“Are We Slaves to Our Online Selves” & “I Know What You Think of Me”

Evans Jules is an author who wrote "Are we slaves to our online slaves?" about the new social media situation and its impact on human society. He states that in today's socialized society, everyone has personally indulged in the pointless habits of global media, which has made them online selves. Nonetheless, almost three decades ago, our social lives were different, more focused on ourselves, and/or confined to the immediate social network, which was often one-on-one contact. In that era everyone was focused to him/herself and more emphasized to the personal building, establishment of intellect and personality. Then the internet changed everything even the personal lives of an individual. Nowadays, everyone or most of us are over exposed to the world through social media network sites. Actually, yes, we have reached to the point which had been identified by Plato and Stoics years ago that “if somebody place too much value to his/her reputation or image then he/she definitely will enslave him/herself to the fickle opinion of the people.” Literally, in the current technological world we really are slave to our Smartphone. The studies suggest that an average user look at his/her devices every four minutes, 253 times a day, and more specifically everyone spent almost quarter of this time on apps like Facebook and Twitter. This shows that how much we are involved in the futile social media activities that has actually distance ourselves to our actual self. We are doing everything for the strangers and the people who don’t know us and don’t care about us. Therefore, it is a fact that we are slaves to our online selves.

The articulation of Evans Jules correlates with Tim Kreider essay “I know what you think of me” as both articulations depicts the same notion of careless and full of hazard use of internet and technology.

Kreider , Tim . “I Know What You Think of Me.” The New York Times, 15 June 2013, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/i-know-what-you-think-of-me/.

Tim Kreider is an essay writer, he has written number of essays such as “I know what you think of me” and “We learn nothing.” In the essay “I know what you think of me,” Tim Kreider invokes the hazard and careless factor in the electronic communication by identifying the example of sending bulk mails CCs to the recipients by disregarding the exact recipients. He explains that he has received a mail which is irrelevant to him. He further explains that the sender sent email with lots of photographs of goats with the expression a) I had goats and b) It was good. He emphasize that the email was an uncensored secrecy/privacy to me. He further emphasize that the privacy was actually breached due to the negligence of sender and at the same time because of the hazards of electronic communication. The writer says that the email is not for me but it is definitely about me as I also sometimes CC my emails to the persons who are irrelevant. He explains that this kind of mistakes expose the people to others and it can be a weapon to tease by knowing him and/or his mistakes and it can be useful for making fun of him behind his back. The essay is about carelessness, personal privacy and electronic communication hazard which is very common among us. In addition, this is very common because we need to complete the things quicker than the required time period and the required focus.

Indeed, Evans Jules and Tim Kreider articulation suggests that same notion and identify the careless use of internet and technology with full of hazard.