Orkut-To Be or Not to Be???

Social networking sites have become so popular today that almost the whole world finds it convenient to make new friends with a click of a mouse! Not that I am against such sites, but I guess the initial hoopla surrounding one such site Orkut is slowly dying down. With communities like ‘I hate Pakistan’ and a few incidents of female photographs being morphed, more and more people have become skeptical of continuing their membership therein.

Being a student, I too received invites from friends to join Orkut. But I flatly refused. My friends would keep discussing their experience with all kinds of people-from the smartest intellectuals to the weirdest ones, from the road side romeos to the most handsome hunks. In short you did not have a life if you weren’t on orkut.! They would often remark “It’s a fantastic place to meet old friends”. One of them even admitted “I could get to know more about film festivals through a friend I made there.” While a few others were of the view “It organizes a lot of your database in a brilliant manner”.

I would be lying if I said I was never tempted enough to join Orkut after hearing their stories. I have even tried filling in my profile twice, but on both occasions, I backed out owing to the kind of personal information asked! Besides, when I learnt that anybody can read anyone’s messages (sorry scraps, as they are popularly called) I was determined to not have a membership with them.

It was on one such occasion when I happened to open my gmail account (which I strictly use for formal conversations), that I come across a school friend of mine called Rohan. He had ‘scrapped’ me saying “Hi, I am ur classmate from dks”. On first glance it seemed like junk mail to me. But later, I found the mail was sent to me via orkut. What made me worry even more was the fact that how could he possibly find me on orkut, when I did not have an account with them?. Nevertheless, I wrote back to Rohan saying “Hi good to hear from you after such a long time. I do remember you, but I am not on orkut. We can henceforth carry on our conversations via e-mail” , after which Rohan never responded :( Similarly, one of my younger cousins also scrapped me and I gave her more or less the same reply.

All this while I kept pondering on how could I possibly land up with a profile on orkut. A quick search with google’s search engine made me realize that I had checked on the clause of signing into ‘other google services’ when I created my gmail account!I felt like a fool for having told Rohan and many others the fact that “I AM NOT ON ORKUT”. Little doubt, he never wrote back.


A few days later, one of my school friends from Mumbai, Arya, ‘scrapped’ me and now we have regained contact after a very long time. After all this, I decided that merely criticizing the website, without actually visiting it once would not be fair. Hence, after much hesitation I logged onto orkut and lo…..my suspicions came true. God knows how many people had sneaked into my profile(which had nothing beyond my name and place of stay) and written scraps. One fellow writes “Hi…ur in delhi and ur Konkani?. I am also in delhi. Wot say shall we meet?”. Ya why not, after all I love being friends with all konkani’s in this world, especially through such social networking sites! sigh


“Look if you don’t want people to scrap you or read you messages, you can always ignore them. After a while no one shall bother you.” was one of the suggestions I got. If that’s the case then, what the heck is a social networking site for? Till yesterday these were the people who would laugh at me for not being a part of what was called ‘the most happening place of them all’. Today, some of them have withdrawn from it, as they consider it too time consuming and addictive. Like everything ‘Orkut’ing too has reached its saturation! Well at least for some.

My privacy is sacred to me even if I am discussing some stupid shahrukh khan film. Nevertheless, I am forced to question “Isn’t blogging also similar?” If one blogs regularly, most people can gauge the “inner you” thanks to your posts! There is no privacy if you decide to publicly display your profile, which is applicable in my case as I want to reach out to more and more people. So I am wondering if I am doing anything different. Any answers?.....