"Is Facebook Overrated?" Is an ineffective argument that fails to convince the not well-addressed public to believe Facebok is overrated. It relies on metaphors, similes, devil terms and it appeals to logic, credibility and feelings in lower level.
The author makes an attempt at simile by comparing Facebook and nightclubs and how they are popular for periods of times, which totally fails to accomplish its purpose. It talks about how past social networking websites were what everyone would talk about but then they became boring. The author’s conclusion is that because of this event, Facebook will be another of these websites that will be forgotten with time. This is a sweeping generalization, as it is comparing Friendster to Facebook, two totally different social networks. After all, why would Mark Zuckenberg (Facebook CEO) follow the steps of another social network that didn’t succeed? If anything, he will learn from their mistakes and avoid ending up the same way. The situation is true for Friendster but not necessarily true for Facebook,
The author also uses the metaphor when comparing Facebook to gyms—a place where the author assumes people goes to flirt and gossip. He tries to make clear that Facebook is trying to morph from a gym-like site to a place where people do all kinds of activities. This is a failed attempt to support his arguments because it intends to tell the readers that so far, Facebook is not as effective as it should be and therefore is not worth the market values it had at the moment, but the author doesn’t connect this fact with her thesis, making it look rather boring and more of a useless paragraph.
Devil-terms are used not in one word, but in a whole sentence. There’s a paragraph that talks about how facebook has the “creepy prospect of turning your life into one big direct-mail campaign”. This gets to the reader as something bad as soon as it is read, appealing to Pathos, but again, it doesn’t seem like it is supporting the thesis. It seems like it is suggesting readers not to fall into facebook addiction more than convincing them of its overrated cost.
It can be said that the author himself looks a little confused about her argument, as the title of the article itself points to a question that seems to be left unanswered as you read through the article. It leaves the argument open to be interpreted by the reader more than establishing a straightforward argument and supporting it with ideas. The audience is also not well addressed, since the people who could really do something about the issue are the investors who finance these social networks and the informal language makes it look like the article is directed towards public in general.
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