3 words

So if you were asked the question, ‘in 3 words, describe yourself?’ what would you say?

This is a question I’ve heard at an interview before and it stumped me. I mean how can someone sum themselves up in three words? Now of course, with this question relevant to the interview, they were just looking for three key attributes of mine that would sell myself to this job, which I realised after a few seconds. But I’ve got a blog to write so I shall conveniently ignore this and make my point.
               

How can a person seriously, round themselves up in three words? How can a person ask that of someone? And is the question referring to my opinion of myself generally or simply today’s mood? It’s so vague. As for the words, it would take years to find the precise, individual words that could describe someone’s character, traits or personality but moreover years for someone to simply identify themselves as a person. For me this question beggars belief, there’s too much individuality in every single one of us, that there’s not even enough words to describe.
                 

Can a person describe themselves in three words?
               

No they can’t.

Mark Zuckerberg; social networking's Pied Piper.

Facebook. We all use it. In fact if most people are like me, the first thing I do when on my computer is look at Facebook. It amazes me. But why? All I do is snoop through the news feed, looking at my friend’s conversations and pictures. So unnecessary and insignificant, simply too curious for my own good.  But it’s an addiction. I can’t help myself but go on.

Think back? Where was Facebook, say 5 years ago? Nobody new it. Bebo was all the rage. Myspace was cool. Flixter was fun. Social Networking was divided between these websites. But from nowhere, Facebook came steamrolling through and changed this system. These minor websites are unheard of now, Facebook has demolished their popularity. Domination on social networking fronts, Facebook is a phenomenon. As if not content with this newfound success, they figured why not branch out over other areas, such as live chat on the internet. And as was imminent, Msn messenger, Skype, you are no more. Facebook chat has arrived.

So what’s next? I fear for Google. Could Facebook’s own search engine be on its way? Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and the rest, be very afraid. Perhaps Facemail or Fmail, could be on its way. (I’ll have my CV in for Facebook tomorrow, this is too easy). What if they challenged on an internet sales level? Becoming a serious threat to Amazon. Or dare I say it; could Facebook actually become the internet?

 

 

After spending many hours on Youtube loops, I came to a rather interesting conclusion. This is a rather intriguing human trait I’ve seen which seems to be present in all of us: the enjoyment we seem to find in other people’s misfortune (Schadenfreude, I believe is the technical term). I’m largely referring to videos where the ‘stars’ proceed to hurt themselves, inflict pain on another or completely embarrassed themselves. As a rule of thumb these generally seem to be popular, very popular infact. To be more specific, the names of videos I mean could be ones such as, ‘kid cycles into tree’, ‘Worst face plant ever.’ What does that say about us as people? Are we a bad race; because which other species acts like so?    

What makes this righteous? One justification, in brief, could be us blaming karma, i.e. what goes around comes around. Or people with the attitude, ‘well they would laugh at me if it were the other way.’ Or simply the fact we don’t know who this person is, therefore that makes it alright. Be it worth noting, the older generations will think it’s just the younger generation’s humour that seems to have developed this way, just the sadistic nonchalant attitude we have. Cue the, ‘back in my day’.

It could however been seen as a much more serious point, a deeper underlying problem we have. We would rather look and laugh at others problems and misfortune, than confront our own. Subconsciously using them as a barrier for our own issues, a temporary scapegoat for our own inhibitions. When someone has low self esteem and find themselves on the end of stick, it could only help to laugh at someone else when given the opportunity, surely?  

Or perhaps, we just wanted a laugh.