Essay on Facebook: Facebook and Jurgenson

Submitted By Khenley-Harvell
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Pages: 4
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Running Head: E­2 Rough Draft

Is facebook Real Life
In the essay “The IRL Fetish”, Jurgenson states an opinion contradicting that of Turkles in “The flight from conversation”, to point across that we never really are offline, Facebook is
“real life.” I agree with this statement, because the way technology has shaped society today. In spite of the two having many differences in the way they see how technology has shaped us, they are still similar in the fact that the impact of technology is far too deep.
Can we really truly ever log off the internet? This notion of our ability to shut off our phones etc is just complete nonsense. Honestly, it is almost a good thing that we never fully have the ability to fully unplug ourselves from todays social media. When "the IRL fetish" talks about online, it means both a collection of behaviors and a set of technologies; Turkle, in contrast, sees online as something you do, not something that is layered into the folds of reality. Jurgenson's essay starts from the premise that online is simply a hardware category, an inescapable feature of the physical (or hybrid physical/digital) world. Claiming that you're "offline" is as laughable as claiming that you've escaped gravity by jumping on a trampoline.
“We’re not friends until we are Facebook friends…” Jurgenson states about how our society is today. Isn’t that the truth these days? We speak about our “online” lives as if they are a different life but in reality, it is nothing more than a carefully curated extension of ourselves.
Online cannot exist in a vacuum, and he highlights this in his piece. The internet and “social media” (as if it is a “thing” that can be defined), is only another tool for us to interact with as we see fit. In the same way that the clothes we choose to wear are an outward reflection of our beliefs or the image we wish to project, the parts of our lives we choose to share speak volumes about how we wish to be seen.

Running Head: E­2 Rough Draft

My point is that as Jurgenson writes, real, offline, life is so completely intertwined with technology that it borders on absurdity to think otherwise. For example, when Turkle talks about enjoying life and taking a break from technology, “without a device, we are heads up, eyes to the sky, left to ponder and appreciate”, like going on a camping trip; Do we really take it to get away from technology, or did we actually take it to rid us of email access for a couple of days? If you really took it to “go offline”, where you truly ever offline, or was it a hiatus until you could post about these exploits on Facebook. “Twitter lips and Instagram eyes: Social media is part of ourselves; the Facebook source code becomes our own code.” Jurgenson says. We have to adapt to technology because, there is no way to log off of life.
We now appreciate what is in front of us
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