The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: a Cultural Critique on Facebook
Nicolette Stevens
Professor Burt
ENL 101-40
31 October 2012
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Cultural Critique on Facebook Ever since the creation of Facebook, people have slowly become addicted to putting their lives online. Facebook was originally created to allow one to stay in contact with friends. The past few years, though, it has been used to let everybody know how one is feeling and what one is doing every second of everyday through what is known as a status update. A status update is when one posts about who, what, when, where, and why of one’s life. The most common update usually involves the following: “Hanging out with (insert friend’s name) at (insert location).” There are many pros and cons to having a Facebook account. In this essay, I will discuss how Facebook has brought people together, but how it also slowly started to damage our lives. Everybody knows the good old Facebook creation story. It was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg while he was attending Harvard University. He created it as a place for him and his classmates to connect. He never intended on having it turn into this mass social giant. Six years later, Facebook currently has about one billion active users. How does Facebook have that many people, you may ask. Well simply because it is a simple way to stay in touch with friends and family. It allows one to keep others updated on one’s daily life. It is also a good time waster with all the games it has been adding onto the site recently. But how is Facebook useful? Facebook is useful in many different ways. It allows one to connect with long lost friends, post and invite people to upcoming events, keep track of other people’s daily lives. When one first creates a Facebook account one is asked how they would like Facebook to search for people they may know. Most people type the names of people they know in the search bar on the top of the page. After adding one’s first friend, Facebook then automatically generates a list of
Professor Burt
ENL 101-40
31 October 2012
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Cultural Critique on Facebook Ever since the creation of Facebook, people have slowly become addicted to putting their lives online. Facebook was originally created to allow one to stay in contact with friends. The past few years, though, it has been used to let everybody know how one is feeling and what one is doing every second of everyday through what is known as a status update. A status update is when one posts about who, what, when, where, and why of one’s life. The most common update usually involves the following: “Hanging out with (insert friend’s name) at (insert location).” There are many pros and cons to having a Facebook account. In this essay, I will discuss how Facebook has brought people together, but how it also slowly started to damage our lives. Everybody knows the good old Facebook creation story. It was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg while he was attending Harvard University. He created it as a place for him and his classmates to connect. He never intended on having it turn into this mass social giant. Six years later, Facebook currently has about one billion active users. How does Facebook have that many people, you may ask. Well simply because it is a simple way to stay in touch with friends and family. It allows one to keep others updated on one’s daily life. It is also a good time waster with all the games it has been adding onto the site recently. But how is Facebook useful? Facebook is useful in many different ways. It allows one to connect with long lost friends, post and invite people to upcoming events, keep track of other people’s daily lives. When one first creates a Facebook account one is asked how they would like Facebook to search for people they may know. Most people type the names of people they know in the search bar on the top of the page. After adding one’s first friend, Facebook then automatically generates a list of