The vanishing of words

You should listen to the BBC Business Daily podcast on Facebook's Annus Horribilis. According to a person who is interviewed in this podcast, Instagram is a more popular app than Facebook. Facebook is a dad tool. I am not surprised for two reasons. A picture is worth a 1000 words. It makes communication easier.

I will take longer to explain the second reason. It all started with a photo walk in Liverpool. There were a few people who were so young that I was only one without a student's discount card during lunch. I did try to capitalize on the student card of these young people, but the person at the counter gave me look which has a lot of emotions written on it. Let me assure none of these emotions were that of respect. Coming back to the topic of Instagram versus Facebook, I noticed my newfound friends were referring to Instagram first and then Facebook. 

They were on both the apps. So the popularity of Instagram is not surprising. It is simple to click and upload. If you want specificity, then you can add tags. We had reduced the usage of words to a minimum when Twitter appeared. Facebook was quick to adopt the microblogging feature. But we still posted updates which were longer than 140 character limit associated with Twitter. 

With Instagram being the favorite app, are status updates going to be the thing of the past? Aren't we losing the ability to imagine when we are fed images after images? Words conjure up different meanings for different people. Have you noticed how words can create a rift in our day to day life? You use a word in a conversation, but it might hurt the other person because that particular word might invoke a stronger feeling for the latter. 

Of course, a picture could solve everything. It removes the ambiguity in expression. But we forget one important fact. When there is a misunderstanding, there might also be an effort to bridge the gap. To bridge the gap, two people will have to engage in a conversation. A conversation is always a better remedy to problems plaguing us. 

Picture Courtesy: Tanja Cappell