The dark side of networking

By Gaurav Chawla
gaurav@gloconomics.com

There are many positive aspects of networking - more

contacts, more recognition, more information – and the
best part is, it increases your worth as an individual.
Today networking is ‘the’ buzz world around the globe.
You need job, network! You need investors, network!
You need social help, network! As if the world was
never approachable before we had networking in our
culture. The counts of Facebook and LinkedIn friends
have become a matter of prestige and who knows
would also become criteria of selection for tomorrow’s jobs. I would not negate the good it has brought
to society but I guess it’s high time to reflect on the dark side of it too because as things go beyond
control; they get ingrained in the culture along with their negatives thereby making themselves
inseparable from us even if they are doing harm behind the scene. Social work has already been a
victim to it. Facebook groups like Save Tiger or Campaigns for Cancer Awareness can amass hundreds of
thousands of members, yet at times members of these groups, including the organizers themselves, fail
to contribute in real ways to the cause. Membership in an online group can never be equal to true
commitment; it might even make people less likely to take action, because they feel that their online
group membership lets them off the hook. In one study, researchers showed that when people talk
about their intentions, they can be less likely to act on them because the talking gives them a
"premature sense of completeness."

On the same lines networking through an online world can never equate the relationship that is
developed through face to face interactions while understanding each other’s feelings not by words but
everything else: the body language, the facial expressions, the emotions. All of know how much we
laugh, or even feel like laughing, when we type ‘LOL’ in our online conversations.

With limited 24 hrs in a day and increasing work pressures, time for others is reducing while the number
of friends is drastically increasing through the online enablers; so forcibly we are left with hardly any
time for any of our friends. At times it takes 2-3 days to respond to a ‘Hi’ mail, forget about
relationships! The Gen Y today believes in short term solutions and networking is an apt tool for that.
For some this short term would last throughout their life but that would be the case with most of us.
One or the other point in life we will face the lack of relationship with excess of networking.

This is getting too materialistic. No doubt you can leverage on the ‘give and take’ facility the networking
offers but what if when you are not in a position to give anything but desperately need something from
somebody? True that some of the network do convert into good selfless relations but can we ever
equate them to the potential relations that we just lost because we had put them in the cadre of
networking pool. Having thousands of people in your network would definitely give you a materialistic
advantage but it can never replace a true friend who would be there for you even when your closest of
the people are not around and in spite of the fact that you never ‘networked’ with him or rather touch
based with him for many years. It is all about relationship and networking is just an initiator but
unfortunately many of us consider it as the destination and try climbing the ladder of success with these
feeble links.

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