Losing myself online is scary

As a fourteen-year old, when I first started using Internet, I remember, it was indeed scary for me to create an email account in Yahoo. It was a feeling of ignorance mixed with fear. At home we had a computer sans internet connection. In my state in India, by then, we were already seeing a lot of protests by employees against the central government's initiative to install computers in government offices, fearing loss of their jobs. People panicked ignorantly fearing that the use of a 'machine' like computer would eventually replace them in manual jobs and computers would do everything from maintaining a register of attendance to keeping a track of expenses. 

During this time, I started using computer quite carelessly and with internet, whatever little things I had in my 15-year old life, became easy. Let me explain why. I was quite an introvert then (I still am) and normally didn't use to talk to people unless they talk to me (People thought I am an arrogant girl but I just didn't know what to say to strangers except how have you been?). With Yahoo Chat, I could talk to people quite boldly and without hesitation. I met some bad people and some good people, but the journey was awesome, since a lot of my real life experiences were rooted in the Internet. With time, all good and bad people were lost, again in the Internet, except one, a very good friend, then-best-friend and whom I just met once in this eight-year old friendship, still walks with me, yes, through Internet. 

Amidst all this chaos, I was learning to do everything on the Net, from playing games to looking for study materials for my papers of English Literature. With Orkut, during my college days, I felt things became a little narcissistic. At the same time I felt proud of the fact that I had so many 'friends', be it inside the computer and the number was on the rise. I went on spending a lot of time on Orkut, scrapping, making new friends and retrieving my lost and 'once-upon-a-time-good' friends. But that was the time too when I slowly started withdrawing myself from that world while feeling a bit of fear of drawing attention to myself. That was it, I guess. However, I do agree that narcissism has evolved with time and Nietzsche's way of looking at it will just be a grand narrative.

I joined Facebook quite late and even after I joined, many-a-times, I deleted my account and then again came back, less I lose touch with my 'long-lost' friends who are living far away from me. On Facebook, I remain inactive most of the times and unless I get a FB notification on my email, I normally don't login to FB. Although I did put up my  pictures on getting swayed by other people's similar actions,  I consciously try o remain myself. Now I realise Orkut and Facebook can tremendously play with one's emotions. I fear, after a few years, the concept of privacy will be obsolete. More than that, I am afraid of revealing too much of myself through information, pictures, other people's opinion about me, etcetera. Though I claim and try to be careless about what other people opine and how they judge me. Yes I do fear that my multiple email accounts will be hacked someday and all 'my' things would pop out of the box anytime. 

I'm not afraid of technologies that would sweep us like the Great Internet did. But I'm afraid of losing myself.  For me, who takes pleasure in reading, playing guitar, writing, the fear is immense. I fear that the Internet might snatch from me the time when I reflect on ideas, people, places; I fear that it might take my reading and writing habits from me and that it might sway me to bare all; and I also do fear the eventual chaos. The cyber space, though it is a repository of what-not, is so huge that I fear to be lost in it. Every other thing appeals and I jump from one information to another forgetting what I was looking for. And I lose my focus here and unfortunately, it makes an habit outside the cyber space as well. That is I'm afraid of, most importantly.


Nevertheless, I'm aware that there's no conflict but deep down myself I also know there is. I don't want to spell it here and I don't want to be aware of it or accept it as well.