The other day, I got this opportunity to introduce Facebook to a friend of mine who had been a registered user for a long time but never active. What started as an effort to introduce Facebook to a lapser ended up being an inquiry into the reasons for the acceptance of this site amongst millions across the country. And yes, it also led to that person being converted into a Facebook loyalist.
To understand this phenomenon, I would start with the period when online chatting had started in India. The youth, especially in smaller cities and towns discovered Chat Rooms for the first time and it created quite a stir in their lives. Cyber café’s mushroomed and people started understanding the utility of this magical weapon. Suddenly, there was an alternative method of talking to the son who had gone abroad to study, see the face of the grandchild and make calls to US at relatively dirt cheap rates. Suddenly, there was a new medium where relationships could be formed. Suddenly, there were a whole bunch of boys trying to act like men with women (or supposedly women) from distant lands.
And then, came in the world of social networking. The early days saw people confused in many ways with this new mechanism and its merits. There was a period where batch-mates found each other, people competed about the number of friends in each one’s list, boys saw pictures of girls and sent Friendship Requests (sometimes without a message and at times writing in a minimum of five thousand characters about how their meeting online is divine and destined by the powers of the heaven). Today, there seems to be a greater amount of maturity in the understanding and the usage of these sites. As people matured in their usage, they started off with self-regulations along with creating acceptable practices which are now commonly understood and followed.
My discussion is not so much about the evolution of this medium. It is more about the underlying cultural reasons which I feel are somewhat reasonably crucial towards the acceptance of this format in India. Even while trying to attempt this, I would try and limit myself to my second love in the social networking world i.e. Facebook.
The first interesting aspect of Facebook is the whole chaos in the aesthetically beautiful pages and a seemingly orderly world. A few clicks would open the world to endless number of friends from the pages of history, windows which would keep showing new faces amongst your list of friends, a home page where there are as many things happening as it would in any typical Indian market place, a profile page where you feel like being dragged in and out of conversations just like it happens in the festival of Holi or during the dances in a wedding, bright pictures about the adventures of the known and unknown, a constant desire to do something in a place where many are active and popular, and so on.
What is interesting to note here, is that this chaos does in more than one way reflect our style of existence. As Indians, we have always hated processes and guidelines and embraced and thrived in a world of chaos. We seem to have almost perfected this method of existence over time. There has been a long history of under-delivery by the people in power in the country and we have always had to strive for even the basic requirements like food, water and shelter. Even the other day, when a building collapsed, over a hundred of the current occupants were stranded without any support from the government and left without a roof on their heads. We have been through a long period of licensing and quotas and in certain sectors it still exists, there is barely a concept of stating the MRPs in traditional retail, we need to wait for months to start a new business, own a phone, get the delivery of a car, etc. We would usually have to pass currency under the table, flash notes at signals, innovate methods to cheat during examinations and when caught, find brokers to get the mark-sheets altered. The list is endless. There was never a single perfect method or process and somewhere we have never completely wanted one. We seemed to thrive in a world of chaos, randomness and uncertainty. The world of Facebook, with so many events happening at such a rapid pace, gives us a feeling similar to that chaos which we have grown up with. It does scare us initially but later provides us with the satisfaction of being in a place where we truly belong.
Another aspect of Facebook, worth considering is the display of the complete name along with a good looking or an attitude defining or want-to-be-like-this profile picture (in most cases). Now, while this allows people to know the person they are getting networked with, it also provides them with the complete freedom to segregate them on the basis of some mental stereotype. Not many people create groups within their list of friends, but they do create mental segments of people whom they would look up to, people to be avoided, people to be seen interacting with, people whose posts need to be commented on, people whose comments need to be replied to, etc. We have always been a nation where the first thing a person normally hears on uttering the full name is question to confirm the caste or religion or place of birth. We understand the family background by accents and dressing sense. We visit or stay away from areas which are meant for certain ‘kinds’ of people. We have always been a society where there are different roles defined to different sections of people with little overlapping. In the case of chat, there were normally alias instead of the actual name. When it comes to Facebook, with the help of names and profile picture, our desire to stereotype people and our guesses about what they would be like, just gets stronger.
The Live Feeds page or the home page on Facebook also plays a role larger than providing an update about what people are up to. We are a nation of people hungry constantly for information from the world around us. There was a time when the ruler would send his messenger to announce his decisions across the city and beyond. The Panchayats still sit in many villages where information is shared and decisions on important matters arrived. The famous ‘adda’ from Bengal, the ‘sutta’ at the ‘tapri’ and the ‘kaif (slang for café) in Hyderabad; are all answers to this same desire in one way. There are still many towns where people wait for the newspaper which arrives the next day if not in the afternoon on the same day. Not to mention the ‘Chitralekha’ for the Gujrati community which would usually arrive a month after being published. Women would wait for the ‘bai’ to come in and share the gossip about the neighbour and fathers would normally ask the watchman the whereabouts of the kids. The desire to know all that happens in our surrounding is so overpowering that it is like second nature to many of us. This page on Facebook, not only meets this desire but also makes it relevant since it comes from the people we know. The beauty is that while it comes from within the network, it is not restricted to information about people but it also shows their greater interests and likes.
Another very strong Indian trait is that of having an opinion about everything. So while the Live Feeds sections powers the availability of information, the option to ‘Like’ (agreement), ‘Comment’ (my opinion) and ‘Share’ (gossip with others) takes it to the next level. It provides us with the ability to voice our opinion on the subject that is being discussed.
What Facebook also provides us with is social currency and a barometer about our standing in society. While it gets more and more difficult for people to participate in the society around them with the pressures of the modern work culture, Facebook is one mechanism, which has come to their rescue in a big way. As I had mentioned in one of my previous articles (The Traditional Indian Social Networking - http://advertisinginsight.blogspot.com/2010/11/traditional-indian-social-networking.html) I would like to re-iterate here that in India a person is usually identified as being a part of the family in which he was born and not in isolation. The number of people one knew was the social currency he owned. The number of people who knew him was a manner in which is social standing was determined. Facebook is an answer to this need of our country to be able to create our own identity in the society. We do this with the help of the number of people present on our lists, the groups that we are identified with, the people we usually interact with, the communities we belong to, the events we attend, the pictures of places we have visited just like many others, etc. Facebook has almost become a real society for us in the virtual world of today.
And last but not the least, Facebook does provide amateur writer like me with an audience. While I get thrilled by the kind of comments and feedback I receive, my blog rarely gets even a single visitor. Don’t really mind it as long as Facebook is present. :)
Special thanks to Pritesh Angane for his inputs on the subject.
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