Analyse af Roger Scrutons artikel om virtuelt liv

In this assignment, I will take a look at the Sunday Times article:” Can virtual life take over from real life?” written by Roger Scruton. The article was brought in 2008 and revolves around the topic of technological progression. To start things off, I will comment on the main points in Scruton´s article. Furthermore, I will analyse the author´s attitude towards the main topic, and comment on how this is revealed.

The article starts with the quotation “The medium is the message[1]” by Marshall McLuhan, which expresses Scruton´s opinion on the topic quite well. He believes that by changing the medium we change ourselves and that´s the message he wants to bring in his article. Scruton is convinced that virtual friendships never can reach the level of a normal friendship and empowers this point by using the “bigger risk, bigger reward[2]” theory. He explains how real friendships involve risk and this risk is nowhere to be found online. Further on he continues to repeat his opinion on virtual friendships to really prove his point and to seem trustworthy. Repetitions are a very commonly used method in articles in which you want to get a point across.

There is no doubt that Scruton´s article wishes to target a young audience – this is already decided by the article´s headline. Middle-aged and old people haven’t grown up with this phenomenon as young people have. Therefore, is it natural that young people are more adapted and large consumers of this. One could argue that Scruton exclusively criticizes the friendships of young people in the modern world, but he actually mentions some positive things about it as well. For example, he mentions that “shy people used to go trembling into society, hand I mouth; now they can go boldly into virtual society, hand on mouse”, and for some people, this is what they need to get that last kick and last bit of confidence. Afterward, he quickly turns his argument down, stating that it is naïve to think people can live their life this way. This brings us to the author´s attitude towards the main topic, which is proven very negative. The negative attitude is obvious throughout the article as Scruton continuously fills the topic with negative connotations. Some of these are words and sentences such as: “Cyber-castle[3]”, “I will never obtain friendship or love[4]” and “people will hide in their narcissistic dreams[5]”.