What did I learn about Facebook after joining Sarahah ?

The first thing which I learned from Sarahah is about Post-Truth. Not the word of the year 2016 -Post-truth, but our new age belief which says whatever is Posted is the Truth. Okay, this is too common Since this trait or trend is too common these days, so I will narrow it down further…it’s not the fake news articles and twisted facts, the truth which is posted in that greenish blue-ish message box from Sarahah, which my friends and frrainds are apparently believing and posting away to glory (male mitr I am talking about).

This is an interesting kind of manpasand truth, as most of them, who have been boys at some point in their lives, do understand the risk, have this inkling that 99 percent of the time these confessions or testimonials were just pranks played by their pukka yaars (who, by the way, are giggling somewhere sitting on their workstations or laughing looking at their phones) but still post it, praising their good looks, silent admiration, chances of coffee wagairah wagairah with heavy dose of romance and proper tone of confession..

If this app wasn’t developed by some Saudi Guy and wasn’t named Sarahah which apparently means ‘Honesty’ in Arabic, we could name it Salaam-e-ishq . Constructive feedback gaya tel lene.. we are looking for just a suraag, koi chance tha kya?

Biggest regret of Indian boy is missing on a girl jo line de rahi thee (this phrase varies with pin codes) .. and these “honest confessions”, as Sarahah claims, somehow validate their regret…abey yaar this must be her !!

The boys know that I am not bursting any bubbles here ..most of our friends did similar pranks in school days, in college and we should be happy that we still have such friends who keep the umang jawaan.

This was one of the reasons I never shared any messages. Another reason was this blog.

What I learned about Facebook

What I learned about Facebook was rather complex. Sarahah is also showing us a vacuum facebook users are facing these days.. We used to be more intimate, open on Facebook, used to post more of personal stuff. Sharing and posting on Facebook has definitely increased but it’s becoming more and more impersonal, unoriginal. Most of us are either trying to push our political point of view, defending our religious beliefs, watching viral videos, sharing news articles to read, commenting on outrageous things etc, but personal connection hardly. The reasons could be many, from suspicious online privacy, to clutter and noise in the social media, the polarisation of thoughts. Whatever the reason is, result is shrunk space for personal, genuine, no nonsense communication. This was my first realization of the kind of messages I got on Sarahah. Most of them were like the messages I used to get some years back from my viewers, Raftaar’s followers and friends.

I started looking for information if my observations are right !? and they were. In April this year, many news sites carried a report on Facebook’s new challenge, users are not sharing original stuff enough. They are active, they are sharing but more and more of impersonal stuff, events, happenings and maybe their agenda. A website called ‘The Information’ carried an article talking about Facebook’s struggle, which is setting up a team to chalk out a strategy for stopping the decline in original sharing by the Facebook users.

Some messages did look genuine, so not sharing them, as that wasn’t the point of this blog at all.

I logged into Sarahah to basically find out, how the dialogues and expressions change when there is anonymity, will I get more hatred on Sarahah than twitter? I didn’t. This sample size is small, but I do think that it’s doing what Facebook used to do.

Anyway. My blog is done, and I am thinking now, should I log out right away or wait for more ego boosting stuff sent by my friends posing as some girl ? ( you can’t deactivate the account apparently)