Fellow human beings have a tendency to dream about something extraterrestrial, a fantasy world which is found free from many shortcomings that we come across in our daily lives. In fact, if we take a look deep down the history lane, we figure out that one of the most perfect places to live has been the Garden of Eden. The Wright brothers started living in the fantasy world where they can live like birds, they dreamt about flying like birds, which helped the human beings in devising aircrafts. The great scientist Newton sat under an apple tree and thought why the apple is not going up, instead of falling on his head, which resulted in revolutionizing the world of science.
Therefore living in the world of fantasy is nothing new for the human beings. The latest craze is the online fantasy world, which has been resulting into many peculiar activities all around the globe. On the one hand there are instances where some persons are being driven to commit suicide because of the circumstances created online by the fellow netizens, but there are also instances when the human side of the stories was also being highlighted by the online community. For example, atrocities committed by some persons in Kenya, in the violence taking place in the country after the recently held general elections, were brought before the world community by this very online community. This led to calls for peace and efforts towards reining in the anti-social elements.
There are increasing numbers of instances where the online community is becoming a strong society in itself. There are also instances when the online communities have carried out campaigns in favor or against a social cause. Environment protections measures are being spread all across the globe in this very fashion. The recent summit held in Indonesia is an example when, some differences on the issues, almost made the summit, a failure, when efforts from a number of NGOs and the online community forced the leaders from different countries to rethink and come around some common agreeable points.
Writing weblogs, posting comments, breaking news, uploading pictures, organizing campaigns etc. are some of the tasks that the online community has taken up in the recent past. Therefore if we take a look at these events we find that this particular online community has an obsession for improving the living conditions around us, for allowing to live the earth live longer, for creating a world full of peace and love etc.
But a trend is also developing in which the online community takes on disguising identities, which is used to behave in a particular manner, quite distinct from their actual lifestyles. While taking on such identities, the netizen is supposed to display the behavior depicting him/ her on the net. This is where some amount of danger emanates and leaves scope for introspection about the side effects of being in the fantasy world.
Once somebody starts behaving in a particular manner, the thoughts start affecting his normal behavior as well, because he is supposed to synchronize his actions with that particular character. For example, if someone starts behaving as a monster, he is bound to create problems for others on the net. If we trace the trajectory of the number of viruses let out on the net, we will find that most of these viruses have been spread out by some pre-identified citizens of the internet (or netizen), who have peculiar identities giving them an identification, which separates them from the normal world. These people happen to be extremely talented, but work like misguided missiles, destroying everything around them and enjoying the destruction.
Such an obsession becomes dangerous not only for the society, but for them as well, because they find it difficult to live a normal life. Such an obsession has already starting harming the society and under the prevailing circumstances there doesn’t appear any tangible solution in sight for such trouble mongers. Perhaps the positively inclined online community only can do something constructive to ease the pressure.