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.
“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.
Logan Radwanski
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
English 1003
1 October 2015
Franzen Summary
Franzen get real and tells it straight forward with not sugar coating to it. Talking about our relationship with technology with how it's almost erotic. As we "love" this device and calling it "sexy" shows how the markets created a technology to "correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly..." (Franzen) Turning this into "human terms" and gets very real by saying our relationship with technology but if it was with a human. It's terrifying how true what Franzen was saying such as " Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identity with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some yourself." (Franzen) As our world of "liking" is a lie for life doesn't work as our technology lives and we must face the real world also experience the pain to truly live our short lives.
Peter Cote
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
English 1003
1 Oct. 2015
Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. Summary
Although many people believe that being careful in life and not loving will make a happy life, but Jonathan Franzen shows that people need to take risks in life in order to have lived life to the fullest. Franzen points out that phones give people a false sense of security and love while people have a fake relationship with them. He states that technologies goal “is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes.” Franzen explains that technology gives an escape from reality and pain to a place where everything is the way one wants it. He also shows that culture is replacing love with like meaning companies make things for people to like them. Franzen proclaims that technology will never do anything people do not like which encourages people to be someone they are not just to be liked by other people. Franzen then states that “to go through a life painlessly is to have not lived.” Franzen proclaims that, without loving and not taking risks in life, people will not have fulfilled the reason they are on earth. Although there are hurtful things that happen with love, Franzen explains that technology tries to tell people love is harmful because love causes people to go away from their phones. He explains that the reason people do not love is for fear of getting rejected, but if people do not take risks then, as Franzen shows, they are just “consumers” of the planet’s resources.
Devante Wrenn
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
English 1003
1 October 2015
Franzen
Franzen seems pretty cut and dry by explain how we are so attached to our technology now in days. He talks about how we call our devices names that we really shouldn’t be, but it shows our relationship with it. We seem to love our devices more than we love each other. We are so attached to them. We use them every day and we just have them in our everyday lives. In a way we cannot go a day without our technology. We love our devices. Our devices mean a lot to us and later on in life it may control us because we use it and develop it more and more each day. Franzen wants use to face the real world and live normal. We need to live with pain but not a short life. Our technology is holding us back and is taking us over.
Austin Bennett
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
ENG 1003
1 October 2015
A summary to like
Jonathan Franzen starts right off with pointing out the strangeness of our relationships with technology. While technology is considered a good thing, he points out that the relationships are basically erotic. We call them names, consider them sexy, and are in complete control of it. Franzen also points out how if these were people, these devices would be very narcissistic. Needing to be liked, they would be hermits, hiding from criticism so their reputation does not get tarnished. Franzen goes on to say how this affects us, saying that, "We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.". These devices validate us, and we need that.
Carter Groomes
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
English 1003
1 October 2015
Franzen
In Franzen’s New York Times article “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”, he delivers a strong point on peoples desperation in technology and how love has many flaws. In our generation now it is very common to see a young girl or boy who devotes their life to social media profiles, trying to gain attention in the way of technology. When the attention that the person wants, fails, they spiral into self-pity and depression. Franzen aspires that love should not only be about liking something, but it is about the passion and drive towards that one thing. However, if that person would go about it the way Frazen believes it should, the person would be expecting pain or despair because that normally is a side effect of Love.
Gabrielle Tallman
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
ENG 1003
1 October 2015
Franzen focuses on the word, "like" throughout the whole article. There has been a transformation from the state of mind to action. For example, he brings up Facebook and how instead of just scrolling through your feed and thinking to yourself that you like a picture, you literally take action of pressing the 'thumbs up' button. Although, consumer products were designed to be liked and it's not the same when we, as humans, devote our time and energy towards being liked. As he plainly states himself, "The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships." He argues that technology is just an extension of ourselves.
Breanna Roper
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
English 1003
1 October 2015
In Jonathon Franzen's "Liking is for cowards. Go for what hurts.", he introduces his readers to his personal view, which is that we have developed an intimate relationship with our cell phones and devices. We call inanimate objects sexy, and personify them in a way that should not occur. We live through them, constantly connected to our social media accounts, where we strive to gain the attention of others, and to be of nearly everyone's likings. Franzen claims that,"The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relations". My interpretation of this is that as we constantly try to be impressive and likable by everyone, we fail to realize the superficiality of this, and we have not had the realization that real love is not going to include being "perfectly likable", it has flaws, which is a huge factor of life and all of our human experiences. We press a button to "like" something instead of telling them in person how we felt about it, we have become insincere, not experiencing real love, partially because of our connection to our devices.
Aidan Bish
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
SWU English 1003
1 October 2015
Franzen on the Superficiality of “Like” and the Reality of “Love”
Franzen describes technology’s tendency to create shallow “liking”, and the dangers of allowing it to replace real love. He discusses how we describe technology as “likeable” and “sexy”. The technlogy, Franzen explains, resembles a narcissist in its constant effort to be perfectly likeable has qualities that “coorespond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship” because it constantly gives and asks nothing in return. This, however, is nothing but a one-sided projection of our own desires and lacks the depth and reality of true love. Because of this, technologies try to demean love by associating it with materialism, substituting it with “liking”, and by illustrating it as simple and foolish in endless romantic comedies and similar film. Part of our infatuation with technology and all of the latter distractions is that the “like” that it promises is painless. The pain involved in love, however, is what makes it real. Loving someone requires you to give up a part of yourself, and to be vulnerable, and it’s these things that make painless perfect technology so appealing. However, these qualities are also what make it so important and a vital part of life.
Kaylee Young
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
English 1003
1 October 2015
Franzen- Summary
Franzen opens up his essay by talking about how the relationship between his phone faded because it was old and continued to let him down. He has this idea that technology is troubled by love so things should be likable. According to Franzen, “The striking thing about consumer products—and none more so then electronic devices and applications—is that they’re designed to be immensely likable.” I believe, just like a narcissist, who has to constantly do something to be liked, technology is constantly updating and advances to be liked. However, Franzen believes that social media and technology is the perfect escape to enabling narcissism and does not manipulate anyone’s self. In the essay, I’ve somewhat inferred, that if you get away from technology you might actually have to deal with real life scenarios. Then you might end up falling in love with someone or something and that is the worst thing that could happen according to Franzen.
Anna Newton
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
English 2003
1 October 2015
Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. Summary
In Jonathan Franzen’s, “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.” article, he contrasts the egotistical technologies today and the unsolved dilemma in love. Franzen describes how we call gadgets, and technology, “sexy” and how we like them “immensely.” He states, “liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving.” (2). If we viewed these “narcissistic” technologies as humans, they would be desperate, conceded, and unlikable. Franzen aspires that love comes with the acceptance of flaws, the uncontrollable concern, and the sacrifices. As people love others, and now gadgets, it all brings trouble, no matter how much joy he/she/it might bring you.
Hunter Hebert
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk
English 1003
1 October 2015
Franzen
In Franzen’s Liking is for Cowards. Go for what Hurts, he immediately exposes the unusual relationship between people and technology in today’s society. People today have become so consumed by their technological devices that they have begun to form “relationships” with them. Franzen discusses how people are hungry for acceptance and attention and how technology serves as that identity for them. Instead of facing rejection or pain, people find safety in the constant companionship they find in technology, viewing it as a friend figure in their lives. Because of this unhealthy obsession with devices, Franzen describes how the life styles of people are being altered in order to conform to what they are now comfortable with, leading them closer and closer to a bond with technology, and further from a bond with the real world. Franzen states,"The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relations", concluding that this type of relationship is not realistic and is hurting people’s abilities to live properly.