Analyse af Jonathan Franzens 'Liking Is For Cowards'

Today’s society is extremely affected by electronic devices, such as smartphones, computers etc. Through these devises, the social media is having a great impact on the youth and making people strive towards popularity and measure them by how many “likes” and positive comment they have on these online sites. Especially the young generation who has grown up with this phenomenon is exposed to the influence the social media has. The essay “Liking Is For Cowards. Go For What Hurts” by Jonathan Franzen is discussing this dilemma. Jonathan Franzen is an acclaimed American novelist and essayist. The essay is based on Franzen’s speech which he gave at Kenyon College, Ohio, USA and was first published in The New York Times, May 28, 2011.

The purpose of the speech is to remind people of the true meaning of love and that people should not fear rejection. He reaches this main point by comparing the love of today’s technology with true love. The new technology is making people strive after things and not humans. Materialism generally seems to have become the main focus in the western lifestyle. According to Franzen people do not believe they show love if they do not buy material things for their loved one. He suggests that techno-consumerism, as he mentions in his text, is troubled by real love and therefore needs to defend itself by staging fake love and making people believe, that is the only way to show love. “The message, in each case, is that if you love somebody you should buy stuff”(pg. 2 l.75-77). In other words Franzen is trying to tell us that the industry business uses love as a pathos appeal to make people buy the things they are selling.