In a topic-driven, well-developed
paragraph, SUMMARIZE Franzen’s
“Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.” Clearly identify the author’s thesis and supporting arguments. Be specific. Use examples from the text in your response. In your paragraph response, use summary, paraphrase, and quotations.
NOTE: After posting on the blog, open up the CANVAS assignment (by the same name) and DO copy and paste the URL address into the CANVAS "WEB URL" text box so that I have record of your submission on Canvas. Thanks.
“Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.” Clearly identify the author’s thesis and supporting arguments. Be specific. Use examples from the text in your response. In your paragraph response, use summary, paraphrase, and quotations.
NOTE: After posting on the blog, open up the CANVAS assignment (by the same name) and DO copy and paste the URL address into the CANVAS "WEB URL" text box so that I have record of your submission on Canvas. Thanks.
Jonathan Franzen explains a contrast between our "liking" tendencies of technology and the issue of love. he claims that the "world of liking is ultimately a lie." It is impossible to like every particle of someone else, but it is possible to love everything about a person. technology produces people who "lack integrity and have no center" because they focus too much on being liked. People who only like for the rest of their lives will struggle to find meaningful relationships, with both people and things in the environment. It is not until they start to love something that they truly experience the joys life has to offer.
ReplyDeleteIn the essay, “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts,” Jonathan Franzen infers a similarity in the way we get attached to our new devices and the way attachments to other human beings work. Franzen infers that we even get attached enough to think our devices almost have ‘feelings.’ He comments his broken relationship with his old ‘Pearl’ that, “I’d developed trust issues with my Pearl, accountability issues, compatibility issues and even, toward the end, some doubts about my Pearl’s very sanity, until I’d finally had to admit to myself that I’d outgrown the relationship.” Frazen then takes a turn more towards the ‘love’ side—he goes in detail about how “…the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long” and “…when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.” I agree with Franzen and I applaud his audacity and tenacity with this paper.
ReplyDeleteIn Johnathan Franzen’s essay, “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.” he explains the difference between actually loving something and going through life comfortably just wanting to be liked. People hide behind Facebook, not wanting people to see the real them. Franzen calls these people “narcissist”. He states, “…this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie” (4). People are scared of rejection or commitment; therefore, people do not expose their real lives. Our generation has the option to create their “perfect” life on social media to be liked, because of all the technology we have access to.
ReplyDeleteIn Jonathan Franzen's essay "Liking is For Cowards. Go For What Hurts", he reveals many people's confusion between our infatuation with our devices (and the image we make of ourselves on them) and real love. He even compares technology to a relationship by saying that devices are our fantasy- never complains, does what we ask, wants nothing in return. Who wouldn't that sound appealing to? Franzen claims that "the ultimate goal of technology... is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes... with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self." But in Franzen's opinion, we take it too far. We put more effort into the way others see us through our social media. We have to look like perfect people, of course only showcasing the highlights of our lives. People are obsessed with being liked (specifically by receiving likes on social media), to the point where their main goal is to modify themselves into the most likable person they can be. But, this false sense of belonging distracts us from real love. Real love is not liking every single part of someone, in fact, according to Franzen, that's impossible. Instead, "love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are", states Franzen. In order to enjoy the boons of real human love, we must detach ourselves from our obsession with being "liked" and pay attention to the actual relationships in our lives.
ReplyDeleteIn Franzen’s article, “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.” Franzen is speaking on the topic of how technology is improving and how we love the technology that we have. He discusses that you can either go through life not being involved and just going with the motions or you can become involved and love people and love life. He speaks about a narcissist- “a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likeable.” Franzen refers to consumer technology as a great ally and an enabler of narcissism. He also talks about rejection and the pain received from it. Franzen then says, “To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived.” To be loved you must go out of your way and show others the love to receive it back.
ReplyDeleteIn Franzen’s article “Liking is For Cowards. Go For What Hurts.”, he talks about how we have become completely attached and dependent on our devices. We tend to hide behind social media trying to portray ourselves as having the perfect life. Franzen stares, “But to expose your whole self, not just the likeable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful”. He talks about how we put more efforts into our social media that we forget the real world. Our infatuation with being perfect humans on social media has distracted us from real love. Humans are so afraid of commitment and rejection that we do not try anymore to find love. Franzen talks about how the only way to love someone is to detach from our devices so we can truly see what is in front of us.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Franzen compares the public’s “liking” for (or attachment to) the present day technology with his definition of love in his essay “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”. He starts off, trying to engage the audience in his essay by talking about the advancements in cell phones. Then he makes them think about the effects these advancements would have had on “people a hundred years ago”. The next thing Franzen talks about is the trick markets use to create a product that we want. They replace the real world with a dorm of virtual reality. This, of course, faces contradiction by the real love. To this, Facebook replied with the verb “like” which Franzen says, “is the commercial culture’s substitute for loving”. These markets design their products in a manner that they are most likable. Next, he describes a narcissist: a person who would change his/her persona to become more cool, attractive, or “likable”. Franzen believes that the technology today can very well aid these narcissists be more likable. According to Franzen, “trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationship” and loving someone does not imply that you like everything about them.
ReplyDeleteIn Jonathan Franzen’s essay “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”, he argues that “liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving” (2). However, Franzen believes that this new liking fad is more of a human’s lack of integrity to love something or someone. He even states that people who try to be “perfectly likable” find that this is completely “incompatible with loving relationships.” What he says suggest that, in order to love or be loved there has to be the truth, and you have to accept what you can do and what others do in order to love them. This liking trend shows how most people now a days are too afraid to put any commitment into something because we all “die before long” and this causes most of our “anger and pain and despair.” If people had integrity they would face the facts and live their life in pursuit of things they’ll love, and not just try to follow everything likable.
ReplyDeleteIn Johnathan Franzen’s essay, “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.” he differentiates between actual true love and the existence of a similar, but less involved feeling. Franzen stated that people use modern technology like cell phones and social media to shape how they want others to feel about them. In today’s times, he claims that people are more scared of rejection and ridicule than ever. “But to expose your whole self, not just the likeable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful.” He however warns against these cover up tactics.
ReplyDeleteIn “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” Jonathan Franzen contrasts consumer related technology and real life and describes how technology gives us a false sense of power. Franzen describes that when he got his new phone it seemed that he could do anything, almost instantaneously and that got him thinking. Technology like a cell phone or a Instagram page present everything in a very likeable way, sidestepping curves in the natural world like resistance and pain. Franzen discusses that in real life one must ask and answer questions like,” Do I love this person? Or Does this person love me?”. Technology tries to defy the natural order of things and that is why love, the most infallible thing in this world, “exposes the lie” of the “techno-consumerist order”. Franzen does admit that the world can be a truly hurtful and nasty place, however if you really want to live a good life you have got to be willing to step out the door and interact with REAL people.
ReplyDeleteIn Jonathan Franzen's "Liking Is For Cowards. Go For What Hurts." He shows the difference "...between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love"(4). He begins the essay talking about how great our technologies are to us and then he goes on to tell us what that would have looked like to people a hundred years ago. Technology makes us feel all powerful , it troubles love;-by "commodifying its enemy" it has us believe that "...if you love somebody you should buy stuff"(2). Franzen says that liking is cultures substitute for loving. He states "...to love a specific person , and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self"(5). We are afraid to love so we decide not to risk getting rejected and ultimately we live in a world of liking, which Franzen describes as not living. We all "die before long" and so we avoid commitment and rejection all together and that is the real cause of "our anger and pain and despair"(7). Franzen ends with saying you can fix these problems with just facing the truth and letting go of yourself and allowing yourself to fall in love.
ReplyDeleteIn Jonathan Franzen's article "Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts." He presents the ideas that humans can be consumed by our technology to the point where it becomes a "mere extension of ourselves". Franzen shows how consumer products are "designed to be immensely likable" so much so that we become infatuated with our phones and our online presence. We use our phones to create an online persona that we maybe can't cultivate in the real world. Who we truly are is pushed down by the desperation to be liked. Technology doesn't have the ability to do this but it is a great enabler of this narcissism.
ReplyDeleteIn Jonathan Franzen's "Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts", he presents that "the world of techno-consumerism is therefore troubled by real love" which is causing people to "love in return". Franzen says that we are forced to be infatuated with our devices because they design them to do it to us. The constant updates and new features only reels more and more people into this pseudo love. People have a masquerade behind Facebook pages and others because "technology is really just an extension of ourselves". Although, you are more apt to provide false information to positively present yourself online. He later claims that "trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships." This idea of "love" for our technology is an outdrawn idea because there is, indeed, no real love. The use of technology is simply a mask from our true identity.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Franzens belief that Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. The overall connection is the direct correlation with a newfound love for new technology? And how technology has advanced and developed over time with upgrades. Franzen says, “to like”, an option on Facebook is derived “from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice.” So the decision and or choice to like something is of upmost importance to someone’s beliefs and should be taken deeply into account. Liking something is also the easy way out doing what your gut tells you whether its negative or not is the important part and that is always hard for someone to do.
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