After Hi5 and myspace, a new online community came to life. It was started by a bunch of Harvard geeks which wanted an exclusive online lounge for American university students. The project was expanded to let in North Americans and then students from all over the world. (That's when I joined ). A final upgrade then arrived and facebook became accessible to anyone with an email address. That's when I thought problems will start. I expected people outside from university to join and so anonymous and rude comments will prevail in this nice lovely online hangout.
Now looking back, I am thinking about how stupid I was to think that way. I was fooling myself with the ' education ' arguement and hell I was proven wrong.
Facebook encloses many groups and so I have the hobby of occassionally going over some of them. I take a special interest in Iraqi ones. Most of them are non-political, mostly social and are quite fun to read. Then a major twist happened on Dec.30th. Saddam execution was too big of a political event for any Iraqi to ignore. Even the Iraqis born outside Iraq had to discuss this, 'Saddam is dead '.
First, the impulsive blabber came out with people claiming the Eid tastes sweeter while others started to mourn the martyr. All such comments were from supposedly educated and enlightened university students in N.America. Then, discussions started to happen between two uncompromising extreme points of views that reminded me of elementary school arguements ( whose shoes are better or whose football shot is stronger or whose Dad is smarter ) . This kind of stuff that really amased me.
The discussions then started to go down another route. Swearing started to come in, sectarian terms followed and then bans from groups started to fly around. I became curious and asked here and there and apparently most of these people were either born outside Iraq or left Iraq really young. I expected some tension following the execution but the amount of hostility and the hatred that I sensed shocked me. It was all too much to take and people were talking about reconcilation and uniting the country back again. We could not do it on facebook in simple discussions about a single and most importantly a vital part of Iraq history. Saddam's position can not be discussed. Noone can justify his actions or his deeds but still Iraqis could not get over that subject in a civilised discussion. Until now, some people are still arguing against his death and actually mourning his death.
Such online differences could not but confirm my fears of not seeing a united Iraq soon. The fact that a good sector of Iraqis cant get over the fact of Saddam's death summarises alot. Some still argue about his achievements for Iraq and will not accept any discussion of the matter. This is coming from supposedly educated,well-off Iraqis living in liberal and democratic countries. I certainly will not blame the Iraqis inside for what's happening. If those elite of the country are still so close-minded and cant forget,forgive or move on, what hope do we have inside this torn country??
Your comments will be greatly appreciated,whether to content or style. Thx :)
Now looking back, I am thinking about how stupid I was to think that way. I was fooling myself with the ' education ' arguement and hell I was proven wrong.
Facebook encloses many groups and so I have the hobby of occassionally going over some of them. I take a special interest in Iraqi ones. Most of them are non-political, mostly social and are quite fun to read. Then a major twist happened on Dec.30th. Saddam execution was too big of a political event for any Iraqi to ignore. Even the Iraqis born outside Iraq had to discuss this, 'Saddam is dead '.
First, the impulsive blabber came out with people claiming the Eid tastes sweeter while others started to mourn the martyr. All such comments were from supposedly educated and enlightened university students in N.America. Then, discussions started to happen between two uncompromising extreme points of views that reminded me of elementary school arguements ( whose shoes are better or whose football shot is stronger or whose Dad is smarter ) . This kind of stuff that really amased me.
The discussions then started to go down another route. Swearing started to come in, sectarian terms followed and then bans from groups started to fly around. I became curious and asked here and there and apparently most of these people were either born outside Iraq or left Iraq really young. I expected some tension following the execution but the amount of hostility and the hatred that I sensed shocked me. It was all too much to take and people were talking about reconcilation and uniting the country back again. We could not do it on facebook in simple discussions about a single and most importantly a vital part of Iraq history. Saddam's position can not be discussed. Noone can justify his actions or his deeds but still Iraqis could not get over that subject in a civilised discussion. Until now, some people are still arguing against his death and actually mourning his death.
Such online differences could not but confirm my fears of not seeing a united Iraq soon. The fact that a good sector of Iraqis cant get over the fact of Saddam's death summarises alot. Some still argue about his achievements for Iraq and will not accept any discussion of the matter. This is coming from supposedly educated,well-off Iraqis living in liberal and democratic countries. I certainly will not blame the Iraqis inside for what's happening. If those elite of the country are still so close-minded and cant forget,forgive or move on, what hope do we have inside this torn country??
Your comments will be greatly appreciated,whether to content or style. Thx :)
posted by zmanutdz at 8:09 PM
4 Comments:
the online communities can tell u more of what is happening inside people's houshold than the usual keeping it up with public appearances.
Two Iraqi families i know of, are still very polite with each other, their boys still hang out with each other, but each family head is doing their job politely by doing some (distancing).
I hate it how people can not see from where they pov come from, and how did they formulate it, instead of accusing each other, they keep their irrational, extremist emotional behaviour up the ladder to the never ending story of social disintegration of the Iraqi population based on stupid things that are reall irrelevent to real human bondage.
thanx for letting me vent.
nice blog ;)
The whole situation is amazing me every day with so much mess.
Now what's happening with the Haifa, oh man, where is this country heading??
from facebook to Iraq.... I was expecting a critique of facebook when I was reminded of Iraq and how bad the situation is over there. It was a good yet unexpected transition into a very sensitive topic.
I will have to agree with you that I had no idea that the situation is just as bad within the Iraqi communities that have formed in many countries all over the globe. Yes it is very sad to see how educated and supposedly enlightened (i hope i spelled that right) individuals are finally showing that they have not changed at all since being displaced by wars and a dictatorial regime.
Oh well we can only sit and watch I guess and hope for the best. I mean in most movies you get happy endings so I choose to think of the situation right now as being another one of those Hollywood movies :)
As for the people, it will take many many many years before you can alter their way of thinking.
oh and one last thing.... call me whatever you like, but when you refer to harvard geeks u have to use 'who' not 'which' :)
cool new blog, some grammar mistakes but nothing incorrigible with watching marathons of jerry springer on tv
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