Oh, my... I almost emailed this link, a post called "Goodbye Facebook", to several of my real friends. Not Facebook "friends" but people I actually interact with all the time. Then I stopped. 1) I don't really enjoy being sent gobs of links all the time. I can't keep up with all the blogs and online sites I like to read, much less all the online articles that other people send. 2) I want this link where I can tweet it, FBook it and refer to it as often as I want. ** What LINK? ** Where is it?? ** hang on...
Little preface: I watched the Social Network movie, something I had been really anxious to watch. I was sure I would enjoy it because of Aaron Sorkin's writing, and the docu-drama aspect of the "real" Facebook story. BARF>>> PUKE >>> as the sophmores themselves might say. The story (real or imagined) was so idiotic I couldn't stand it. Then came the Golden Globes and it won the BEST PICTURE ?!?!?! Some say it will win several Oscars, too. So sad. Then I got a tweet from Jack Schafer at Salon with THE link. Vindication, I begin to scream. Someone else -- two of them, at least -- felt just like i did!
Facebook: Nothing more than "a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore."
... we should all delete our Facebook accounts to protest invasion of our privacy and the stupidity of the site in general. Then, just like poster Nichol realized --
even down to her ending (which spoiler or not, you can read NOW.)
"...I’d really like to share this epiphany with my friends.
Hmm… now, how do I do that again? (with Facebook account deleted.) I guess I’ll tweet it. And can someone else share it on Facebook for me?" she says.
HA!! And thus, I blog. Oh, yeah, here's the LINK ;)
6 comments:
ya'll do get the irony, right? But this is scary:
Salon article
Which irony might that be and is the second sentence of the comment related to the first?
Do you mean the irony in your blog? Because that's not what I call irony so much as sending oneself up, i.e., self mockery. Which I consider valuable too, by the by.
Is it irony when Barry stands up and talks about puddles in heaven, the dreams of slain little girls, and the value of life on the same day that HIS drones kill four unsuspecting and unknown people in Pakistan, a country with which no one is at war? That they were unknown if very important, btw, and should be remembered when your government tells you that they were militants. They're lying. They don't know who they killed. You can't even draw odds on it, unless you want to use the percentage of militants among a full population - in which case, chances are virtually certain that those four were as innocent as the little girl.
So, was Barry being ironic? And the universal approval of that devil's speech, was that ironic? Or just stupid and mindless?
Well, the definition I know for irony is: to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.
I didn't mean anything sinister or hostile (like the vibes I get from your comment), just that quite literally those of us tweeting, blogging, endlessly emailing, and most of all using Facebook, have precious little grounds to bitch about it -- myself included.
The vibes? I don't quite see the connection between the definition and the alternative put forward in the second paragraph, but it sounds like you're suggesting that if it wasn't ironic, the vibe is that I must think it was sinister or hostile. Did you study logic in Arizona? I don't even know where to begin with an argument like that, never mind that it's all indirect.
Or, alternatively, maybe there's absolutely no connection between the first and second paragraphs, in which case defining 'irony' seems a bit gratuitous, but thank you anyway.
However, the definition of irony isn't really necessary. I'm talking about communication and/or honesty. Also, there's context, there's bitter irony, there's comic irony, and many places between.
The point is that the first paragraph doesn't provide the kind of setup that can allow for deadpan irony. Not even literary deadpan irony. For one thing, even deadpan broadcasts that it's humour in one way or another. Even Buster Keaton broadcasts that it's humour. And context is important if it's the incongruity that will give it away. But there was no such setup. And in the broader context of historically knowing the blog - deadpan works when the audience knows the artist - it would seem appropriate to interpret the comment at face value. You've written things in the past about annoying email.
Furthermore, deadpan in writing is hard to do in the midst of asterisks, question marks, ellipses, all caps, and suchlike things. They suggest emotional, not deadpan.
So, let's clear it up and then I'll be able to eat crow with as much dignity as possible.
Are you saying that, a)you DO enjoy getting "gobs of links all the time"; b)you don't care if you get "gobs of links all the time"; or c) you do NOT like getting "gobs of links all the time"?
Personally, I suspect the answer is 'c', but that something happened subsequently that induced you to add the comment that in itself is a bit confusing. But perhaps the answer is actually 'a' or 'b' and it's just, well, not written very well.
Didn't your mother ever tell you that you can't have your cake and eat it too?
OMG... I just sent you a TOME of an email response privately, so I am not going to do it again HERE!!! I'll just post this excerpt which I hope will end this diatribe:
"To go on and on about this is really the height of irony, isn't it? Endless analyzing and describing what is or is not irony? And, it feels to me like you, Terry, are confusing irony with sarcasm, the latter which I just checked is: a sharp taunt; sneering or cutting remark. The IRONY, which I have already explained, and is now devolving into a pathetic diatribe*, was not the earliest part of my blog, but the very blogging itself... the very living out and posting of one's thoughts online, which was the subject of Social Network, the post I was blogging about, and the post the poster was blogging about. THAT WAS THE IRONY!!
** A forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone.
something about facebook rubs me wrong
i'm waiting for assbook to come along
(look at me. i've written a poem)
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