Social Work

 I am not one to say.  Or do.  I wish I could do social work.  I guess growing up in India I did some.  I volunteered at schools on day camps.  I also did some stateside.  With the Red Cross and with some non profits.  But not enough.

What would our world be if many able bodied people actually did more of it?  Instead of the other almost eponymous activity - Social Network?

I find that in the decades of my being on our planet, we discovered personal computing, then mobile technology and access to global information and then the culmination of it to be able to lookup anyone or anything 24x7 anywhere.

The looking up anyone took off, first for its novelty and then for what it truly was designed for - more efficient mass consumerism.  But as always happens the gullible were led down the road oft traveled.  They fell for it.

People began to compete.  The haves showed off while the have nots pretended to be the former.  Whether it was vanity or sheer stupidity all manners of folks; from the villages in Asia and Africa and South America to the power corridors of capitalist centers around the planet to the glitzy show biz airheads spouting their latest hairdos and plastic and chemical enabled avatars, they all wanted to feel connected.

And marketers were having the last laugh.  From the cliched 'looking hot' comments to pithy 'wows' the stay at home moms got an audience of thousands by clicking on glass.  What was the risk in that?  Hello Social Network.

Being at a job for five years or 10 called for the social software to urge others to congratulate the employee.  Do we know if this person felt congratulation worthy?  Do we even know if this person is in fact at said job?

No matter.  Software has taken on its own life and continues to pound out spam mail to scam calls to adulation and platitudes a plenty.  And suckers are being born and convinced every waking and sleeping minute to go out there and network.