The Insidious Evils of “Like” Culture by Neil Strauss

1293 Words6 Pages
Your one of them aren’t you? One of the teenagers who can’t think for yourself online anymore and you’re too afraid to express your own opinion, because of peer pressure and this new “like” culture. You’re hiding behind this mask and not showing your true form online, because you might be ridiculed and un-accepted by everyone for sharing your opinion. You should be focusing on school, homework and just living, not getting addicted to tweeting or updating your Facebook status. Those tweets or statuses you make have to get enough “likes” or comments, or you won’t “belong” or “be popular”. Neil Strauss wrote an article called “The Insidious Evils of “Like” Culture” about the pressures of conformity. Both Neil Strauss and I believe that social networking, and “like” culture contributes to conformity, and also has other negative consequences. In the “Insidious Evils of “Like” Culture” Neil Strauss states that, everyone who is on Facebook or Twitter or some sort of social networking site isn’t looking to express their own opinion but looking to get the most “likes” and comments. Q: Why is Facebook like a refrigerator? A: Because every few minutes you keep opening and closing it to see if there's anything good in it! You’re laughing right? If not then you wouldn’t “like” or “retweet” this, and I would feel “unliked”. Neil Strauss explained “A status update that it met with no “likes” (or a clever “tweet” that isn’t retweeted) becomes the equivalent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewritten.” And “Instead we are shaped by our stats, which include not just “likes” but the number of comments generated in response to what we write and the number of commented generated in response to what we write and the number of friends or followers we have.” What’s up with this “like” stuff? Why do we care so much about who “likes” what? The liking is about ranking

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