6th August, 2017 my WhatsApp, Facebook,
Twitter and Instagram accounts were flooded with Happy friendship images. I was
not well aware about friendship day as I was for Raksha Bandhan because back in
our school days, we loved to wait for “Rakhi”
which used to come in different shapes made of colourful sponge
topped with tiny little shining stars. Irrespective of gender, we used
to tie Rakhi on each other’s hands and gift our own crafts (the “home made
Rakhi”) to our elders, teachers and our best-friends. In my family, this was an
occasion to pamper our grandfather with our own Rakhi who was generous enough
to give us the sisters a treat in a nearby Chinese restaurant for “rakhi”. My family
was not alone in celebrating Rakhi in such a manner. There were many families
irrespective of religion who would extend Rakhi greetings and children would
come over to each other’s places to show their Rakhi that they got from their
siblings, friends or even grandparents. That was our ‘friendship day’ too as we
the Bengalis carefully nurtured the custom of strengthening social bond with
tying of Rakhi to our friends irrespective of their religion, cast or place of
birth, instilled by none other than Rabindra Nath Tagore. We never saw texts
wishing of “rakhi” or “Freindship day”. The greetings cards made especially for
this were special items in gift shops which some of us bought for presenting a
‘memorable gift’ to their acquaintances. That was some thing REAL in real
world.
There were spats of incidences this Friendship day
and Raksha Bandhan day which made me think where we are heading to:
People wish happy friendship day to strangers whom
they have never met or heard their voices in their lives. Women especially are
flooded with such messages accompanied with images from ‘friends’ all over the
world. An expert researcher may definitely find a nexus between sending
friendship messages and subsequent online harassment to these ‘friends’. Such
messages actually initiate a strange relationship and may even make women
recipients believe that the senders have genuine interest in extending
friendship. This internet culture is especially noticeable in young women and
also first time users of social media including messaging apps in the smart
phones. The virtual friendship or even any relationship can be so addictive
that individuals may even forget their real life family or friends with whom
one has actually grown up. Unfortunately there is no law for
internet-deaddiction or rather virtual relationship deaddiction. Laws are made
to control crime or prevent escalation of crimes. But consider when individuals
forget their liabilities and duties to their real life family members or friends
for their virtual relationships: a unique condition may arise in such cases
where the neglected member may have to plead to the courts for directing the
concerned person to ‘pay attention’ failing which, he/she may have to ‘pay’ for
his/her irresponsible nature. Such unique conditions may include not only
negligence of his /her moral responsibilities towards own families including
caring for older or younger generations or dependants, but also may include exposing
own family members or real life friends to extreme danger including various
types online offences whereby the latter’s privacy may be infringed due to callousness
of the earlier.
August is the beginning of festive season in India, followed by major
festive months including September and October. Let us share the happiness and
positiveness among our family and friends first and then to our virtual friends
some of whom may not even be “real”. We need to understand that once the family
unit provides a strong mental support to any individual including children, no
negative force may destroy the inner peace and yes, the reputation of the said
person. Sharing happiness and sorrows alike may also make it easier for any one
especially women and girls to combat
online harassment especially those kinds which directly affects our reputation.
Let us be independent from fear of virtual
reputation damage which may be caused due to unknown virtual friends.
Please
Note: Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations
provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article,
please cite it as “Halder D. (2017), " Virtual
friendship: what’s the reality in it for women”10th August,
2017, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com
