Information-in : connect-out

The truth about an over-updated digitally wired world. There is no dearth of information about people on my radar. 

With little or no effort I can tune into

Who is celebrating Chatt Puja, with whom and how in Bihar or Bangalore ?
A neighbour who might has visited his mother's grave for her first death anniversary 
The people on my timeline or contact list who are having beer with their colleagues or visiting an international destination
The person I worked with a long time ago who paints life-size canvases on weekends
The latest flower that bloomed in someone's balcony or whether their kid wore a superhero costume for halloween. 

Its all out there with such granularity that it almost replaces the need to reach out and make small talk. After all this is what small talk was supposed to be about. "Kuch nayee taazi khabar...the new and interesting trivia and sharing the highs and the lows sukh-dukh baatna" 

But small talk filled another purpose and a very important one - it helped create and strengthen emotional bonds since small talk happened one-on-one. Over time picking up the phone and talking to people or meeting them in the park and sharing small everyday moments with them nurtured relationships that lasted years. 

WhatsApp status messages or social media feeds do just the opposite - satiate the need for small talk and hence break the loops of connection. With this broadcast like one-to-many-updates - one can easily go for months not reaching out since one knows what is happening anyway. Sometime back when COVID was at its peak - there were daily updates about people recovering from the illness and how much they walked or ate or slept each day. 

I have always struggled with one-to-one v/s one-to-many communication messaging - while a birthday or burial announcement can be one-to-many - somehow the many-to-many responses to such announcements just does not make sense. The result 200 people have clogged timelines with HBD like updates and the overexposure to and glut of such updates makes these occasions and these updates devoid of any emotion. Its a task that is ticked off like any other. 

Yesterday while I spoke to a teacher from Bihar - she said - Yeh WhatsApp ka yug hai...yahan jaakaari toh sab ke paas hai...bus connection ki kami hai. (This is the age of WhatsApp where information flows within seconds but what is lacking is the human connect). Touché !