Whether Facebook Creates Friends or Fools

"As the scale of the balance must give way to the weight that presses it down, so the mind yields to demonstration." (Cicero)

Can Facebook communication really demonstrate friendship to others? 

            I stared at the keys of my laptop. What should I say? This was it, the most harrowing experience for a Latter Day Saint, that moment when a Facebook “friend”—who is also “Latter Day Saint”—posts an attack against our faith on their Facebook feed. A member of my congregation was basically saying, “I quit; religion is stupid.” There I sat, slouched over my laptop awaiting inspiration.

           

            Obviously, the most important thing was that he knew I cared about him. I also knew that, in general, he wasn’t very fond of church leadership. So, I typed my comment carefully and awaited his response. I waited for days, but I didn’t see a thing. Had he not logged into Facebook? Why wouldn’t he check this post daily (if not hourly) on such a heated topic? After all, there were dozens of comments beside the one I made. Still, there was nothing.

           

            I decided to talk to this “friend,” and I made sure to do it in person. I reached out with a simple act of service—taking him some doughnuts that were leftover from an office party—which he happily received. Doughnuts in hand, he let me into his apartment and we were able to have a caring conversation about his concerns. I left that night as his friend, not just his “friend.”  

           

            Lesson learned: nothing replaces a genuine, personal demonstration of friendship (aka: an act of service).

     

Of Social Media

When wondering whether or not clothing has benefitted mankind, Montaigne theorizes, “Now, all other creatures [are] sufficiently furnished with all things necessary for [their] support,…it is not to be imagined that we…are brought…defective…and in such a state as cannot subsist without external aid.”

Figurative Language about Facebook

Tropes:

Metaphor

o   “Facebook is a sewer filled with the waste of others”

o   Facebook is not literally a sewer. But by comparing it to a sewer, which is filled with unwanted things from other people, the reader is able to say “you know, there are a ton of things on here from other people that I don’t want”. Like a sewer, there are a lot of things on there that you just don’t care to see.

 Paronomasia

o   “One of the consequences of gazing at your feed, is that soon you are grazing without any need”

o   Gazing refers to looking, grazing to eating. Once one looks at Facebook, Food comes calling. One interesting way of reading this is to view grazing as eating up what you see in your feed, bringing you in, when you have no need to be looking at it. This causes a reflection, do I do that?

Anthimeria

o   “Facebook has interneted our friendships too much”

o   Changing the internet into a verb shows that our friendships have become too online and not enough in person.

Hyperbole

o   “Each day everyone logs on Facebook and complain about every bad thing that happened that day, and post a thousand pictures of every good thing that happened that day.”

o   This has tons and tons of hyperboles in it. Not everyone logs on Facebook every day, not everyone posts something that is complaining, not everyone posts pictures of something good. But when the reader thinks about all the posts they see, they see that there is some truth in the statement.

Oxymoron

o   “Facebook will take you into a land of virtual reality”

o   Virtual reality has become what we associate with online interactions. And there is a reason for that, virtual is the antonym of real. Since fake is the opposite of real, virtual reality is fake reality. People will consider that what happens on Facebook is not what happens in real life, just as we can take on a persona in virtual reality, we can take on a persona on facebook.

Schemes:

Parallelism

o   “Logging on to Facebook means logging off of life”

o   The idea of logging into or out of something is repeated. It causes one to think about if they do “log off” of their real lives when they are on Facebook.

Anastrophe

o   “Seized, there is a world out there to be”

o   By having first, the natural order is changed giving the impression that seized is very important, causing a search for what is important to be seized.

Ellipsis

o   “Under the right circumstances Facebook can be used for good, and under the wrong, bad.”

o   By not stating “circumstances Facebook can be used for” again there is a greater proximity between good and bad, which does a better job of showing the range of impact it can have.

Alliteration

o   “Go use your gifts to gladden a heart”

o   The repetition of the “G” sound gives it a sense to go and do, to motivate to action.

Down With Facebook!

The world would be better without Facebook. Just look at how many hours people spend gazing at their feed. If so much time is invested here, then it can’t be invested in more productive pursuits [Antecedent and Consequence]. “But you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater!” [Maxim/Proverb] some protest. Yes, I am. The bathwater has become as dirty as a sewer, filled with the waste of others [Similarity]. Just look at your Facebook wall. I know someone who had a post on their wall that said that they ran out of toilet paper [Witness], making the sewage analogy quite fitting. Not all aspects of it are bad [Contradiction], you can keep in touch with those who are important to you even when you live miles away. But this has become a small part of what Facebook is today. Most of it is aimless ramblings [Whole/Parts]. It would be impossible to find a way to filter only those things that keep us in touch, without going overboard [Possible/Impossible]. 

This poor guy spent all
his time on Facebook.

This phenomenon has even attracted the attention of the leaders of the LDS church. “I invite us to identify the time-wasting distractions in our lives that may need to be figuratively ground into dust” came the call from General Conference recently [Authority]. Perhaps if we put our “face” in a “book” [Notation and Conjugates] we could make more of ourselves, and humanity as a whole. Just like when the phone gave us new ways to communicate and has stuck around, Facebook will likely stick around for a long while [Genus/Species]. But for us as individuals, just as we swore off that bad habit before, we can swear off endlessly Facebooking! [Past Fact/ Future Fact]