A nitwit on Orkut. There are many, you say?

While doing my routine channel changes, I caught a news clip on a news channel (I forget which one it was). Orkut was the object of attention and with the amount of firing hurled at Orkut, I thought my television set will go up in flames.

The gist of the story: A girl met a boy on Orkut and they became paly-paly after some time (I refuse to use the sentence 'She was befriended by him', that's utter nonsense, he can't be friends with her if she doesn't want to). She shared her personal details, including photographs of her family, her phone number, her address etc. After a while, there was a tiff among them and the boy went ahead and 'published' all her details on Orkut. The girl claims that the boy put her name and phone number on his scrapbook for everyone to see.

The news channel invited the Managing Director of Google India and what surprises me is that the MD agreed to it! If a girl is stupid enough to give out her phone number to strangers, what can the MD of Google India can do about that? If she didn't know that the rules of real life applied pretty much the same way to the internet life, whose fault is it? How can she claim that Orkut was responsible for the mess when she didn't her own boundaries? How can she ask the MD to make scrapbooks private? If scrapbooks are private, then how do they differ from emails?

I am not pro-Orkut or anything, I know there are many pitfalls in using Orkut which many people don't know. (Read my older posts on about Orkut to know my opinion.) All I am saying is, don't point a finger at Orkut to justify your stupidity. If you are a nitwit, abstain from using Orkut.

PS: I really wonder how net-savvy this particular news channel is. For the above story, the headlines being shown was: 'Orkut hacked'. This news channel should have 'How computers work' and 'How internet works' on their wish list.

More on Orkut

Further to my previous rant about orkut, I found how someone can exploit orkut to make money.

I got a call on my office extension today. Here is the excerpt:

Phone rings...

Me: Hello
He: Am I speaking to Anamika?
Me: Yes
He: Hi, I am Sankalp. I am a consultant.
Me: Ok...
He: Can you give me your mobile number? I will call you in the evening and brief you about the requirements.

Me: Why don't you give me your mobile number and I will call you back?
He: I can't give you my number because my mobile is provided by the office.
Me: Then how dare you call me on my number which is not only provided by the office, but is within the office campus?
He: Give me your email id atleast, I will send you a mail.
Me: Who gave you my name and number?
He: Some reliable source. Can't disclose the name. (Yeah right, I am Britney Spears and you are paparazzi)
Me: Why not?
He: I can't. Give me your mobile number.
Me: What the ? Who the are you?

Beeeeeeeeeep......... He hung up.


After a lot of thinking and logical reasoning, I somehow feel that this information was procured from orkut. Well, if one has the patience to scan through plethora of unfamiliar faces and their unreadable scrapbooks and note the name of the person and the company he/she is working for, one sure is desperate: not to change one's job, but to make sure somebody else changes their job.

PS: His English was nowhere as good as this. His words were smeared with coconut oil. He was a Mallu.

My new found group

I became a member of the elite community orkut recently. I see my friends from a different angle. It's as if we all put up masks and play different roles when we are on orkut. The moment you log off, you are back to your original self. Strange, huh?

How many of these are you guilty of?

You put up the best of your photographs -- the more modern you look, the better.

You scriblle in your friend's scrapbook hoping that your freind's friend notices you and sends you a friend request.

You disable profile updates and sneak into all your close friends' and not so close friends' profiles to see if they have uploaded their fiancee's or girlfriend's or spouse's picture.

You improve your vocabulary by adding the word 'scrap' to your 2-page-dictionary. The first time one of my friends said, "I will scrap you", I cringed in disgust.

You can't take 2 minutes off to shoot a mail to your best friend, but can find enough liesure to login to orkut (Man, is it slow!) and wade through the list of your friends, find the one you are looking for and then scribble something. Oh yeah, I forgot that the point of scrapping someone is not because you want that person's attention but somebody else's who is on that person's buddy list.

So, why am I on orkut? Because I met some of my old friends who I wouldn't have met if not for orkut. I am not against orkut, I use it to keep in touch with few of my friends whose email ids I don't keep, because they are not that close. I use it to see what's happening in others' lives, just to see if something interests me.

But, when it comes to talking to my best friend, I don't scrap her. It has to be a long e-mail or a live chat or even better, pick up the phone and talk to her. Sad that she is not accessible on phone. I hope she finishes her MS and comes back soon. I miss her.