Oh, the beauty of introspection!

When WA decided to postpone its policy by 3 months, I decided to move anyway. Because one does not remain with the butcher just because the slaughter is postponed. 

Moving away from WA is not a choice any more. 

But, as expected, most ppl in my network did not want to move. 

The same thing happened when WA was bought over by Facebook. I had tried to move then, with no success. 

This time, the only difference was, that people have moved. But then, Whatsapp came up with that masterstroke, let's postpone for 3 months. 

The universal law of inertia took over and ppl said, ok, why should we move now? 

Well, the answer to that was pretty obvious to me: One does not stay with the butcher because the slaughter has been postponed. 

But more importantly, this universal law of inertia forced me to face 2 important questions: 

1. What do I value more? Privacy, or network? 

2. What is the optimal size of the network that i really want? Not what Marksman Z , Larry Page and Co, and Bill Games have created for me. What do I want? 

The answer to the first was a no-brainer. 

For 2 elections now, Facebook has directly decided who the President of the United States should be. 

After the first election, I had asked, "If Facebook decides who the next president of the United States is going to be, is the US still a sovereign nation?" 

After the second, we know that they are not. 

So, yes, even if I am the lone dissenting minister in the court of some Indian king in the 1740s, even if I am the lone dissenting citizen, privacy clearly matters far, far more than the network. 

2. What is the optimal size of the network that I really want? Not what Marksman Z , Larry Page and Co, and Bill Games have created for me. What do I want? 

This is a surprise. When I really, really thought about it, I realised that the REAL networks for me are still small. 

Let's ask that question: How many of these Whatsapp networks, Facebook friends, etc., do you call when you are a in jam. I realised, NONE. 

For practical advice, I might go to some WA groups, but if they are not there tomorrow, that is fine too. 

It is great fun to see pictures of people's kids and vacations. But over many years, it has not brought me closer to them in any real sense. (2)

For search, I have used DuckDuckGo and not Google, for over a year now. And here is the real surprise: Contrary to what Google has you believe, personalised search results are NOT better than standard search results served by DuckDuckGo. In fact, they are *&@$ worse.(1)  

So, really, when I thought about it, I realised that I will be much, much happier in a world full of people who have the maturity to have discussions without getting personal, people who actively invest in positive thoughts, and in building each other up.  It is GREAT to be brutal about cutting out people who add an atom of negativity to life. 

I scrolled through the Facebook groups - do you know how many groups were retained? 4 out of 150. 

Scrolled through the Whatsapp groups - 3 out of over 100 were retained. 2 of these are the child's school groups, which I cannot exit. Which means that effectively, ONE out of my hundreds of WA groups were of real value to me. 

Can you imagine how much time i have wasted over the years? 

And so, having thought through this clearly, one feels so sweetly liberated and happy. 

It is time to let go and watch more Netflix! I recommend The Social Dilemma. Very Highly. :) 

Endnote

As a consultant, we tell our clients - Our job is to ask you the right questions, so that you arrive at the right answers in the shortest possible time. So: 

I would urge you to ask yourself the same 2 questions - 

1. What do I value more - privacy, or network? 

2. What is the real network that YOU want? 

Good Luck! 

Footnotes

(1) There was this day when I was doing a story on edible oil exports from India. Usually, when researching such stories, i go to the website of the trade association and pick up the numbers from there. In this case, i searched Google for the Association of Edible Oil manufacturers of India - 3 pages of search results and NOTHING. Then, i tried DuckDuckGo. First search result was the right one.  

(2) Facebook: I have added many colleagues as friends, and consequently become better friends with them. Some new friends have come from Facebook groups. And some real friends are from Blogger. This necessitates a loss of privacy, bcs unless you discuss your real thoughts, you cannot connect with others. 

BUT, the converse is also true. Many people I value have stopped being friends with each other  - stopped being real friends because of stupid virtual online debates. 

Both Facebook and Twitter have hit the world with  hate campaigns that are both malicious and unprecedented. Yet, NOT ONE country has been able to sue them. Not one country has been able to bring them to justice. If that is not Colonisation 2.0, I dont know what is. 

These hate campaigns are not, to be fair, their main agenda. Their main agenda is engagement. Because of the way the human brain works, we engage more with negativity than with positivity. 

It is our own brains that taught the AI to give us hate campaigns. 

 

I want good, warm networks. I want to be surrounded by people who actively prefer positive content to negativity. 

(3) Tangent: In a flood, a twig is swept away by the force of the water. It is not the fault of the twig, but the twig moves with the water. As the water reaches livestock, the twig enters the eye of a lamb and blinds it. Floating in a flood of negativity is not the twig's fault.  The twig did not, in all probability, realise that it was a part of a flood and was going to be a weapon. It did not even think itself capable of being a weapon, being just a twig and all that. But the twig is responsible for blinding the lamb.