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In “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Marche States The Following

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In “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Marche states the following in response to the question proposed in the title of his essay: “Within this world of instant and absolute communication, unbounded by limits of time or space, we suffer from unprecedented alienation” (601). In other words, thanks to technology the world has never been smaller, and humans have never felt farther apart. Marche’s feelings about social networking, Facebook in particular, are made clear from the start. He opens his essay by vividly relaying a true story that conjures the reader’s morbid-curiosity and establishes his writing-style. At times it seems like Marche makes a sport of playing on humanity’s primal fears about loneliness, ageing, and dying, but he plays a …show more content…

Using disturbing imagery, he recounts the story of a washed-up former Playboy Bunny turned B-Movie horror-icon that died old and alone, and was found upstairs in her house “mummified” with the “glow of her computer screen” illuminating her bedroom (601). In relaying this tragic final scene of Yvette Vickers’ life, Marche delivers a veritable one-two-punch with the line, “… now she was an icon of a new and different kind of horror: our growing fear of loneliness” (601). Marche’s background as a regular contributor to WIRED magazine shows in the way he quickly grabs the reader’s attention from the get-go with a macabre tale. As if dying alone and being left to rot wasn’t sad enough, Marche includes a personal account of the times he has scrolled through Facebook and felt disconnected and ‘’miserable’’ after witnessing all the seemingly full and perfect lives projected by the people on his Facebook feed (606-607). This personal story most likely hits home for anyone who has ever used Facebook and probably conjures up strong feelings of isolation and inadequacy after viewing a procession of air-brushed lives via a news feed. Marche plays on common fears and emotions to plant his thesis in the mind of his readers, creating a desire to read on and see what other curious devices he has up his sleeve. Some might say Marche is being melodramatic by indirectly including Facebook in the smoke surrounding Yvette Vickers’s lonely death or blaming the social media site for feelings

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