A Rhetorical Analysis Of David Brooks Use Of Social Media

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In the past decade there has been a dramatic rise in the use of social media as a way of communicating and connecting with friends and family but, it soon reached epic proportions. Nothing happens without being tweeted, posted, or captured to exist in the cyber world for the rest of time. Although social media has moved social interactions into our technology driven world, it comes at a cost. In a erudite and cogent tone, David Brooks, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, warns users of social media and social media companies of the darker side of social media by explicitly arguing that it causes irreversible destruction to our ability to form intimate relationships. At the same time he implicitly claims that these social media tools are not just something we enjoy, it is who we turning into, and if we don’t put a stop to the ever-increasing use of this technology, we will change from human beings to machines that can only live life through a screen. …show more content…

Brooks states that, “you can have a day of happy touch points without any of the scary revelations, or the boring, awkward, or uncontrollable moments that constitute actual intimacy.” Brooks uses this strategy to prove that social media is a way of concealing the difficult reality of relationships. When creating a social media page, someone can create a persona that is completely void of the reality of their life. Raw, meaningful relationships are based upon real life, which comes with life’s ups and downs, not just a sugar-coated version of reality. By comparing and contrasting these two things, Brooks is proving to those who are creating virtual relationships that these types of relationships may feel good at first, but are ultimately going to leave them unsatisfied and

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