your friend?), acquaintance, good friend, best friend. Earlier, even if it was only once in a month or a few months, I would sit down and write an email, or in some rare cases, when the person was not net-savvy I would write a letter. If only for those few minutes, I would bear that person's thought in my mind, memories of times we had spent together would flash past and that somehow gave me a better feeling. Scrapping and profile visiting can never come close to that. I think the recipient will also appreciate that someone actually took time off to write him a mail or a letter.

Maybe that's how people who were used to writing letters felt when email started replacing traditional post. Maybe I'm old fashioned. Maybe I'm slow to adapt. But I want to go back to the old routine of sending and receiving mails.

People out there.. are you listening? If I actually get around to writing mails, please do not reply to them with lame scraps! I won't mind if I don't get replies. But a scrap reply would really offend me.