The Fakebook Generation: Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Words: 1568
Pages: 7

In her blog “ The Fakebook Generation,” later to be published in the New York Times on October 6, 2007, Alice Mathias enters the topic of the most used social networking service worldwide, Facebook. Mathias debates on Facebook’s claim of being a forum for “genuine personal and professional connections” (438) and tries to influence her readers to ask themselves if the website really promotes human relationships. Alice Mathias, a 2007 graduate of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire has wrote several more columns before, in which one of them was even awarded the Waterhouse Research Award.
The author illustrates in her blog the power and impact Facebook had on the population by convincing to be “a place of human connectivity,” but
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This obviously impacts the reader, where he/she becomes aware of the situation and decides to read more in order to be able to form an opinion and agree or disagree with the writer. She explains by using Pathos the fear the Facebook audience has to lose their privacy privilege to search someone. Using words like “fear” and putting it in a sentence where we “fear of being caught, bored, lustful, socially unfulfilled or generally avoiding life” (439) creates emotions within the reader. The importance of Logos in the argument is probably, if not the same, closely as important as the Pathos Appeal. On paragraph nine, Mathias seems to be making an issue question, “But does this more reverent incarnation of Facebook enrich adult relationships?” (439). This inevitably brings the reader interest to the writer’s question to gain new knowledge about the subject, which afterwards he/she will use to form an opinion. With Logos, she debates on if Facebook really promotes human relationships, and helps the reader understand where her claims come from and gives structure to the argument. Mathias views Facebook as an “online community theater.” She provides reasoning of this by explaining with detail how it resembles a community theater. As said by the author, the Edit Profile page is the