Analyse af 'Liking is for cowards. Go for what hurts'

Is the modern technology the one doing us damage? Are we neglecting the importance of the real world when we hide behind the virtual world where the mouse is guiding our lives? In a world where the social media and the online world are playing a bigger role making the physical contact and face-to-face relations a decreasing factor. We have the social media to keep the contact with each other, online stores to shop from and meeting a new partner can now be done from a dating site. Therefore, it has turned out to be a regular thing; to be online at all times, to keep up with everything in the virtual world. These are the problems that arises in the essay “Liking is for cowards. Go for what hurts” (2011) written by Jonathan Franzen.

The essay puts our Internet habits into discussion and perspective thus forcing us to think judgmentally about the effects of the way we act on the Internet. He discusses the differences between the love for consumerism and technology versus the real life. He starts out with his infatuation with the new smartphones by describing his phone as if describing his lover. From these personal experiences, he criticizes the overtaking of the techno-consumerism. He encourages the younger and more modern generation to go out and live their lives, experience love and feel pain instead of being on Facebook and “liking” people’s façades, because who could possibly get hurt from this? Only real emotions and feelings can hurt us and this is why people hide behinds screens – to keep a safe and secure distance. He then moves on to saying that love is the enemy of technology and therefore they, the modern media, are trying to commodify love through commercials. Just like he describes his new BlackBerry Bold in the begging of the essay as a lover that listens and when he has “outgrown the relationship”, he replaces it without any further discussion, compared to breaking up with someone.