Artikel yang agak "cool" daripada Zan Azlee, seorang individu yang menggelarkan dirinya sebagai "IT Journalist". Baca pandangan beliau tentang fenomena "Facebook" yang kini hangat diperkatakan sebagai platform rangkaian sosial yang paling terkedepan dalam budaya sosial masyarakat IT.
Facebook is a crime
JUNE 21 — Zan Azlee scours the Internet for interesting videos. The abundance of idle time forces him to write responses to the videos he views. This week's video can be viewed here.
I’m a very New Media guy. I have a website, a blog and a YouTube and even Twitter page. I have one of the latest PDA phones and two iPods. I produce and direct digital films. And I have been an IT journalist for the past nine years. But somehow or rather, I had never subscribed to an online networking site. Until, of course, Facebook came along.
Friendster never appealed to me. MySpace just flew past my head. But Facebook had a magical effect on me. It was as if Sofea Jane’s pot of rice from the movie "Perempuan, Isteri dan... " appeared on the monitor of my notebook. I can’t explain why but I signed up and was immediately poking people I did not know.
Facebook was wonderful. I added everyone I knew who had a Facebook account. I would sit in front of the computer, type out a message to a friend on Facebook, call that person to check if the message arrived, then giggle like a teenage schoolgirl.
Facebook is also useful to search for long lost friends. I’ve gotten back in touch with so many primary school friends. I’m now regularly poking Marimuthu, the fat bully who used to hit me on the head every day with his ruler when I was in Standard Two. Heck, we even send each other gifts of heart-shaped chocolates online these days!
I was addicted. I was hooked. My "friends" list grew and grew. I stopped requesting for friends. Instead, others were requesting to be my friend. It came to a point where I had more friends I didn’t know than friends I actually did know. The amount of pokes and sex surveys I got daily was getting out of hand and I was beginning to feel a bit dirty.
The last straw had to be when I saw local politicians having Facebook profiles. It started with all the Opposition members and then, of course, the ruling party followed suit. They even requested me to be their friend! I wondered if it was really them on the other side. I don’t think Anwar Ibrahim would want to come to my birthday party if I invited him (through Facebook, of course!), right?
Today, all the applications that were in my Facebook profile are all gone (especially the one that says I would most likely be Phoebe if I were to be cast in FRIENDS!). The gazillion friends whom I don’t know are still there though. I rarely use Facebook for staying in touch with people I know anymore.
Facebook to me now is mainly a business tool. Say for example, if I have a new film coming out, I would spam everyone on my list to let them know. I would also post clips of my films. So Facebook has become some sort of a marketing and publicity strategy for me, which is kind of cool too if you think about it.
I guess I’ve become just like those local politicians. The only difference is, I have to do it myself since I don’t have that much money to hire someone to manage my Facebook profile for me. But you never know. Maybe that really is Khairy Jamaluddin poking you every day.
Zan Azlee is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, writer, New Media practitioner and lecturer. He runs Fat Bidin Media (www.fatbidin.com)
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