In my level 2 freshman English class entitled "composition and rhetoric" the theme of our class is focused on language and communication relative and "whole" outlooks. The readings for this week out of the book "Exploring Language" by Gary Goshgarian (which is a very good text book for any class) explored technology and language and further traveling into the ever evolving social networking phenomena. I found the article "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism" by Christine Rosen (posted here
The New Atlantis: Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism) to evoke a clarity within hidden workings social networking giants "Facebook" and "MySpace." Rosen uses keen eye to analyze and present a brief history of social networking beginning in the 1980s with message board and finishing the article discussing the possibly consequences of this blessed burden of online networking. I found this article to be particularly pertinent because I am a current slave to the social networks of email, Facebook, and instant messaging. While these sites allow me to stay in contact with friends and family that I would not be able to communicate without calling or sending a letter, they are also a burden. When I sit down at my computer and launch the internet it is instinct to check my email. Checking my email leads to the discovery of a new Facebook notification that send me to Facebook for the next three hours. I do not make any progress on the work I had planned to start let alone finish. The three hours I spent on Facebook were as productive as "wiping your ass, because your just going to shit again" according to a fellow college student. Aside from this Rosene's observations made me think back to when I first discovered what is online networking and social networking. As a youngen at the age of 12 I made my first IM account "kingofhearts466" to immediately find that I had no friends to talk to but the receive and reply santa clause whose only job was to spit adds at things you told him you wanted for Christmas. I quickly dismissed the idea of instant messaging unitl high school. Around the end of my 8th grade year I had a MySpace which I found incredibly entertaining, distracting, and weird all at once. I would catch myself "profile surfing," which in person would essentially be stalking. "Profile surfing" includes going to a persons profile quickly looking over their information then immediately looking through most of their photos. You know when you have been "profile searching" after you realize that a friend of a friends brother went on a cruise to Cabo San Lucus and has a very good looking sister who has a wierd birth mark on her thigh. Rosen has her own feel for this, describing friendship in social networking sites as being "fluid"-being able to travel around others profiles, "public"-anyone can see everyone elses pictures, and "promiscuous"-I did not consider my self to be 'getting around.' After catching myself a few times I considered myself a borderline predator but everyone was doing it an it was a great way to pass time, even faster than sitting on the toilet with a magazine. Several guys and girls were put in detention for having pictures of themselves smoking cigarettes, clearly the school was the butt-end of that controversy(pun intended); as well as several girls being been caught with what was perceived to be "revealing" profiles. This was only the beginning of my social networking experience, being a young lad in puberty with the self esteem of an unfluffed pillow that someone had had a bloody nose on. My group of friends in eighth grade was tight but we were of lower social class, stained as the bench warmers for every sport and school activity. We studied but never got the A, we tried to play right outfielder and never caught the ball. Never was always around the corner to get me wither I liked it or not. As I digress Rosen argues that...(this is where you place your own comment in which you, having read the article, continues the sentence and writes their own commentary or comedic paragraph) hope you enjoyed the aritcle!
-Quince
