Facebook: It’s Complicated
Our lives with social media can be described as, well, complicated. People often find themselves in a heap of lies, misunderstood statuses or comments, and “friends” that aren’t even your actually friend. In Lauren Tarshis’ article, Is Facebook Making You Mean? she talks about how one simple comment on a friend’s Facebook picture or status can be misunderstood. Steven Levy’s article, Facebook Reset, describes how Levy wants a “friend-list do-over” (Levy, 2014, p. 169). Levy find himself scrolling through his timeline reading tons of status updates from people Facebook considers his friend, but in reality he doesn’t even know them.
Thesis
Both Levy and Tarshis’ articles have claims that have similar meanings. In Tarshis’ article, her claim is that “Rude comments and insensitive jokes have always been part of the middle school (and adult) world. But experts say that Facebook and other forms of online communication make the problem worse” (Tarshis, …show more content…
Tarshis gives an example of, “your best friend’s blush when you mention a girl he likes, the flash of anger in your mother’s eyes when you say you’ll take out the garbage later. Over the phone, we can hear a change in the person’s tone, or the ominous pause that sends a message to back off” (Tarshis, 2014, p. 167). This gives the readers of the comment or status you post to ability to misunderstand what you meant because they didn’t hear it directly from you, just like in the example Tarshis gives about Anna’s comment “ummmmm…ew?” on Maya’s picture of her and Mickey Mouse. In Levy’s article his facts that back up his claim are that of “I make my way past heaps of classmates, overfriendly PR people, and folks whose amusing conversations in hotel bars led to morning-after friend requests” (Levy, 2014, p. 170). This would allow us to actually have friends on Facebook that we are actually friends with in the real
Our lives with social media can be described as, well, complicated. People often find themselves in a heap of lies, misunderstood statuses or comments, and “friends” that aren’t even your actually friend. In Lauren Tarshis’ article, Is Facebook Making You Mean? she talks about how one simple comment on a friend’s Facebook picture or status can be misunderstood. Steven Levy’s article, Facebook Reset, describes how Levy wants a “friend-list do-over” (Levy, 2014, p. 169). Levy find himself scrolling through his timeline reading tons of status updates from people Facebook considers his friend, but in reality he doesn’t even know them.
Thesis
Both Levy and Tarshis’ articles have claims that have similar meanings. In Tarshis’ article, her claim is that “Rude comments and insensitive jokes have always been part of the middle school (and adult) world. But experts say that Facebook and other forms of online communication make the problem worse” (Tarshis, …show more content…
Tarshis gives an example of, “your best friend’s blush when you mention a girl he likes, the flash of anger in your mother’s eyes when you say you’ll take out the garbage later. Over the phone, we can hear a change in the person’s tone, or the ominous pause that sends a message to back off” (Tarshis, 2014, p. 167). This gives the readers of the comment or status you post to ability to misunderstand what you meant because they didn’t hear it directly from you, just like in the example Tarshis gives about Anna’s comment “ummmmm…ew?” on Maya’s picture of her and Mickey Mouse. In Levy’s article his facts that back up his claim are that of “I make my way past heaps of classmates, overfriendly PR people, and folks whose amusing conversations in hotel bars led to morning-after friend requests” (Levy, 2014, p. 170). This would allow us to actually have friends on Facebook that we are actually friends with in the real