Summary Of The Language Of Fakebook

In the article “The Language of Fakebook”, Katie Roiphe explains how the norms on social media steal the concept of people having their own voice, and tricks them into thinking they need to fit into the twisted social media world. Roiphe begins by explaining the way teenagers and adults create make-believe versions of themselves after the unhealthy amount of time they spend on Facebook every day. For example, the author explains how two women created a Facebook page for their fictional character, Natalie Pollock, writing, “Natalie’s page may seem fake and stilted and artificial, but only in the way all teenagers’ Facebook pages seem fake and stilted and artificial” (1). When teenagers spend hour after hour on social media each day, it’s easy to get lost in believing fake accounts because kids make the
Roiphe believes that Facebook “is no longer art imitating life, or life imitating art, but the two merging so completely, so inexorably that it would be impossible to disentangle one from the other” (2). Since social media users hide behind the computer screen, there’s no definitive way to crack down on fake accounts, and the fictional profile managers can evade confrontation from the real people on the real pictures from their account. In the third section of the article, the author suggests that social media users create a fictional world through their writing in order to not seem overly anxious or to avoid embarrassment by not revealing their true emotions over messaging, accepting a make-believe world that is intended to be the norms on these sites. Many discoveries can be made on social media, but pervasive findings include “[breathless] or emphatic speech” used by teenagers, and seeing “polite little girls cursing like sailors on Facebook” (2). In order to remain cool and expressionless on the internet, teens might decide to add “lol” to the end of an actual, meaningful text just to stay under the radar and portray themselves as something