Recently, when talking to a friend I realized how easily people took content on the internet for granted. As I was describing my job profile to her, she interjected with an "Oh! So you basically write. How hard can that get? Use some flowery words, put in some posh grammar... Lo and Behold, there you have an article." I was tempted to retort back with "If it seems that easy let's see you do it, Shakespeare",but settled for, "Yeah. Pretty much", instead.
That does summarize what people, in general, think of writers - Hobo chicks with pencils in their bun wearing flowing skirts writing flowery poetry. If it were only that simple!Even worse is when you tell people you work on Facebook or Twitter the whole day. Just the other day, my mother thought I was wasting time on Twitter on a weekend. When I told her this was a part of the job, all she replied was "What possibly could you work with on a social networking site that just allows 140 characters?" She, like many other people, is blissfully unaware of the efforts at the backend of every site- social networking or otherwise. To them, it's all just a random unknown person sitting on a computer somewhere far away posting content and images.
What many people don't understand is that words are way more powerful than swords could ever be. Especially with the Internet disseminating information so effortlessly, words are more than just the building blocks of a language. They're ticking time bombs if used wrongly. The wrong words at the right time could trend and result in something awful or moronic.Take the recent case of a teen committing suicide because #CutForBieber was trending on Twitter. Agreed that it was the most drastic case of a prank gone bad, but that's the kind of impact words have on people.
So the next time you see a writer, tip your hat off to that guy/girl. They're probably the reason why you have your Facebook, Twitter and Google timelines flooded with information. Whether the said information is relevant or irrelevant is another story altogether!
That does summarize what people, in general, think of writers - Hobo chicks with pencils in their bun wearing flowing skirts writing flowery poetry. If it were only that simple!Even worse is when you tell people you work on Facebook or Twitter the whole day. Just the other day, my mother thought I was wasting time on Twitter on a weekend. When I told her this was a part of the job, all she replied was "What possibly could you work with on a social networking site that just allows 140 characters?" She, like many other people, is blissfully unaware of the efforts at the backend of every site- social networking or otherwise. To them, it's all just a random unknown person sitting on a computer somewhere far away posting content and images.
So the next time you see a writer, tip your hat off to that guy/girl. They're probably the reason why you have your Facebook, Twitter and Google timelines flooded with information. Whether the said information is relevant or irrelevant is another story altogether!
Nice! You put it so well.
ReplyDeleteI shared this posting, hoping someone will give me a hats off for what i do :)
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