Orkut was the first social networking site that I used. An integral feature of orkut's user profile is a testimonial that a friend writes to a user and is displayed in user's profile. An interesting point to note here is that the testimonials almost never talk about anything bad regarding the person. I read the testimonials in anybody's profile and they're filled with praises for that person. The bad side of the person, if at all discussed in the testimonials are sweetened that they loose their badness and one feels, so what, that guy is a human and a human has flaws, everyone has flaws, nobody is perfect... the person is portrayed as a saint.
In my defense, I would say that I have written testimonials for only a few people and they happen to have a very good influence on me. The ones I wasn't sure about or the ones I don't really like, or even the ones I am unable to express in right words, I haven't written a testimonial about them.
As an interesting activity, I asked one of my good friends, who is an active orkut user to write me a testimonial expressing all his frustration about me and why he doesn't like being with me sometimes. He did write a lot of things about me that I'm afraid are true, and bad! :(
I asked many other people to do so but nobody else would do it. Writing a bad testimonial does take lesser time than writing a good testimonial and praising the person, trust me!
If a person is actually good, he/she does deserve praise for that and so good words should express them in the testimonial. Sometimes it happens that we can only see the better part of the person and so we can only write good things about the person, but honestly there's atleast one thing about even the bestest of the best friend that one may have that could get too annoying to be ignored!
Personally I feel a testimonial is an image of a person in one's mind and one must bring out that image with all the pixels at the right places. Not every part sugary, need to add some spice and bitterness in it to make it interesting!
So then one can have two testimonials, first may say, "he's a pain to be with" and next one may say, "his company doesn't bother me that much, infact I am finding it quite pleasant", or it could be vice versa!
P.S. Similar logic can be applied to comments on the blog, friends are obliged to praise the blogger or else he/she would feel bad even though the post may suck big time!
P.S. Get the truth out, breathe in the open air!
P.S. I don't say the truth many times because I can't anticipate the consequence. :)
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