DeLinked In

Each week, without provocation and apropos of nothing, I receive requests from at least two complete strangers who wish to be added to my professional network on LinkedIn. This might make it sound like my professional network is the equivalent of those parties thrown by Jay Gatsby that everyone wishes to be part of. That to those on the outside looking in, it looks like the sort of professional network that helps people get jobs, make useful business contacts, publicize their successes, climb up the career ladder and that sort of thing. The reality, though, is quite the opposite. The last time I updated my LinkedIn profile was nearly a decade ago – to give you an idea, the iPhone had not been launched yet, Pluto was still a planet and not just a cartoon dog, India hadn’t played a single T20 match, and Israel and Palestine – well, ok…that situation was still messed up. But apart from that, it was a very different world.

The truth is that I’m simply terrible at business networking. I’m shy, withdrawn and prefer the quiet comfort of the written word to the raucous harshness of the spoken word. Networking, then, isn’t something that comes naturally to me. And when you throw in business along with it, it’s a uselessness that gets exacerbated exponentially to create a perfect storm of incompetence. It’s not like I don’t have a commonsensical understanding of business, but I’ve never had that eye for business that marks out an entrepreneur from, well, a regular person. Not just an eye, but I also lack the guts, heart or spine for business – it requires too much ambition and too much of dealing with people.

Of course, the unsuspecting strangers who wish to be part of my professional network do not know any of this, since it isn’t exactly the sort of thing you’d state explicitly on your LinkedIn profile. Still, it does make me wonder, who are these driven and motivated professionals that decided to add me to their network despite not knowing me at all? It would be understandable if I was an HR person, or if I had some big time designation like Vice President or Director or Partner or CEO. But I don’t – so it probably means that these people diligently tracked down profiles with the big shot designations first, sent them requests, possibly got rejected but persevered doggedly until they trickled down to my level. That just seems like an insane level of dedication to business networking. Was I missing out on something? Was there some very happening and exciting business life that was being played out on LinkedIn, the way it always seems to be the case on Facebook?

Each time I log in to Facebook, the first five minutes are enough to convince me that I have no life, and the next five minutes are enough to convince me that I have no opinions and am an uninformed country bumpkin who has been hiding under a rock while the whole world was seething with rage over something that offended someone. Half the people I know are partying, holidaying and checking in to fancy places. The other half are expressing opinions, getting outraged and having informed debates on topics that I didn’t even know are in the news. I wondered if it was the same on LinkedIn, but in a professional context?

What I mean is, were people eagerly updating their statuses with their latest professional achievements like “Landed a new client today – mopped the floor with my rivals”, “Got a big promotion and a bonus – time to get that sports car”, “Crunched numbers and absolutely wrestled them to the ground – I’ll totally rock the budget meeting!” or even simply “Ate a hearty business breakfast. Good food for thought”? Did they put up photos of themselves attending high-powered meetings or making strategic presentations? Was there a plethora of selfies out there but with people trying to look professional instead of pouting? Did they check in with statements such as “Checked in to CXO level meeting at posh 5 star business hotel” or “Checked in to World Trade Tech Village Global Corporate Business Park for tricky meeting with idiot client”? In other words, would logging in to LinkedIn make me feel like I have no professional life either, to go along with the social life that I already did not possess?

Thankfully this wasn’t the case, though after five minutes of browsing through LinkedIn it was clear that I had no opinions and was utterly uninformed in the professional sphere as well. People were holding forth on professional topics of interest, sharing links to new corporate developments, commenting on latest workplace trends, etc. It was an entire world of opinions and debates that I was completely oblivious to. And it’s not like LinkedIn didn’t try – they’d send me regular reminders that invites were waiting to be responded to; people were waiting to be recommended glowingly and that yet more habits of highly effective people were being discovered while I withered away in a state of ignorant stagnation. Every now and then, it even sent me beseeching mails imploring me to congratulate someone on completing 2 years in a job, and I foolishly ignored it thinking that no one actually did something like that. Yet it was only now that I realised that this congratulating is actually very real, just like people wishing you on your birthday on Facebook.

The oddest part, though, were the spate of links shared on increasing productivity and efficiency in the workplace. By the time you’d get through these, you’d have spent pretty much your entire workday. Now that’s not exactly being productive, is it?

iSpy

For a long time, cyber-crime seemed like one of those harmless things that would only affect someone with the IQ of a plank of wood. Sure, someone somewhere in this world was diligently cooking up an elaborate new scheme to make you part with your money every week, but it essentially served the purpose of filler entertainment on slow work days. A doctor in the UK was looking for a “reliable and trustworthy” partner for an exciting new business opportunity and had magically narrowed down on you, you’d just won the Coca Cola lottery and were entitled to half a million dollars, a Nigerian prince wished to donate all his property to you and the Income Tax Department wished to refund you an amount greater than what you’d ever earned, out of the goodness of their hearts. You’d have to be a really gullible sort to fall for any of that – the sort who’d accept life-affirming advice dispensed by a suicide bomber, or be willing to pay Sreesanth to bowl badly when he would have done that anyway. It’s not something perfectly reasonable that you’d believe right away – like someone telling you about an omnipotent bearded fellow in the sky who controls everything that happens in this world.

This was, of course, until the Chinese came along. Suddenly, the Chinese weren’t just making bad products that you’d buy cheap but still regret when you realized it stopped working after the first week. The Chinese could now hack into your country’s central defence systems and scrawl upon the Ministry of Defence website “China wuz here” or “You no leave Arunachal? We attack! Last warning.” Cyber crime suddenly seemed to be the warfare of choice among the leading countries now that everyone had a nuclear bomb and could not physically attack each other. It turned out that China had trained thousands of hackers who’d sit all day and hack into their enemies’ defence secrets while watching YouTube videos of a tap-dancing cat wearing a bowler hat – and this was how wars would now be fought in the future.

Just as Barack Obama was getting ready with the final draft of his note “Rip into the Chinese PM and tear him to shreds over this whole cyber crime thing”, the NSA revelations came to light. Obama would’ve dejectedly recalled the famous quote cautioning people against enumerating their poultry before the onset of the hatching process, while China, which had so far been reduced to playing the meek Clarke Kent role, had now got its telephone booth. It turned out that the US had been cyber spying on the world all along, and here was conclusive proof that it had engaged in all the dirty, despicable, malicious, loathsome, repulsive, malevolent, depraved, nefarious, sordid, vile, low-life, reprehensible cyber stuff it was accusing China of, plus some more! It’s a bit like getting scared about being caught while stealing from the cookie jar, only for it to turn out that the person catching you was actually stealing the entire jar!

As is usually the case when something big happens with the USA, questions about US dominance were being raised. Would American hegemony & preeminence in world affairs finally come to an end? Had the US taken one step too far even for them to get away with it? Was the US finally a victim of its own hubris? Was this the beginning of the end for the greatest country in the world? Tune in at the same time next week to find out what REALLY happens. A lot of commentators felt that this might be the case, and came up with a number of well-reasoned arguments to bolster the case.

There was, however, one crucial thing that they missed out on. It seems that the US cyber spying included all mails, phone calls, text messages, Skype calls, Apple/Google data and Facebook, among others.

Facebook!

Think about it – as a citizen, even if I were to accept my government’s argument that all this spying was of utmost necessity to keep me safe, I’d still be mighty pissed if my tax money were being utilized to spy on people through Facebook. Facebook intelligence sounds like an oxymoronic term – after five years on Facebook I’ve yet to come across any information that comes close to qualifying as ‘intelligence’! I can understand that maybe they’d glean some important information through emails or phone calls – but Facebook? It’s not like you’d accidentally stumble upon a post on Osama’s wall that says:

“Ayman al Zawahiri has invited you to the event: Serial Blasts in Tokyo.

Date: 13^th June 2013. Time: 12:30 p.m. Venue: In & Around Tokyo Tower, Tokyo.

RSVP – Yes, I will attend; Maybe; Sorry, can’t make it”

Mullah Omar – Osama, costs are going up, we need to downsize. Organize suicide missions ASAP to trim workforce by 10%.

Osama’s Status: New Jihadist track is totally inspiring. All set for my next big plan to teach the infidels a lesson – storm the Engineering college in Bristol!

[Ayman al Zawahiri, Ahmed Awlaki, Hafeez Saeed, Mohammed Atta and 133,654 others like this]

The weekly status meetings must be pretty depressing for the spy in charge of Facebook spying. Every Monday morning, when the NSA is taking stock of the situation, he’d probably be wishing for some terrorists to storm the building and take everyone hostage instead of being subject to this weekly ritual of humiliation.

NSA Chief: All right folks, what have y’all got for me this week?

E-Mail Spy: We have credible intelligence that a hostage attack is being planned in the heart of Rome.

Phone Calls Spy: There is reason to believe that a plane flying from a Texas airport could be hijacked in the next 2 weeks.

Text Messages Spy: We need to intercept an arms shipment that could be used for a terror attack – they’re likely to try and ship it in off the coast of Southern Florida.

Facebook Spy: Alice got wasted at the last party and kissed Doug. Josh went to Mexico for his holidays. Fallon put up pictures of his cat playing the piano.

Another fallout of this whole saga is that those looking at spying as an exciting, glamorous and jet setting career opportunity would need to do a bit of a rethink. The NSA activities should now replace James Bond movies as the point of reference for the life of a spy. Or, the James Bond movies could change to reflect the new age, sinister-but-boring reality of a spy’s life.

M: James, the terrorists have stolen the codes to detonate a nuclear device that could destroy the world. Our sources tell us that they’re currently on a train from Cairo to Alexandria.

James: Don’t worry, M – I’m on it. I’ll get into a helicopter and then climb down from the helicopter into that train and have an elaborate chase sequence after which I’ll jump off at the station and run after them through a crowded, exotic marketplace and then they’ll get into a taxi and a car will appear for me and there’ll be a long car chase ending in a crash after which I’ll again chase them on foot while showing off my parkour skills jumping from one building to another and then…

M: You’ll do none of that, James. What is this, 1980?

James (taken aback): Then what do you want me to do, M?

M: Nothing. You’ll log in to Facebook and click “Like” on the terrorist’s new status message. Then you keep your eyes on his Facebook page at all times. Inform me the minute there’s an update.

Ok. Maybe writing scripts for James Bond movies isn’t my thing. But one cant help shake off the feeling that you can’t be productive if you’re on Facebook all the time – even if it’s massive, global-scale spying that you’re doing. And if that’s what the US spying machinery shall be devoted to, the future indeed doesn't look very promising for American hegemony in world affairs.

His Holiness @ Facebook

In a fascinating bit of news, it seems that the Pope has decided to reach out to his followers by opening an account on Facebook. This sounds like yet another of those cases such as that uncool middle-aged uncle of yours who’s just bought a guitar and grown a ponytail to try and look cool. Sort of like the BSNL ads which give you the message “So what if I’m an incompetent, outdated government-owned telecom service provider? I know that hip-hop is the ‘in’ thing these days!” It would, however, be interesting to see the kind of posts the Pope would be receiving on his wall:

Pope’s Wall

Big trouble – Danish chap drew cartoons of Mohammed – Middle-East up in arms – conciliatory noises need to be made, maybe even a quick visit.

- Secretary

Bible Poker Night at Cardinal Monfils’ on Friday nite – bring your own holy wine.

- Cardinal Martinez XVIII

That whole Bethlehem mass business – big cock-up! Middle East up in arms – retraction might be in order, say you were misquoted, biblical language can be vague, all men are equal...that sort of stuff.

- Secretary

In a bit of a pickle here – was god really serious about the whole “Do not covet thy neighbour’s wife” bit? I’m sure he was on to something, but d’you suppose the old chap would relax the rules if the neighbour’s wife happened to be Carla Bruni?

- Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, England

That little speech of yours with the Byzantine emperor quote – big disaster! Middle East up in arms – say you were misquoted, or that you misquoted the emperor – or just say something insensitive and anti-gay to deflect attention from it.

- Secretary

All right, all right...maybe the holocaust thing was a bit extreme. But I’ve been good otherwise...how about putting in a good word with god about a place in heaven?

- Sincerely, Adolf

Palestinian rocket hits Tel Aviv. Middle East up in arms, and this time it has nothing to do with you. So just stay out of this – the press would try and lure you into commenting – say something irrational against contraceptives or evolution to deflect attention.

- Secretary 

Ratings at its lowest since John Paul took over – number of new members in the flock has reduced considerably over the previous quarter, while a record number has deserted our flock this quarter. Figures from Eastern Europe particularly alarming. Could we meet on this ASAP?

- God

Is it blasphemy to scribble on the holy wall?

- Anonymous

It seems that Nicholas Sarkozy, the French President, also has a Facebook profile. In fact, he has recently updated it to show us all what a normal chap he is – there are videos uploaded of Sarkozy playing with his dog, asking his wife what’s for dinner while discussing his upcoming state visit to Iraq, and so on. It would be rather interesting if our Indian politicians did the same and starting creating their own Facebook profiles. We could then have interesting situations such as Manmohan Singh throwing a sheep at Advani, Advani responding by throwing a stiletto at Manmohan and the Congress subsequently accusing Advani of being a cross-dresser. Narendra Modi’s profile would include “Genocide” among his interests. Lalu Yadav’s status message would say something along the lines of “Blew it big-time, didn’t I?” while Prakash Karat would simply have a sad smiley next to his name.

A couple of decades ago, El Salvador and Honduras went to war with each other over a football match. If you think that’s sounds like a trivial reason to go to war (even for two hot-blooded Latin American nations), then you’d be surprised at the possibilities of war that Facebook could generate. With easy access to all the big shots, there would be breaches of protocol aplenty, and some of them could possibly lead to war:

“Assistant Defence Attache Co-Secretary of France Mr Giles Portmanteau landed in a soup for addressing Prince Charles as ‘Monsieur’ as opposed to ‘His Royal Highness’. This is viewed as a major breach of protocol and has strained bilateral relations between France and the UK. Matters worsened further when Mr Portmanteau commented that the soup he landed in was quite bland like most of British cuisine, leading to a military build-up between the two countries.”

“The Middle-East is up in arms after Bill Clinton poked Queen Rania of Jordan on Facebook. While Clinton insisted that it was just a friendly gesture (with his reputation, who’s he trying to kid?), the Jordanians, for whom even touching a woman who’s not your wife results in being stoned in public (not the marijuana kind!), are demanding that Clinton be extradited immediately else it could lead to an all-out war.”

The other flip-side of this whole politicians-on-Facebook business would be that Idea Cellular will subject us to a series of ads about how this whole thing is good for democracy and you can immediately let it be known to your PM whether you think he should go for the G-20 summit or not, vote whether the Chinese state visit was a success or not, what dishes to serve the Malaysian business delegates, exploring investment possibilities in Ecuador, etc!

Let me super-poke you!

This is something that has happened often enough for me not to dismiss as mere coincidence. Each time I log into Facebook (generally once in two weeks), the next 2-3 days I receive at least half a dozen invites. How does this work? Is it that each time I log in, Facebook sends out an alert to everyone “Argha Sarkar logged in yesterday. I guess you know what this means...you better send him an invite”? And how does Facebook decide whom to send these alerts to?

Around a year back, social networking seemed a simple enough task. Everyone I knew seemed to be jumping on to the bandwagon by creating their Orkut profile, scrapping people left, right and centre, and discovering the surprising existence of long-lost acquaintances. There was the simple pleasure one derived from watching one’s female friends receive random requests along the lines of “Will you pliz make frendship with me?”, “I was luking thru ur profile. It seems we have a lot in common, will u be my frend?” or “Hi. I liked ur profile. I am also from Bangalore. Let’s be frends.” As a response, said female friends would remove their profile pic from Orkut and replace it with a random object, or a very arty-looking pic that however gave no indication of what said female in question looked like.

As a guy, the only unsolicited scrap you’d receive would be along the lines of “Hi. I noticed that your interests include Bavarian wild boars. I have started a Bavarian wild boars community on Orkut, where like-minded people such as you and me can discuss our passion for Bavarian wild boars.” Any visit to the community would have you come across fascinating threads of discussion such as “Why Bavarian wild boars are superior to Hungarian wild boars?”, under which some passionate Hungarian wild boar fanatic would’ve interrupted a wholesome debate on the merits of the Bavarian wild boar with a comment such as “Bavarian wild boar suckzzzzzzzzzzz. Hungarian wild boar RULEZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!! Go rot in hell, you Bavarian wild boar lot!” (to put things mildly). At this point the discussion would degenerate into angry chants asking Hungarain_WildBoar_4life to go mind his own business, with the choicest of expletives being hurled at him.

And of course, who could forget the communities of people with same names! Soon after you joined Orkut, someone else named Argha would send you a scrap saying “I could not help but notice that your name is Argha. Come and join the community of people named Argha, where we can discuss the merits of our wonderful name.” The threads in such communities would be limited to half a dozen members introducing themselves and sharing some interesting anecdote about their name, at which point there was nothing else left to say. If you think sharing the same name sounds like a flimsy excuse to form a community, you are horribly mistaken. You would probably come across communities in Orkut such as “Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Episode 8 is the BEST”, “Lovers of Judas Priest in South-Central Delhi” and “People who use a red towel on Tuesdays”.

You either fell into the category of people who initially showed a lot of enthusiasm for Orkut, rediscovered long lost friends, joined a few communities before slowly losing interest and reducing the visits to simply checking when one has received a scrap and replying to the same - yours truly being a prime example of someone in this category. Or you could fall into the category of people who would check their scraps at least thrice a day, dutifully reply to every scrap, send half a dozen scraps of your own, manage to wish happy birthday to everyone on your list, and maybe even start and maintain a community of your own, if you’re REALLY adventurous – I suspect both my ex-flatmates would have fallen into this latter category. The bottom line, though, was that Orkut seemed to be just one step beyond an SMS – albeit free of charge. But you understood everything, and felt like you were in control.

And then something sinister started to happen. First it was just one person, but slowly every second person would tell you “Oh, I’m not on Orkut anymore, I’ve deleted my account. I’ll add you on Facebook though...you have a Facebook account, na?” You decide to keep with the times and join Facebook – you figure it would probably be the same and you’d get the hang of it in a day or two. But lo and behold! Life just isn’t that simple anymore. Everyone around you is poking or winking at each other, someone has found out that they resemble Kareena the most among Bollywood stars, someone has super-poked you, someone has asked you to figure out which ‘That 70s Show’ character you are and someone has offered you derivates on the Peruvian Futures Index. And if you think that is where it ends, you’re sadly mistaken. The next time you log in someone has hurled a sheep at you, another person has rung a bell at you, someone has fattened a pig for you and someone wants you to participate in their coolest friend contest. Where do these people get the time to do all of this? Does it not feel like a full time occupation just figuring out what all these things are supposed to mean, leave alone participating in them? Yet, everyone seems to be doing it effortlessly and is still hanging on to their jobs quite comfortably. How?

And these are the same people who then start sending you invites to join Hi5, Gazzag and an assortment of various other social networking websites...how do they manage it all? For someone who finds it a challenge to even upload pictures on an Orkut or a Facebook, I wisely refrained from joining any of these new-fangled sites. Life is complicated enough with strange animals being hurled at you, you getting poked at, participating in sundry other quizzes and polls, you getting super-poked even though you have no idea what it means and why someone would do that to you. And then there’s Linked In, which I had joined a long time back under the naive illusion that it would be a good platform for creating some business contacts. Or perhaps that wasn’t an illusion, perhaps Linked In is useful...just that I’m not in the “networking” mode anymore.