Monday 11 June 2012

Facebook - Freedom of Speech



Rule 105 of Internet: 

"Someone, somewhere in the world
 will get offended by your comment 
no matter what."

Can you deny that fact? It is a terrible world we live in nowadays, where people aren't really given the chance to freely voice out their inner thoughts or desire. But today, I would like to point out the perfect irony of the freedom of speech (mainly in the Facebook corner of the media society) and the actuality of its "freedom".

When you log in your Facebook profile, the first screen that will no doubt greets you would be the homepage, or what most people would recognize as 'news feeds' but at the very top of all those status updates by your friends *or anonymous people who added you for no specific reason than just because to increase their total friends count, or just because you and that person share a mutual friend), is a rectangular box which allows you to post your status update. 


Things that normally you would post would be updates such as where you've been, what you ate, which restaurants did you go to for dinner/lunch/etc, or sometimes just to simply show off to another person that you (yes, you!) have a life by telling everyone in their social community that they are up to something which is not Facebook-ing.


Anyway, back to my predicament. In that box, you can see that it wrote,

"What' on your mind?"

Right? And here's my question. Neurologically, that sentence could revoke our cognitive understanding of the current state of mind and what our state of mind is fiddling with. One such nature would be about,

"thinking about farting"

or something like,

"I knew it, she's a bitch"

or something along the lines of what pops out of our minds at the momentous second. But the real reason why this entry was written was not about what was written using it, but rather on what the whole world sees of it.

How can one actually persists to share, or express what was on one's own mind when the subject himself/herself is subjugated to the ugly reality that whatever they posted or have written will be viewed and analytically judged by others. In this situation, I'm referring to status updates which relates to sarcastic remarks, racism, hate dedications, or even something that might spark a fire between the other readers.

For example, if someone were to suddenly feel angry and mad at a particular person, and wishes to let it all out by posting it all out on his own wall, WHY is there a need for him to feel a sense of insecurity or at the very least, hesitated, that the object of his rage would find out what he posted, and feel angry too. Thus eliminating him of the opportunity to let it all out, but now subconsciously had to revert into keeping it all bottled in.



Another example would be like when a person posted up whatever they feel like and gets turned off by everyone else. Even worse, they commented those status updates with negative responses, or comments such as those that "grammar nazis" would correct those wrongly spelled words or horrible ungrammatical sentences. Does it ever occur to some people (those with the knowledge of grammar) that these ungrammatical sentences or even misspelled words were written like that on purpose? 




You see, I don't see that much of a freedom of speech inside Facebook at all. Because most of the time, you'll either end up re-thinking about what you just wrote before you push the "post" or "share" button, or even worse, once you've posted it up, let all your steams come out, and deletes it. That is, however have something to do with another issue of Facebook that eludes most of the people in Facebook, protecting their images.



Freedom of speech, for me, depict a flow of motion where a speaker (or in this case, a writer) are able to express or extenuate, or even share with the world what they think, what they know, and what they wishes other people to acknowledge, without having any doubt of what he will say, or what will happen after those words would have been set carried in motion. This is, my understanding. If you, however believes that I might see it in a totally different way, feel free to explain it to me.


In a manner of speaking, if you really wishes to evaluate and prove me wrong, try reading a huge number of other people's status updates that keeps on popping on your news feed. And IF, not after a few minutes of reading other people's updates and comments that you have neither the needs to comment on someone's terrible grammar, or even loathe as some of the lovey-dovey status updates, or even my most hated ones, the I-THINK-I-AM-A-SUPERSTAR-AND-EVERYONE-MUST-KNOW-WHAT-THE-FUCK-DID-I-DO-THE-WHOLE-DAY-SO-I-MUST-UPDATE-EVERY-SINGLE-FUCKING-HOUR-ABOUT-MY-LIFE, then feel free to say that I'm wrong.

Till then, let's ponder upon other matters for the moment. Sayonara~

All photos are of copyright of 9gag.com.

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