ATAR Notes: Forum

VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => AN’s Language Analysis Club => Topic started by: MissSmiley on August 06, 2019, 09:16:41 am

Title: 2019 AA Club - Week 15
Post by: MissSmiley on August 06, 2019, 09:16:41 am
Our Facebook friends are virtually useless
by Charles Purcell
9th August 2019 - The Sydney Morning Herald

It’s a familiar story.

It’s your birthday. The phone rings a few times as friends pass on their compliments. Maybe some gifts have already arrived. Perhaps some birthday cards arrive in the mail, some today, some over the next few days.

Then you turn on your computer and check your social media. You probably have about 150 Facebook friends (interesting number, that 150: more on that later). You’d probably expect half of them to send you birthday greetings.

Oddly, that doesn’t happen. Maybe only a dozen or so people actually wish you happy birthday on Facebook, despite Facebook’s attempt to engineer social bonhomie. At least, that’s what’s happened in my experience: something that irritates me every year. Am I really that unpopular?

If I am, I’m not alone. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar – creator of the famed Dunbar Number, which claims that the maximum number of people with which one can maintain stable social relationships is 150 – weighed into this very debate.

His Facebook research, based on data from UK users, revealed people have generally about four very close relationships – people we might consider true friends, people to whom we would turn in a real emotional or financial crisis. Having 1000 Facebook “friends” might feel good for the ego, but your true connection to them is tenuous at best.

The ultimate conclusion? Most of your Facebook friends are not your “real friends”. We might share cat memes en masse, but our souls with only a few. And there’s no substitute for real-life, face-to-face contact.

“No amount of social media will prevent a friend eventually becoming ‘just another acquaintance’ if you don’t meet face-to-face from time to time,” said Dunbar.

Even the law seems to agree Facebook friends aren’t real friends. Last year, a Florida judge, Thomas Logue, stated: “Acceptance as a Facebook ‘friend’ may well once have given the impression of close friendship and affiliation. Currently, however, the degree of intimacy among Facebook ‘friends’ varies greatly.”

In the movie The Social Network, Sean Parker says: “We lived on farms, then we lived in cities and now we are going to live on the internet.”

He got it right and wrong. Yes, we live on the internet: yet the number of people we really share it with would fill a Neolithic farming village. And your number of true friends would probably fill one of its huts. We might invite our 150 Facebook friends to a party, but we’d probably end up at a table drinking with just four of them.

Something I’ll try to remember when it comes time to counting my birthday wishes on Facebook.
Title: Re: 2019 AA Club - Week 15
Post by: beastquest1212 on August 11, 2019, 12:26:06 pm
Just typed this up. It's not quite finished, but it's all i can force myself to do rn  :P

Cheers and thanks for the feedback

Lang Anal: Our Facebook Friends Are Virtually Useless
11:25 start
In this age of social media, debate has been incensed as to whether systems such as Facebook fosters a warped meaning of what it is to be a friend. Concerned in tone, Charles Purcell’s candid opinion piece “Our Facebook friends are virtually useless” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 09/8/2019) contends that although Facebook casts a wide net on friendship, it projects the illusion of social interaction thus deluding us that we have meaningful intimacy with all of our “Facebook friends”.

Purcell begins with a strange anecdote of the reader on the day of their birthday. The liberal use of meta-breaking references to the reader with “you” and “your” has the intent of immersing the reader into this situation, thus creating a greater connection to the issue of Facebook friends. This is teamed with Purell’s tentative vocabulary in “maybe” and “perhaps” as he paints the arrival of gifts, which again widen the relevancy of his anecdote to readers as they are encouraged to look back to their own birthday experiences. Then, as the initial aura of giddiness and anticipation akin to Christmas morning, is fractured by the disappointing number of birthday messages which leaves the “reader” crest fallen, the tonal shift elucidates the reader on what is perhaps a darker side to Facebook friends, one which perverts ideals of friendship and leaves disappointment.

As Purcell navigates the mind of the reader, unspooling thoughts such as “[having] about 150 Facebook friends” of which “half [will send] birthday messages”, the writer subtly constructs a discord between a traditional interpretation of friendship and a quantitative mindset, to consolidate in readers awareness of the intrusion of superficiality into their social spheres. This too is aided by the clinical word “engineer” used to describe Facebook’s manipulation of their networks which suggests to readers that the emotional quality of friendships is being reduced to a science.
12:21 finish

Title: Re: 2019 AA Club - Week 15
Post by: MissSmiley on August 12, 2019, 12:12:44 pm
Just typed this up. It's not quite finished, but it's all i can force myself to do rn  :P

Cheers and thanks for the feedback

Lang Anal: Our Facebook Friends Are Virtually Useless
11:25 start
In this age of social media, debate has been incensed I know you're trying to use wide vocab, but incensed just seems a bit odd here. do you just want to say 'Facebeeok has been criticised for presenting a warped meaning..." ? as to whether systems such as Facebook fosters this has a positive connotation a warped meaning of what it is to be a friend. Concerned in tone, Charles Purcell’s candid opinion piece “Our Facebook friends are virtually useless” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 09/8/2019) contends that although Facebook casts a wide net on friendship, it projects the illusion of social interaction thus deluding us facebook users that we have meaningful intimacy with all of our “Facebook friends”. great summary of contention! also another target audience potentially could be the fb founder group and also extending to founders of other social media platforms. 

Purcell begins good job on analysing argument construction and development! with a strange an intriguing anecdote of the reader of a regular facebook user? on the day of their birthday. The liberal use of meta-breaking references great! but just say meta-reference :) to the reader with “you” and “your” has the intent of immersing the reader into this situation from the outset itself , thus creating a greater connection to the issue of Facebook friends. excellent! This is teamed with Purell’s tentative vocabulary in “maybe” and “perhaps” as he paints the arrival of gifts, which again widen the relevancy of his anecdote to readers as they are encouraged to look back to their own birthday experiences. Then, as the initial aura of giddiness just sounds a bit informal. Do you want to say excitable frivolity?  :D and anticipation akin to Christmas morning I don't understand this, is fractured by the disappointing number of birthday messages which leaves the “reader” don't need to put quotation marks around this crest fallen, the tonal shift elucidates the reader on what is perhaps a darker side to Facebook friends, one which perverts ideals of friendship and leaves disappointment. --> try to find some better examples from the text which'll help prove this tonal shift

As Purcell seeks to navigates the mind of the reader, unspooling thoughts such as “[having] about 150 Facebook friends” of which “half [will send] birthday messages”, the writer subtly constructs a discord between a traditional interpretation of friendship and a quantitative mindset, to consolidate in readers awareness of the intrusion of superficiality into their social spheres. this is really excellent! This too is aided by tFurthermore, the connotations of the...clinical word “engineer” used to describe Facebook’s manipulation of their networks which suggests to readers that the emotional quality of friendships is being reduced to a science. Excellent! Great analysis of intended effect! Well done!  :)
12:21 finish