"Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”
”Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”
We live in a world where the internet and social media plays a big role. There are constantly becoming less and less physical contact, and fewer face-to -face relations. This is demonstrated by the fact that we keep in touch with each other over Facebook, shopping takes place over the internet, we keep up with our economy whit online banking and meet friends and lovers over online dating sites. In late modern society, we are always available. But are we really missing out on a lot of important stuff, and is this necessarily a bad thing? This is also the theme in Jonathan Franzen’s essay, “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” from 2011. The focus in this essay will be on how Jonathan Franzen uses a lot of different rhetorical methods to engage and convince the young readers with his massage. This essay will also discuss if Jonathan Franzen managed to convince the young readers and if the increased use of social media really has such bad consequences?
Jonathan Franzen uses a lot of different methods to convince and engage the young readers. Even before you have read the essay you see the title “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”, this title will engage the young readers because they can recognize the word “liking” from facebook. This will catch the young reader right away, because facebook is something almost all young people know and use. In general this subject is just super relevant to almost all young people. The 51-year old author wants to put the young people’s daily internet habits into perspective. He focuses on the bad consequences of what they are doing online. But before he starts criticizing and gets to his actual message, he starts with a personal story. This story is about him and his phone’s relationship, ex: “(…) in which my old Blackberry felt sad about the waning of my love for it – our relationship was entirely on-sided?”(p.8, l.25-27) – He uses a lot of time comparing his relationship to
We live in a world where the internet and social media plays a big role. There are constantly becoming less and less physical contact, and fewer face-to -face relations. This is demonstrated by the fact that we keep in touch with each other over Facebook, shopping takes place over the internet, we keep up with our economy whit online banking and meet friends and lovers over online dating sites. In late modern society, we are always available. But are we really missing out on a lot of important stuff, and is this necessarily a bad thing? This is also the theme in Jonathan Franzen’s essay, “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” from 2011. The focus in this essay will be on how Jonathan Franzen uses a lot of different rhetorical methods to engage and convince the young readers with his massage. This essay will also discuss if Jonathan Franzen managed to convince the young readers and if the increased use of social media really has such bad consequences?
Jonathan Franzen uses a lot of different methods to convince and engage the young readers. Even before you have read the essay you see the title “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”, this title will engage the young readers because they can recognize the word “liking” from facebook. This will catch the young reader right away, because facebook is something almost all young people know and use. In general this subject is just super relevant to almost all young people. The 51-year old author wants to put the young people’s daily internet habits into perspective. He focuses on the bad consequences of what they are doing online. But before he starts criticizing and gets to his actual message, he starts with a personal story. This story is about him and his phone’s relationship, ex: “(…) in which my old Blackberry felt sad about the waning of my love for it – our relationship was entirely on-sided?”(p.8, l.25-27) – He uses a lot of time comparing his relationship to