IT was a hidden and wicked guilty pleasure. A bit like watching those late-night reality TV shows about philandering bachelors and cheating couples sent off to an island of temptations. Or scarfing down a triple-stacked cheeseburger and greasy fries.

No nutritive value to gain whatsoever, but tasty nonetheless (and more than you?d care to admit.)

Scanning the society pages? Me? Love it or recoil at the thought of it, you just can?t help but look sometimes.

?Left to right people,? a friend once called them?those glamazons with twinkling eyes and precisely angled, quarter-turned faces smiling for the roving paparazzi. The cocktail-toting throng with perfect attendance at the city?s nocturnal school of Social Studies.

They?re like the popular kids in all the high school parties, thus inevitably attracting a range of emotions from curiosity and admiration to annoyance and jealousy from anonymous onlookers. Not to mention feelings of social unease, at least for those who feel the need to question the relevance of society pages in a Third World country, where the day?s wages of 70 percent of the population would not even be enough to pay for a glass of Moët.

But there is just something appallingly pleasurable at peering into a sliver of looking glass, from a safe distance, and into the lives of others. We humans are curious cats, after all.

Two-way mirrors

Once in a while, mainly because my job as an opinionated scribbler would call for my presence at a few of the many fetes coloring the nightscape, I?d see my own face among the left-to-righties, and consequently suffer the verbal jabs of old friends who would affectionately prosecute me for breaching the underground and swimming in the social shark-infested, glitzy surface.

(I would then counter with my version of taking the Fifth?the right to claim free cocktails and canapés as a bona fide member of the Pataygutom Press.)

These days, however, something has happened to that peculiar habit of peeking into other people?s lives and social habits. That symbiotic relationship of exhibitionism and voyeurism seems to have found another sphere to thrive in. What?s more, those little looking-glass slivers have become gigantic two-way mirrors.

Oh lordy, it has come to this?the left-to-righties have invaded cyberspace! Except, this time around, everybody is now somebody. And somebody ends up taking the role of Paparazzi, Exhibitionist and Voyeur. Add one more important character to the dramatis personae of cyberspace socializing: the indefatigable Tagger. Or he who tags.

(For the Facebook uninitiated, ?to tag someone? is to identify a person in an uploaded photo on an album. It?s similar to the job of a magazine intern tasked with the intellectually challenging job of matching the faces in a photo with the proper name.)

And so, with the rudimentary tools of a digital camera, USB cable and a laptop, the society pages have turned virtual and essentially more democratic. For not only do we see the lives of the high-heeled, perfumed, long-stemmed glass-clinking set, now we are assailed with photos upon photos of peeps from almost every subculture, along with details of the shenanigans they are up to.

Random, ho-hum

The Facebook newsfeed, or my version of Big Brother, is an open floodgate for all to pimp, pose and peacock themselves at just about any waking moment of life. (And blimey, some of the very same people who detested the society pages are simply all over the galleries).

It started out pretty innocently though, about a year ago when FB was still a fledgling communicative medium, at least in our little archipelago.

People would post a photo album about a trip here, a birthday party there. It was always good for post-revelry laughs and witty captioning repartees.

Today, however, the past, present and future have melded into a cut-and-paste patchwork of moments, laid out for all to see. Here we are with the ol? college gang in the same freaking bar we go to every weekend! Here we are at the beach posing for photos between waves! Here we are out of town playing backgammon and eating kare-kare for lunch! Here we are back when we were still in high school when high-waisted jeans and short shorts on boys were all the rage! Here we are at our most awkward, pre-pubescent selves before the discovery of tweezers!

And what has got to be my least favorite description of life?s moments digitally captured?here are the most random photos of ourselves just because! Overwhelming, much?

Wait. Before I go all cooler-than-thou on you, let me be the first to admit guilt to some degree for posting and posing online. To think, I used to believe I?d be the last person to engage in such digital exhibitionism.

But I did wonder if pictures, like songs unsung or words unsaid, meant nothing if they weren?t shared. And of those special moments captured with a click?are they not more meaningful with the interactive thoughts of others? Okay, screw that, I posted photos because I wanted to show my friends that I made it to Foz do Iguaçu in Southern Brazil.

Inciting healthy jealousy? Guilty as charged. Let?s face it, peer approval is good for our mental health.

But there is such a thing as going overboard. Like posting albums everyday, thereby chronicling life even at its most mundane moments. (I have since developed an allergic reaction to the word ?random.?)

It?s an Orwellian nightmare happening before our very eyes, and all of our own doing.

Recalling the words of the great Master Oogway?you know, the old turtle from ?Kung Fu Panda??today is a gift, that is why it?s called the present. So now I ask, do we end up missing out on many details of the momentous present when we?re so preoccupied with preserving them for the approval of others?

Or perhaps, at least in the virtual social sphere, we get off being left-to-righties, proving that, dammit, it?s not only those glamazons who have a life. Everybody can be somebody, at least in cyberspace.

Fair enough. Guess I just have to learn when to switch off from indulging in voyeuristic tendencies. If, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, then perhaps in the land of the all-seeing, it?s better to just keep our eyes shut. Or at least those camera shutters.