-What's app?
-Not much really. What are you app to?
BY CÜNEYT YILMAZ (ECON/IV)
cuneyt_y@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
What? You didn't get the joke up there? Don't worry, you aren't missing out on a lot. It just means that you don't have a smartphone, which is completely okay. And you know what, despite what the name might suggest, you aren't required to be smart to have one. It's just another trick played on us by advertisers that didn't work out. Too bad, adboys.
It's been a tough week for most of us. While technology worshippers were mourning their prophet's death, I had to cope with a strain of the flu that could easily have destroyed an entire nation in earlier centuries. But more importantly, this week, especially October 10, 11 and 12, will never be forgotten by Blackberry owners. Because, that's when the poor guys had to spend three whole days without their one and only friend, namely Blackberry Messenger (or BBM, as they sometimes refer to it among themselves). Luckily, though, they still had Whatsapp, like BBM an instant-messaging application, except with a funnier name, and also it doesn't discriminate against outsiders (BBM is only available on Blackberry devices, while Whatsapp works on most smartphones). Nothing like their bestie BBM, but still…
So, if you got to hang out with any of these BBM junkies lately, you probably had to put up with their tantrums, too. What's app with them, seriously? Is it really a matter of life and death to have your smartphone beep-beeping all the time? Are emoticons the only way to express your feelings (if so, this is how I feel about that: o_O ), so that you suddenly turned into a boring wall when your BBM decided not to work? In fact, the same question applies to any online interface. Do you think people really wonder "What's on Your Mind" or "What's happening?" Let me tell you: They don't.
Before we were assaulted by a constant onslaught of trivial information from these kinds of websites, I was happy to see anything new that the Internet had to offer, but today that's far from the case. You might think, "Well, Cüneyt, the internet isn't the right place to look for happiness," which is kind of true, so nice observation there. And in fact, it's a place where most people end up being unhappy, if they're not that way already.
Facebook, the foremost of the social networking websites, has to take most of the responsibility here. With its more than 800 million active users, it provides the perfect habitat for the germs of sadness. It makes sense though, because what other result would you expect when you put this many stalkers, procrastinators and recently dumped exes together in one place (which is exactly what Mark Zuckerberg did)? How else are you going to feel, after all, when you look up your old friends and see that they're having the time of their lives, while you're still stuck in some backwater town? And it's true for everyone. A man notices a girl he likes going from "single" to "in a relationship" and goes crazy. A woman, on the other side of the world, hits the Like button under one of her best friend's pictures to compliment her on her new outfit, while actually feeling nothing but jealousy after checking her own look in the mirror and seeing the muffin top bulging out over the waistband of her jeans. And they're both devastated (what a cute couple they'd make, wouldn't they?) because other people are happy, or at least, don't seem to be unhappy.
And then there's Twitter, where your life-altering or at least mind-shattering ideas are boiled down to 140-letter-long sentences. This site is filled with people who really don't care about what other people say--only about what they want to say themselves. These are the people who follow each other and caress each other's egos just so that someone will caress theirs, too.
If you're just not that into writing mind-shattering tweets, no worries. You can get away with checking in at a fancy restaurant (tested, doesn't work: Marmara Restaurant) on Foursquare - a website designed so that instead of you having to place microchips in people to locate them, they'll do it themselves - and sharing a picture of you and your friends eating sushi or quoting Nietzsche, just to show your ex-boyfriend how great your life is without him. Whatever you do, there will be some people jealous of you, some who think their lives are crummy compared to yours and everyone else's.
And there are still more sites, like Formspring, where the users plague each other with pointless questions and claim to be having fun. Or, if you want to start a blog but lack the creativity and effort this requires, don't worry, there's something for you too. Sign up for Tumblr, and you can live off other people's backs by just reblogging whatever they post.
The thing is, though, whichever social interface you choose, once you get bored with it, or it's invaded by a bunch of barbarian high school kids, you end up showing yourself the door. But then, again, some new website pops up, and you fall for it. Really, what's app with this whole social network thing anyway?