“The Facebook Sonnet,” a poem by Sherman Alexie, deciphers the present day culture’s fascination with social media. Alexie scrutinizes how status updates are altering and molding Facebook user’s day to day lives. He gives his cynical opinion of the website in the form of a sonnet, analyzing how Facebook is lengthening the immaturity of youth by concerning its users with opportunities to portrays one’s life as more fulfilling that it is in reality. “The Facebook Sonnet” describes twenty-first century culture in its most negative light by painting a picture of a self-centered society through Alexie’s use of satirical tone, irony, and sonnet structure. The tone throughout Alexie’s sonnet is one of satirical disgust, as so demonstrated in what …show more content…
appears to be an effervescent greeting “Welcome to the endless high school reunion” (Alexie 1-2).
Alexie uses the term “high school reunion” to represent those who are stuck in the past; those attempting to relive those high school memories not just for a single night, but every day when they log on. A glance back in time is now available at the click of a button. The tone is made more clear as Alexie proceeds “Welcome past friends and lovers, however kind or cruel” (2-3). Keeping up with old friends and past lovers was once treated as bizarre, considering the fact that those relationships more than likely had ended negatively with one or both parties emotionally affected. Alexie uses this line as a way of calling out those for once again welcoming these previous relationships back into their lives. In today’s society, it would be frowned upon for the typical married man or woman to call their ex from high school to simply talk about how their current lives are going. Meanwhile, society now overlooks the outlandish behavior of casually befriending …show more content…
them on Facebook and reading about that same information through their status updates. The birth of social media has made it so no one has to lose contact with anyone. Ever. Alexie recognizes this newfound deficient “social” behavior, and it is reflected through his satirical tone. Alexie also comments on how disengaged human interaction has become due to social media in his final line, referring to Facebook as “the alter of loneliness” (14). Users may have thousands of “friends”, hundreds of status updates, and continuous “likes” on their photos but Alexie is questioning the deeper meaning of it all in his satirical manner while addressing social media. As we grow, we grow out of friendships.
Alexie asks “Why can’t we pretend every stage of life is the same? Let’s exhume, resume, and extend Childhood” (5-6). With this statement is he targeting the ironic behavior of valuing the past over the present. With a specific word choice of “exhume,” signifying digging our childhood up from the grave in order to try and bring it back to life. He sheds light on the act of befriending an old peer on Facebook, despite no longer having anything in common. Today’s society has become so obsessed with never losing contact with those who’s paths rarely, if ever cross with their own. By allowing themselves to become absorbed with the current lives of past friends, people have begun neglecting their current relationships. Alexie is aware of this neglect when stating “Let’s undervalue and unmend the present” (4-5). With this he is vocalizing his abhorrence of the strain social media puts on the user’s present relationships. By placing past friendships in the spotlight, by default, your current relations will fall into the background. Alexie also criticizes the newfound religious façade social media users now portray. “Let one’s search for God become public domain. Let church.com become our church.” (11-12). The irony of it is that hollowness of these “holy words” on a computer screen mean nothing. So when users post status updates of bible verses, are their intentions entirely genuine? Are they merely trying to gain “likes” and appear to their
“friends” as good Christians, or are they sincerely sharing the word of God?
The audience can empathize easily with Sue and the death of her youngest and this allows the audience to understand the usefulness of Facebook “friends”; however, Dailey’s shift to present the other side of the argument with Bugeja’s forward truth of the flaws in online social networks. Bugeja convinces the reader that reality provides a more intimate level of support that the virtual world can never offer. Dailey could have ended the article on a stronger note that Facebook “friends” only serves as an additive to friendships to reality. In reference to Henry Adams infamous quote, Facebook “friends” cannot be made but built from existing
5). By never losing touch with acquaintances made throughout life, we lose what has made “good old-fashioned” losing touch so good (para. 5). We lose real friendships and “long-forgotten photos and mixtapes” (para. 5). Without these natural aspects that are so important to friendship, friends have not only lost their worth, but the whole point of a friendship has been lost as well. Arguing that losing touch is a necessity of friendship, Brown suggests that maybe the issue could be resolved if only social networks would create a “Fade Utility” app that would allow unintended friends to gradually blur into a sepia cast, similar to the way unintended friends naturally fade away from our lives (para. 6). Maybe if networks treated friendships the way nature does, providing opportunities for people to reach out to lost friends if they choose, then online friendships might hold the same meaning as natural friendships, where the title “friend” is not just a banner of status, but a position in a
She recalls a disagreement that took place on Facebook between her and a close friend over a few comments placed on her timeline. Wortham describes how she felt embarrassed over the pointless argument. She discloses “I’m the first one to confess my undying love of the Web’s rich culture and community, which is deeply embedded in my life. But that feud with a friend forced me to consider that the lens of the Web might be warping my perspective and damaging some important relationships” (171). Introducing her personal feelings and perspective of how she feels Facebook is taking over her own emotional response online weakens her argument. Wortham reasons that others feel the same as she does. She says, “This has alarmed some people, convincing them that it’s time to pull the plug and forgo the service altogether” (171). Wortham does not bring in other testimonies of those who feel the same as she does, therefore the readers are only introduced to her personal
Marche first draws in readers using pathos, but his examples of logos throughout the article are the real selling point. After the gruesome story about Yvette, Marche begins to talk about how “we live an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are.” He then introduces the statistics of Facebook, how there are 845 million users and how in 2011, they generated about 2.7 billion likes and comments every day. This supports his claim that we are all “transfixed by the glare of a screen, hungering for a response” and that we are now what is known as the digital era. To create a timeline image he makes “Facebook arrived in the middle” capitalized to emphasize that human loneliness was on a rise. From then on he uses statistics and expert quotes to provide evidence about how slowly people are becoming distant due to isolation. Then Marche introduces how researchers have found that people who spend more time on Facebook are more likely to develop neurotic disorders, depression, or health conditions, such as narcissistic disorder. Overall the development and support of logos provides support to the thesis that overtime the digital era is causing more and more symptoms of
The attraction of users to Facebook, or social media in general, isn’t that difficult to comprehend. Over the course of the past 60 years, the percentage of people live alone has increased by 17 percent. In the 50’s it was 10 percent, in 2010, it was estimated at 27 percent. The promise of a greater connection seems extremely attractive to those living in solitary. Here is the irony, what Facebook and Social media provides, differs a great deal from what is needed to create and sustain deeper emotional AND Lasting
“The Facebook Sonnet” and “Icicles,” are two poems that have two different forms of poetry structure incorporated into them. With each different style of poetry comes an equal amount of ways of interpreting the purpose and the meaning of the poem. Each poem is directed to its own type of audience, the types of audiences that are being demonstrated in “The Facebook Sonnet” is determined by thinking outside the box and think about what happens when somebody takes a website that is mostly used by adults who use it sometimes just to communicate with each other and the second type of audience that is being demonstrated is the connection between a father and son spending time together comparing Icicles to any real life objects that they can think
He connects the idea of how friendships now, are associated with youth and something we are all meant to grow out of eventually. He continues by stating that, the moral content of classical friendship, which are to improve together, had been lost to a society that is too sensitive to criticism. He adds that the introduction of Facebook and Myspace have ironically destroyed the nature of friendships. He is saddened by that fact that the term friend has been reduced to nothing but a feeling. He pokes fun at the fact that humans don’t like being isolated, so he adds that the internet gives us a false sense of community. He scoffs at posts because they make everything becomes more public and less intimate, which turns an individual into an indistinguishable mass of people. He does gives credit to social media, since they do have their benefits such as, reconnecting long-lost friends while far-flung ones can stay in touch, but he backtracks by stating that people seem more like they are trying to imitate themselves. Lastly he compares positing personal information to pornography, which is slick, impersonal exhibition. He finishes by solemnly stating that friendships have turned into the cold, unfeeling computers we are so used
One’s amount of Facebook reflects how popular one wish to appear online more than how healthy one’s friendship truly is. Constant usage of Facebook allows user to potentially feel like they have a meaningful social life, when in reality, they are missing something. In Stephen Marche’s 2102 article, “Is Facebook making Us Lonely?” he notes that Facebook was introduced to the world in the midst of spreading and intensifying loneliness, an idea to which he greatly attributes Facebook’s appeal and success (Marche 26). Initially, social networking sites seem to be evidence of modern-day social interaction being easier and more convenient than ever.
Jacob Silverman’s writing documents the significant price that users of social media pay for their constant online connection. Silverman argues that people have left the Silicon-Valley companies to take not only charge of their lives but also shape their behaviors. Moreover, Silverman looks at how social media has destroyed people’s lives; while people pretend to be happy on social media, the reality is that they are indeed unhappy in real life situations. He argues his ideas on the destruction of social media in a total of thirteen chapters that range from the ideology of social media to social media rebellion. The other section includes the notion of engineered to like, ‘pics, or it didn’t
Alexie points that out in lines 9 and 10 “Let fame and shame intertwine”, some people just don’t have any shame of what they share to the outside world. I’m not saying everything is shameful but some of what is posted can be. Alexie points out how Facebook has become a platform for people to share their religious beliefs. It’s become a place to share their confessions to others, and to ask for forgiveness. When he points out “let church.com become our church.” (Alexie line 12) shows us how society has made things that were once sacred become a public domain. Alexie ends the poem with his definition of Facebook to be the altar of loneliness. It’s kind of ironic that he says that Facebook is lonely, because it is a place where people connect with one another. At the same time he maybe saying that we have lost the connection to real people in front of us other than
“The Facebook Sonnet” by Sherman Alexie brings up ideas and controversy over social media because it decreases face-to-face communication. Though Facebook allows people to contact old and new friends, it renders away from the traditional social interaction. Online, people are easily connected by one simple click. From liking one’s status to posting multiple pictures, Facebook demands so much attention that it’s easy for users to get attach. They get caught up in all the online aspect of their lives that they fail to appreciate real life relationships and experiences. Within Alexie’s diction and tone, “The Facebook Sonnet” belittles the social media website by showing how society are either focused on their image or stuck in the past to even live in the present.
...e speaker admits she is worried and confused when she says, “The sonnet is the story of a woman’s struggle to make choices regarding love.” (14) Her mind is disturbed from the trials of love.
The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...
... bruised by the poor reception of his poetry. The realizations that we all "must die", and that attempts to attain immortality through art are in vain, leave this sonnet with a lasting and overriding sense of despair.
Spencer, Edmund. “Amoretti: Sonnet 37”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Gen. ed. David Simpson. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 2006. 904. Print.