Aversion towards Messaging, Chatting, Social Media

Sairam friends,

I don’t deserve to write this article because I had been chatting/messaging a lot over these years. I also speak a lot over phone to anyone close to me.

Surprisingly, in the past few weeks, I have realized that I hate these kind of communication to the core. Its too artificial and unnatural for me to message, chat and even post something on Social Media.

Gradually, I hate every single message alert I hear in my mobile. Its like, We are getting too artificial with our life. 10 years from now, will meeting on a virtual platform be considered the norm? Real relationship needs a personal touch and being close physically be it your friend, mother, wife/husband or kids.

Yesterday, My parents and myself went to see one of my Father’s sister who lives a bit far from us in another place. Of the 3 brothers and 4 sister’s my Father has, this aunt leads a very lonely life. She keeps the house untidy, always sick and she would never listen if I ask her to lead a peaceful life with her pension. She has been cheated by many people looting away all her money.

She has no one to care and even I don’t know if I will be able to take care of her in future because she doesn’t listen to anyone. We went to see her and found even the light in the hall was so dim. I got better bulb, fixed it and gave her some snacks. I had given her a Saibaba statue which was kept on self with no pooja. I told her, just do holy bath for that Baba and keep.

Irrespective of all her short comings, I felt its good to meet my aunt who never expected a relative to visit her. I can’t replace this personal meeting with a phone call or a message. Can I?

I hate the kind of messages being shared among everyone in Cloud message platform like Watsapp and any other Social media. Taking an actors picture, writing something over it and making fun of it. I myself laugh at it. Its good to certain extent. Humor is always good but are we spending too much time laughing at funny videos and photos shared online?

Psychologically, this will hinder humanity.

We loose presence of Mind

Many days, I had seen old men trying to cross roads. I will plan to go near them, hold their palm and help them cross but by the time my thought process gets over, they would have started to cross the road. We all wanted to help people but we stop over self because we are used to more fun and happiness than reality of pain and difficulties.

Last week, I saw another old man trying to cross the road. I waited for a while. At least 3 minutes. He could not cross. So I went and helped him cross to other end. He was smiling. That’s all I got. I was really satisfied. This is just an example. We are loosing our tendency to do little good we can as we are busy on mobile ( Including me.)

My Twitter recently reached 4000 followers and even then I try to be very clean and clear with every message I type and send out. One of the reason I hate twitter is not actually the platform but how Indians are using it.

If you are in college, why follow an Actor? Is he/she going to feed you? Why not find out experts in your field of interest and learn about them? Even professionals have this habit of following actors on Twitter. I agree fan craze is necessary but it will do no good to you and your family. Try to be selfish when it comes to growing ahead in life.

Now a days, my Sai friends also wonder why i don’t chat as before. I request them if I can block them in Watsapp.

One of the reason I hate messaging is because of the importance we give to it.

Do not message when things are serious:

My Sister’s daughter was not well. She had tried to reach us by phone. My parents were away and hence she messaged me saying her daughter is ill and asked me to pray for her. I was chanting sitting infront of Saibaba for 2 hours. I used this as opportunity to do Naam smaran.

Later, My parents kept asking if my Sister spoke over phone but I told her, she just messaged that their grandchild is feeling better.

My Mom was worried why my Sister did not spare time to speak. They are on their vacation and staying in her friends home. So she might have felt its better to chat.

I feel that we must not replace real meetings, speaking over phone etc to messaging. Even in serious issues, if we message, things gets too artificial. My sister spoke the next day and my Mom was happy.

Do not use Messaging app for Customer Service:

(This does not include Website chat support etc. I mean to say, for small companies, Chat support will increase pressure to the staff and the whole team)

There’s a big research and innovation going on to replace email support with any other kind of support. The first one being, using Messaging app. I myself experiment with a chat feature in StarSai. Trust me, Its really not helpful.

There’s another disadvantage. Customer’s today are too demanding.

One of my friend did launched a website for a client. The client kept messaging him on Watsapp for some requirement. This guy parked his bike, standing in rain in the road side on way to home and answering him. I told him, if a customer calls by phone, you must answer but why bother to answer when they are messaging. Finally, I found the customer was simply sitting in Movie Theater and messaging coolly and this guy had to drench in rain.

All this irritated me to core.

You can pay $10 or million dollar but respect people who support you no matter what you buy.

Anyway, I use all these Social Media and Messaging platform but I tried to have some limit. May be, I might change or message a lot if I like someone but even then, I realized the value of personal meetings and face to face conversation.

Sai Blessings,

Venkat

Note: After writing this article I question if I am really honest? I continue to message but there’s some thing which bothers me about it and limited it to maximum. I am sure many people are going through this phase of neither being able to live without such communication tools nor accepting it completely. If you have such a feeling, trust me, you are on right track.

Accept Innovation and changes. With some limits.