Description: A photo of a facebook page of a celebrity
In our culture, vanity is quickly transforming from an undesirable trait to a common one. Talking about yourself constantly and putting extraordinary effort into making sure you are portrayed the way you want to be seen are not always positives. Too often these days, people are having problems just being themselves. Furthermore, social network sites that are popular today continue to enforce the trend that everyone should focus primarily on their own vanity.
Part of the “orbit” that people are stuck in that C. Wright Mills talks about is not recognizing the difference between personal failures and societal failures. When people realize that they spend too much time on facebook or too much time worrying about their appearance, they often blame themselves for being so vain. However, this is not always just a personal problem when taking into account the sociological imagination. Being over-confident or “cocky” is a negative trait; however, through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace it is fairly evident that fair amounts of people believe they are the most important person in the world. I don’t know what is more arrogant than that, but in today’s society these websites have made this not only accepted, but the norm. The fact that magazines, TV, and pop culture in general have created this sense of vanity in society is recognized as a problem, but the solutions are barely discussed. Instead, these websites are created to give an outlet for not just celebrities, but everybody, to live in their own vanity-driven world.
This picture features a facebook page of a celebrity. On it you see not only the celebrity posting everything about themselves plus more, but also numerous amounts of fans commenting and “liking” and doing everything they can just for people to see them. You can’t tell without clicking them (which you obviously can’t) but many people simply post the URL’s to their own websites, just hoping people will come look at their extremely normal, but self-centered website.
I have never looked at Facebook in this way, but your interpretation makes me wonder why I even have Facebook. It has transformed us all into people that are obsessed with appearances and making sure the whole world can see us and pay attention to us.
ReplyDeleteCynthia Little
This is a very interesting interpretation of facebook. I personally use facebook to stay connected with friends and family, but I do agree that 'some' people use it for the wrong reasons, and that these people create a negative image for all people that use facebook. I believe that this interpretation stereotypes facebook users and should possibly take into account the good aspects of the site.
ReplyDeleteNicole Paslawski
This is a great interpretation of facebook. Nice article!
ReplyDeleteJeremy LeClair
Nicole,
ReplyDeleteI would agree that facebook has obvious benefits (like keeping in touch with friends); this is apparent in the fact that facebook has over 400 million users. This article doesn't seem to make any generalized statements stereotyping all facebook users.
david fraser
David,
ReplyDeleteI agree that this post does not make direct generalizations about all facebook users. But by failing to present the benefits of facebook, or failing to just simply state the fact that there are other uses for facebook implies that all facebook users are the same and that vanity is a quality of all facebook users. I agree that nothing was directly said, by sometimes what is not said is more valuable than what is said.
nicole paslawski
You have explored social networking websites in a thoughtful and original way.
ReplyDeleteYour introduction paragraph clearly identifies your central argument.
No exaggeration in an academic writing (e.g. “through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace it is fairly evident that fair amounts of people believe they are the most important person in the world”)
Good job,
Kosar
I have never thought about facebook this way, but looking now there are definitely people like this. Good choice for a photo and article.
ReplyDeleteRene Artiga