Social media has become a part of us. It is with us whenever and wherever we go. However, social media may not always be beneficial for us. In Zadie Smith’s Essay “Generation Why,” she provides a commentary on a movie called “The Social Network.” Throughout the commentary, she would mock the Zuckerberg character in the movie, and I think the scorn she directed at the character might have been used to express her disapproval of the real Mark Zuckerberg. Even so, I didn’t really understand the reason behind Smith’s reproachful attitude towards Zuckerberg until Smith brings out her argument about how Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s creation, causes a phenomenon in which people would “reduce” themselves in order to fit the descriptions that make up
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Cole points out that weak photographs, such as Steve McCurry’s pictures of India, were popular mostly because they please the fantasies of Westerners of how India should be like (Cole 974). Cole finds the pictures to be weak because they only captured the authentic past of India, and did not represent the country as a whole (Cole 972). When McCurry edited out present day India from his pictures, he is “reducing” the perception of how India is viewed by others. Cole then uses Raghubir Singh’s pictures of India as a big contrast to McCurry’s pictures, illustrating how Raghubir’s pictures are much more comprehensive by capturing everything that India has to offer: from villages to rivers to modern cities(Cole 972). Raghubir’s pictures also captured the messiness that is life, conjuring order from chaos, making sense of the collision between the past and the present in just one moment: a woman dressed in an old-fashioned floral skirt with a cloth bag on strings (Cole 973). This scene should be bizarre because the old-fashioned skirt is an anachronism, but Raghubir’s use of the background of people minding their own business makes the scene much more ordinary. Basically, Cole thinks that examples of strong photography should be comprehensive and acknowledge the complexity of reality (Cole 974), instead of catering to the outdated notions of …show more content…
However, omitting these flaws would not give a full picture of who they really are. Instead of hiding their flaws, they should incorporate their flaws in such a way that do not affect other people’s perception of them negatively, just like how Singh is able to take comprehensive pictures by creating order from the messiness that is life(Cole 973). Perhaps they can use their weaknesses to complement their strengths, similar to how Singh used the background to make the main figure less surreal in his pictures (Cole 973). People may have also been encouraged by the social norms to be selective and cautious when posting on social media, and when these people conform to these norms, they have cast away their dignity of being unique by reducing themselves to a miserable state of convention. They do not notice just how miserable they are because this feeling of misery is just so common that it is considered to be the new
Cole points out that weak photographs, such as Steve McCurry’s pictures of India, were popular mostly because they please the fantasies of Westerners of how India should be like (Cole 974). Cole finds the pictures to be weak because they only captured the authentic past of India, and did not represent the country as a whole (Cole 972). When McCurry edited out present day India from his pictures, he is “reducing” the perception of how India is viewed by others. Cole then uses Raghubir Singh’s pictures of India as a big contrast to McCurry’s pictures, illustrating how Raghubir’s pictures are much more comprehensive by capturing everything that India has to offer: from villages to rivers to modern cities(Cole 972). Raghubir’s pictures also captured the messiness that is life, conjuring order from chaos, making sense of the collision between the past and the present in just one moment: a woman dressed in an old-fashioned floral skirt with a cloth bag on strings (Cole 973). This scene should be bizarre because the old-fashioned skirt is an anachronism, but Raghubir’s use of the background of people minding their own business makes the scene much more ordinary. Basically, Cole thinks that examples of strong photography should be comprehensive and acknowledge the complexity of reality (Cole 974), instead of catering to the outdated notions of …show more content…
However, omitting these flaws would not give a full picture of who they really are. Instead of hiding their flaws, they should incorporate their flaws in such a way that do not affect other people’s perception of them negatively, just like how Singh is able to take comprehensive pictures by creating order from the messiness that is life(Cole 973). Perhaps they can use their weaknesses to complement their strengths, similar to how Singh used the background to make the main figure less surreal in his pictures (Cole 973). People may have also been encouraged by the social norms to be selective and cautious when posting on social media, and when these people conform to these norms, they have cast away their dignity of being unique by reducing themselves to a miserable state of convention. They do not notice just how miserable they are because this feeling of misery is just so common that it is considered to be the new