Essay 1: 1,400 words typed and 3 sources: Hard copy and turnitin upload due September 8
Curtis Silver’s “The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships” (444) alleges certain pathologies result from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development. In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion from Sherry Turkle’s “The Flight from Conversation” (online essay) that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development.
Sample Outline
Paragraph 1 Summarize the pathologies explained in Turkle's and Silver's essays.
Paragraph 2: Write a profile of a person you know who is squandering his or life on social media while becoming afflicted with a myriad of social pathologies.
Paragraph 3: Write an argumentative thesis that either attributes these pathologies to social media, as is claimed in Turkle's essay, or argue that social media is not the culprit.
Paragraphs 4-7: Support your thesis with these body paragraphs.
Paragraph 8: Anticipate how your opponents would disagree with you (counterargument) and show why your opponents are wrong (rebuttal).
Typical counterargument goes like this: "My opponents claim that I am wrong because of _________; however, their claim fails to address ___________." Or, "My opponents will take issue with __________; however, their opposition is clearly misguided when we consider _______________."
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, a restatement of your thesis with powerful emotion (pathos).
Final page: MLA Works Cited with minimum of 3 sources (you can try Easy Bib). Be sure to using hanging indent format for MLA. Here's a Create MLA Works Cited video. Here's the 2016 MLA Format.
Example Thesis Structures
Turkle's argument that social media has diminished our humanity is convincing when we consider ______________, ___________, _____________, ______________, and ________________.
Turkle's argument that social media presents dangers to our humanity is both exaggerated and erroneous evidenced by ___________, ___________, ________________, ____________, and _______________.
While Turkle does a good job of showing the narcissism and disconnection from the misuse of social media, her vision of a future techno-dystopia is misguided because _______________, ____________, _______________, and _________________.
Objections to Sherry Turkle's Argument
One. She is too one-sided with only negative anecdotes and examples of the way technology disconnects us and makes us narcissistic.
Two. She exaggerates the pitfalls and dangers of social media.
Three. She offers no solutions to social media addiction and dehumanization.
Four. She resists the inevitability of change brought on by technology.
Argument Against Turkle: Sturgeon's Law
Sturgeon's law states that over 90% of everything is crap. By that logic, over 90% of people using social media are using it in a way that's not in their best interests. But do we throw away social media? Here's another example: According to Sturgeon's Law, over 90% of teachers are woefully bad, but does that mean we abolish teaching?
Life is about accepting the good with the bad, and Sturgeon's Law tells us that most things are bad--very, very bad.
Sample Thesis in Support of Turkle
We ignore Turkle's warning about the way technology is degrading our humanity at our own peril. The evidence supports Turkle's contention that technology, especially social media, is bringing us down "dark places we don't want to go," evidenced by our inability to be alone, our addiction to false connection, and our acclimation to anti-social behavior.
Sample Thesis That Refutes Turkle
While Turkle makes some cogent points about the dangers of social media, her technology diatribe collapses under the weight of evidence that shows other forces, not social media, are dehumanizing us and making us lonely. These forces include Sturgeon's Law, economic collapse, and suburban sprawl.
Sample Thesis That Defends Turkle
While I concede that Sturgeon's Law, economic collapse, and suburban sprawl contribute to the loneliness and social pathology evident in our digital age, these factors do not diminish in any way Turkle's examination of the manner in which technology and social media interact to degrade our humanity in many ways including _____________, ______________, __________________, and _____________________.
Thesis That Defends Turkle
While there are many forces that are resulting in loneliness, Turkle has her finger on the pulse of one of the most virulent causes of self-imposed isolation: social media, which attacks our humanity by making us prefer control over intimacy, making us fear being alone, and making us lose our empathy, and making us atrophy our conversation skills.
“The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships” by Curtis Silver
One. How have friendships been degraded in the age of social media?
Once built on sacrifice, commitment, loyalty, and deep bonds, friendships, now redefined in the age of social media, have become more of a notion of metrics (“how many friends you have?”) than traditional characteristics that define friendship.
With the new metrics system of having over 1,000 friends, one is hoarding huge numbers for bragging rights rather than forging life-lasting connections based on effort and reciprocity.
Social media friendships are largely defined by the lack of effort to maintain them with a “like” button.
We’re now hoarding friends rather than cultivating friendships. We become degraded into petty-brained narcissists in the process.
According the Dunbar Number Theory, we can maintain 150 friendships in social media. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, based his number on a 1990s primate study. That study is now applied to social networks.
Two. Why does Curtis Silver disagree with the Dunbar Number Theory of 150?
For one, social networks are constantly shifting so we don’t even know who our “friends” are, or are not, at any given time.
For two, Dunbar’s theory was based on personal relationships, not online ones. We may be able to apply Dunbar’s theory to a certain point, but probably a lower number.
Three. Curtis Silver asks the question, “What is a friend?”
Silver quotes the Oxford dictionary: It is “a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.”
The problem with social media “friends” is that any mutual affection proves to be too minute or insignificant.
To use a cliché I like, with social media connections there is too often “not enough skin in the game.” In other words, nothing is really at stake in these online friendships.
Four. Have friendships been diminishing before social media?
We read that in fact they have. Silver writes, “According to a 2006 study in the journal American Sociological Review, Americans have been suffering a loss in number and quality of friendships since 1985. The study states that 25% of Americans have no close friends, and the average of that overall per person has dropped from four to two. . . .”
Studies I’ve read about income inequality in America have pointed to the late 1970s and early 1980s as a turning point in which Americans had to fight harder to join the middle class. Perhaps working more jobs and in general being too busy for friends is a factor. In other words, perhaps economics is a cause of dwindling friendships.
“Dude, I’m too busy for friends. I’m too busy taking care of business.”
If this is true, then social media isn’t the cause of diminished friendships; it’s the symptom of economic hardship.
Five. What is the connection between social media and “sharing”?
Silver suggests that we share too much private information on social media so that intimate personal details are no longer sacred or special and that experiencing some sort of degraded intimacy with our “friends,” we stop connecting on a deep level with our real friends.
We could call this Sharing Fatigue, which reveals a pathological contradiction: We’re compelled like addicts to share all our private stuff on one hand but on the other hand we’re numb to all the sharing we do. Sharing Fatigue turns us into zombies.
Silver suggests that this zombie state degrades our concern for others and that it’s more difficult to be a real friend who is “grounded in a concern” for the other friend.
Additionally, all the social media sharing we do is too often less about making a connection with others and more about advertising “The Big Me,” to use a term coined by David Brooks who laments our digital age of self-aggrandizement and general boasting.
Six. What is the effect of our existence in a large matrix of social connections called “friends”?
We are now performing for this large audience and as we perform, cultivating an image for “our fans,” we lose empathy, develop narcissism, and become lost in an image that is disconnected from our true selves.
In an earlier chapter about celebrity culture, we studied the disconnect between celebrity and personhood.
Would a social critic be justly accused of bombast and hyperbole for pointing out that cut off from empathy and creeping toward narcissism and solipsism we’re heading into some mass psychosis? I’ll leave it for you to decide.
I will tell you that I’ve spoken with some students who tell me they not only have time for real friends; they don’t have time for social media as well, to the point that they don’t have a Facebook account or any other similar form of social media. Perhaps their being too busy works in their favor.
The Atlantic article, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" could be a research link.
Another worthy research link is The New Yorker article "How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy."
"The Flight from Conversation" by Sherry Turkle
Student Essay That Addresses Turkle's Essay
Critique of Turkle's Essay
Sherry Turkle's Video Summary
One. We're letting tech take us places we don't want to go.
She's talking about a psychological state, a demonic state, in which we date the angel that turns out to be the devil.
Two. Tech devices change not just what we are but who we are.
Tech is compromising our humanity, our friendships, our ability to enjoy solitude, and our skills at self-reflection.
Three. Crazy, dysfunctional behavior is the new normal.
For example, many text while giving eye contact, a sort of phony connecting.
We text at church, funerals, and sacred places. We take "salvation selfies" as we emerge from the baptism water.
We hang out at Starbucks for five hours and say the next day what a great time we had when in fact we we're "alone together" on our smartphones.
Four. We aspire to the "Goldilocks effect": not too close, not too far.
In other words, we want control of our environment. We prefer control to the messy lack of control from real human interaction.
We no longer want real conversations that take place in real time and that cannot be controlled. Texting becomes the preferred option.
In extreme cases, we're willing to dispense with people and prefer Siri or sociable robots.
Five. We take little sips of tweets and posts and other data bites and the hope is that eventually all these little sips will lead to one big nutritional gulp. But this hope is built on a canard. All we have is nothing.
Six. Our escape from conversation compromises the skills that also help us in self-reflection.
People who converse well also self-reflect well, and the opposite is true.
Seven. We expect more from technology and less from each other.
We need the latest upgrades and refreshes and innovations in tech even as we keep more and more people at a distance.
Eight. We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy.
Intimacy requires honesty, loss of control, and vulnerability, but the rewards are humor, emotional completeness, and life fullness.
We're averse to the demands of friendship, which require commitment, loss of control, and vulnerability.
Nine. We suffer from "alone anxiety."
We can't be at a red light without checking texts and Facebook status.
We connect through texting and other ways not as a sign of our fullness as human beings but from a place of fear, fragmentation, desperation, loneliness, and angst (the restless anxiety that results from not knowing who we are, from having no purpose, and from languishing in the existential vacuum).
Turkle says "connection is a symptom, not a cure" for our sense of loneliness.
The more we connect, the more desperate we become, which in turn compels us to connect even more. This addiction becomes a vicious cycle.
Ten. Turkle says, "I share; therefore I am."
This is a delusion. Sharing is an expression of fragmentation and desperation and the loss of selfhood.
Turkle observes, "We're using people as spare parts to repair our fragile and broken selves."
Eleven. Turkle's secret sauce to the human condition is this: Solitude is the prerequisite for real connection.
"If we can't be alone, we'll be more lonely." We need to learn to be alone, and that means not sharing all the time on social media.
Comma Splices
A comma splice is joining two sentences with a comma when you should separate them with a period or a semicolon.
Incorrect
People love Facebook, however, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.
Corrected
People love Facebook. However, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.
Corrected
Though people love Facebook, they fail to realize Facebook is sucking all their energy.
Incorrect
Patience is difficult to cultivate, it grows steadily only if we make it a priority.
Corrected
Patience is difficult to cultivate. It grows steadily only if we make it a priority.
Corrected
Because patience grows within us so slowly, patience is extremely difficult to cultivate.
You can use a comma between two complete sentences when you join them with a FANBOYS word or coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).
Correct
People love Facebook, but they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.
Student Comma Splices Part One (the second sentence feels like a continuation of thought from the first sentence, which it is, but it still requires a period before it)
- My department decided to set up another office for me to do my work, I was no longer sitting out front like the permanent receptionist.
- The permanent receptionist never spoke to anyone in the offices, he just answered phones.
- He said, “You have a few choices, they need a coordinator at the new jobsite or working the business side as a coordinator.”
- I was lucky, many opportunities came to me and now I had the required experience to get the job I wanted.
- There was no stopping me, all my achievements were completed on my own.
- I was promoted quickly, I went from coordinator to senior executive within a few months.
- The drug dealing lifestyle was insatiable to Jeff Henderson, he believed he could elude the feds.
- Our methods paralleled, my method was legal, his was illegal.
- Jeff Henderson rose to the top of his game, he had established his fortune.
10. Jeff Henderson had no choice, it was either work or stay confined in his prison cell.
11. She was going to marry her high school sweetheart, what better way to spend the rest of your life in bliss?
12. He asked me to marry him, he was a Marine after all stationed in Japan.
13. Her life was finally beginning, she could leave Los Angeles.
14. This was her life, she did what she wanted.
15. Now she had nothing, she had given up her job to move overseas.
16. Life was too much of a challenge, she accepted that fact.
To Avoid Comma Splices, Know the Difference Between Coordinating Conjunctions (FANBOYS) and Conjunctive Adverbs
Examples
Jerry ate ten pizzas a week. Nonetheless, he remained skinny.
Jerry ate ten pizzas a week, but he remained skinny.
Barbara didn't buy the BMW. Instead, she bought the Acura.
Barbara didn't buy the BMW, yet she did buy the Acura.
Steve wasn't interested in college. Moreover, he didn't want to work full-time.
Steve wasn't interested in college, and he didn't want to work full-time.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me. However, I do want you to help me do my taxes.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do want you to help me do my taxes.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do, however, want you to help me do my taxes.
I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid. Consequently, I think we should break up.
I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid, so I think we should break up.
Students hate reading. Therefore, they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.
Students hate reading, so they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.
Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons
Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.
One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.
Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.
Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.
Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem.
Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.
Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.
Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.
Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.
Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.
Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.
Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.
Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.
Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.
Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout every day because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
|
after |
once |
until |
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been cancelled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been cancelled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterwards.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
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