once upon a timeline

Ever since the born of Friendster, my life has never been the same again. It’s the moment where people start to create a new union in the World Wide Web that is definitely more powerful and has less overhead cost than the United Nations.  As I quoted from a very interesting presentation, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populated in the world. In this virtual country, no low-priced airline or lengthy time is needed to investigate one’s whereabouts nor to decipher what’s on one’s thought. Just a click or two, then general information of a person can be blatantly presented in a thing called timeline.

Nothing is unworthy of a tweet or change of status of social media user, especially in Indonesia. According to google trend, Indonesians account for these social media are managed to enter the top ranks. We are on the top ten users of Friendster, Facebook, Plurk, and Twitter. For the last one, it’s easy to spot our behaviour as online time waster. Check on the trending topic every once and a while. Often is Indonesia contributes topics, starting from the amazing social media movement including #indonesiaunite or #koinprita, dominates half of the trending topic during the AFF cup, or some annoying don’t-foll-back or hate-message-hashtags sort of stuffs, proving that these virtual accounts are far from idle. With the low cost cell phone and flooded promotion of social media usage, updating status becomes as important as yawning.

In twitter, to me people tend to try to look critical. Should you put a joke, it better be a witty one, or at least look line one. If you don’t know what to say, better just RT (retweet) someone smart and put additional comment like ‘+1’, ‘I know!’ or ‘Perfect’, so that people know that you can think smart, but it just that someone is saying it first.  Thus, twitter is the best way to waste your time by reading some updated news (@jakpost, @metro_tv, @korantempo), give comments (@anjinggombal, @fiksimini, @soalcinta), plan your holidays (@liburanlokal), find jobs (@unjobs), and tons more. This list can go on like forever. Just stick in the timeline and your following list will grow eventually.

Meanwhile, things are getting too personal on Facebook home page. Allow me to group 99% of the statuses:
1. The place-tagger (Keen reporter of locations. It mostly added by picture of the location although their faces dominate the entire frame instead.)
2. The kid-worshipper (Everything is about, hopefully their own, kid. Yes I totally agree that all kid in this world is damn gorgeous, but it’s your account, not theirs. I think I have to start another writing with premise: ‘Should your personality washed away once you have kid?’)
3. The avid-merchant (Wonder why your salary decreasing even before the end of month? Go figure).
4. The trivial-spotter (Announce tiny-mini-matters like, ‘Oh I just saw a dog poo’, ‘Hey why did my hair getting fuzzy in the morning?’, ‘The lady in front of me is definitely not colour-coordinated’. Gosh, they are so observant, aren’t they? To me, they’re my favourite. Oh, this is not sarcasm.)
5. The hyperlinks-dropper (No matter what it is, they can always find amazing piece of lyrics, youtube video, quotes from people or movie, and links to other website that match with their current thoughts and feeling. Savvy strategy. *lookingatthemirror)

This stream of timeline is the easiest way to pour what’s on mind and heart. Some even have the tendency to exploit amplify their feeling by stating their likeness, or hatred, persistently. Yet, there’s another some who would choose to be mute instead, because often in timeline, publicity beats privacy.

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