The “Facebook Sonnet” is a poem written by Sherman Alexie. It explores the idea that people can have a fascination with social media. He gives his opinions about how Facebook seems to shape and change social networking and the people who use it. It’s a reminder on how people can forget the difference between reality and what is not. The Facebook website has become a place for some to become something they are not, a place to vent, become known, and share personal information. He seems to point out how some of the members of Facebook are so concerned with what people think of us. It’s like a need for validation from others. It makes you question your everyday habits when being online.
In “The Facebook Sonnet”, Alexie talks about the good and bad in social networking. The authors’ tone in the poem is a little sarcastic. The first line of the poem he starts off by saying, ‘Welcome to the endless high-school reunion” (Alexie line 1-2). The line sounds
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like he is referring to the immaturity of the users. Its high schools all over again. It also implies that people are possibly stuck in the past, and has not quite grown-up. The next line in the poem is followed by saying, “welcome to past friends and lovers, however kind and cruel” (Alexie 2-3). It suggests that people want to stay connected to there past even to those who they should stay clear off. In a sense by staying connected to the past you’re forgetting that your reality is in the present you lose focus of what is in front of you, and that’s what “ Lets undervalue and unmend the present,” (Alexie lines 4-5) suggest. The next few lines continue on the theme of immaturity. Not wanting to grow up and live like kids. Because life is so much better when you are a kid because you have no responsibility other than schoolwork, and you don’t have to take on the responsibility that an adult will have. That is where (Alexie lines 7-9) implying when he says, “let’s exhume, resume, and extend childhood. Let’s play the games that occupy the young.” He uses some rhyme in that line. You will see many posts on Facebook with those wanting to be seen, showing off, advertising themselves for a little attention wanting to become viral.
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
online. Whether you agree with Sherman Alexie or not, he does point out some facts about Facebook. Sometimes Facebook portraits life as it truly is but most of the time Facebook portraits life as people think it should be or wish it would be. Ultimately, you have to be responsible for what you want shared to the rest of the world.
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
Stolen from their own homeland and thrown into a sailing ship towards a country of awaiting white masters, hundreds of black folks were to expect cruel hardships and withstand torturous situations, such as rape, starvation, and working without rest or pay. Being treated as something less than a human, instead, more as a tool, was considered normal far back in the year of 1761, when the revolution for freedom had not yet taken place. Considering this, June Jordan tells the tale of the first female black poet in her article, “The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America or Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley.” After describing the life of a slave, Jordan explains how Phillis came to be a Wheatley. Taken in by a white ‘nice’ couple, Suzannah and John Wheatley, decided to bid for a challenge in Phillis, a young seven year old girl. Then, Jordan
In the article “Is Facebook Faking Us Lonely,” author Stephen Marche creates a report on “what the epidemic of loneness is doing to our souls and society.” Marche’s thesis statement is that “new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic) –and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill” from which he attributes this to social media. Marche’s purpose in writing this article is to persuade readers to think that social media, specifically Facebook, is converting real life relationships to digital unsociable ones, which is causing negative effects to our psyche. The author introduces being alone, something every human craves, is different from loneliness. However, he claims that this digital age
In a day and age of a social media dominance, we have never been as densely connected and networked as we ever have. Through studies and researchers, it has been shown that we never have been as lonelier, or even narcissistic. As a result all this loneliness has not only made us mentally ill, but physically ill as well. Published in The Atlantic on April 2, 2012, Stephen Marche addresses this argument in his article entitled “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely”.
“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
In the introduction of the author’s essay, she starts off with interviews and examples of everyday people. The author, Emily, meets with one girl named Kitty and thought she “was warm and funny and humble” until the author went onto her MySpace account (Nussbaum 1). The author was thrown off and shocked because she did not expect Kitty to throw herself out there on the internet like that. From that point the author talks about famous people like Paris
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
In “The Facebook Sonnet” by Sherman Alexie (304), the element of poetry that stands out most for me in the poem is sarcasm. Alexie considers the contemporary society’s fascination with social media making fun of it. For example, he starts the poem with “Welcome to the endless high school Reunion” referring to people being trapped into a nostalgic past that bring them some kind of comfort so they never want to leave. In the second stanza the author states that people forget to live the present and “undervalue” it, because we are to busy worrying about past and future. In the final lines the author says we are too committed to social media and it has become our temple “Let’s church.com become our church” and finally when we are not connected living a lie, we are all
...tantly shown throughout the poem like “friends” and “unmend,” “fame” and “domain,” “pretend” and “extend,” and “same” and “games.” These slant rhymes that Alexie uses show that he doesn’t respect Facebook enough to make the words rhyme. Alexie ends the poem with the lines reading “Let’s sign up, sign in, and confess/ Here at the alter of loneliness.” He has constantly shown through his downgraded words in the poem that this social media website hurts our society as a whole. Alexie believes that Facebook is a shallow way of communicating with friends because it allows them to hide behind a computer screen.
This is an enjoyable sonnet that uses nature imagery, found extensively in Petrarca, that Shakespeare uses to get his point across. Not much explication is needed, aside the sustained images of nature, to fully understand its intent, but I would like to point out a peculiar allusion. When reading line 3, "the violet past prime" has made me think of Venus and Adonis. In the end, Adonis melts into the earth and a violet sprouts where his body was, which Venus then places in her heart, signifying the love she has for him. Reading this into the poem makes the few following lines more significant. Having Adonis portrayed as the handsome youth, Shakespeare is alluding to the death of youth (in general and to the young man) through the sonnet. In the next line, it is not certain if "sable" is an adjective or a noun and if "curls" is a noun, referring to hair (which is plausible) or a verb modifying "sable." Invoking the allusion to Adonis here, Shakespeare portends that if Adonis did live longer, he too would have greying hair; thus, Shakespeare sees ["behold"] an Adonis figure, the young man, past his youth.
I thought the poem was relatable and interesting. Facebook is a part of mainstream media. In a way, its supposed to connect people together. But sometimes the effect is quite opposite. Personally, I think Facebook can either connect us to people or make us feel lonelier. It depends on how we will use it. In lines 2-3, the poet says "Welcome to the endless high-school reunion. Welcome to past friends and lovers..” On Facebook we become friends with people we lost in touch with like past friends or past lovers. Through social media, we are given another chance to reconnect with them. But in other ways, Facebook can also make us feel lonely. It gives us the illusion that we have these many friends. In the last two lines, Alexie says “Lets
One of the most popular social networking websites today is none other than Facebook. People use Facebook in order to stay connected with their friends, family and the people around them, to discover what’s going in the world, in addition to share and express what matters to them. The Social Network is a film on how Facebook was created. There was a series of events, character development, relationships and a series of different emotions that are shown throughout the film.
Marche, Stephen. “Is Facebook Making us Lonely? (Cover story)”: 8 (10727825) 309.4 (2012): 68. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.