WhatsApp is in my opinion the best social media app of our time. It allows us to communicate freely and expeditiously with friends, personally or severally. Chat groups are particularly useful. We got reconnected with old school or college mates and teachers, and ex-colleagues. WhatsApp also facilitates family members, close relatives, friends and acquaintances to form dedicated groups to keep one another posted of good and bad news, share knowledge or experiences, and pursue hobbies and other interests.
It has become an indispensable tool in our lives. The first thing I do in the morning is to check my phone to see if there are messages in my WhatsApp portal. I believe many are similarly addicted.
However, I have just decided to exit two chat groups. I cited WhatsApp fatigue syndrome as my excuse. I suppose friends in these two groups would say I am being snobbish. Although the members were all ex-school mates, I did not quite know many of them personally. Several would post Good This and Good That virtually on a daily basis. And there were endless birthday and season’s greetings. I suppose many also felt compelled to also follow up with wishes once one had been made. And many are trigger-happy to the extreme. Anything they received would be immediately clicked off to the group! Many are fake news and health advisories. While I would welcome the latter if they were authoritative, many of these were rubbish. One screams: Experts say walking is good. Do you need an expert to tell you that? Others advise you to rub here and rub there to cure illnesses. Of course, kneading joints or tuina is generally helpful to relieve discomfort, but can such treatments make your illness go away - as claimed?
We have a friend who must have developed a form of attention deficit syndrome. He does hashing and taichi-in-the-park every day. He posted pictures and selfies of it so often that prompted some of us to comment privately about his angin-ness. (Angin – wind in Malay, but implies idiosyncrasy.) The kaypor (Hokkien or South Fujianese term – busy body) in me once reacted by asking mischievously if the friend was recycling his old pictures. He took it in good faith and responded to assure me that the pictures were current! I felt bad.
Notwithstanding, I still tend to cite this incident to illustrate the need for one to take cognizance of social etiquette. But my wife often says why do I bother. Just click the delete button if you do not lime it. Not everybody can grasp your subtleties!
I started a chat group for residents in the condominium we live in. At the very outset, another resident helped me to establish these house rules: Only use the platform to inform or alert. No partisan politics, no religious talks, no pornography, no product promotions, no morning or birthday wishes, and the likes. Residents generally follow, but sometimes you also see silly postings.
Apart from WhatsApp, the other medium which takes up a great deal of my time is Facebook. I used to dislike this platform. I can understand if you post a dish that is exceptionally different, but you also often see kuey-teow stuff from friends. It is now a platform for me to watch podcasts on geopolitics from all sorts of sources. I particularly like the depth and wisdom of several scholars and thinkers from Taiwan about cross-straits issues. There are also many political narratives from China, some are pretty good, but there are many the syiok-sendiri (Malay term, self-gratifying) type. Some are outright fake news.
I do not use Twitter, Instagram or the others and am therefore unable to say anything about them.
Make the best use of these social media apps to help inform and alert, and build and strengthen relationships, but do make an effort to observe etiquette.
My message: Think before you post or click off! Not everyone will agree, though.
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