Liking is for cowards. Go for what hurts
Jonathan Franzen, an American novelist and essayist, wrote the essay “Liking is for cowards. Go for what hurts” in The New York Times in 2011. Franzen’s essay is mainly about the increasing relationship between humans and technology, where he criticizes the development of the narcissism in the modern time. He writes about how to love and like in real life and in consumer technology. Franzen begins the essay with his own example of his relationship to his old smartphone and his new one. He describes his own addiction to the new Blackberry and he “wanted to keep fondling” the new blackberry even though he didn’t have anybody to reach. He finds safety in the smartphone because it won´t hurt you and it’s always available and writes that the “beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object.” ll.49-53. Franzen describes therefore his blackberry as a girlfriend. But vanity has become more popular these days and the term “liking “ someone’s picture or status on Facebook is stated as “commercial culture’s substitute for loving” (ll.84-84), and is a superficial way of saying that you “like” the person. Franzen writes that we can form our own lives through the media and make it more interesting for others to see and he blames it because of its increasing narcissism and the fakeness of “liking”. But as I mentioned before, this term can be compared to the love/addiction to a smartphone. In real life you could get hurt if you showed your interest for someone or something, but when you are behind your screen, there is a safe distance between your real feelings and the ones that are made up in order to protect yourself. Franzen thinks that “liking” is a complete lie because it is based on superficial decisions and doesn’t show you how love works. He thinks that love in real life “exposes the lie” (ll.174-175), because when you love every particle of a person and you start to fight, the real question is if you really do love this person and not a question about a new phone. Fanzen describes love as “bottomless empathy” (ll.177) and something the media can’t compare with. He wants people to take risks even though it can hurt some time. He says that “to go through life painlessly is to have not lived” (ll.206-208) and this sentence means that you would go through a boring and inexperienced life without getting hurt and learning by your mistakes. He thinks that people are too scared of being rejected and because of that they won’t experience their ride of love. But of course the chances you take with love could lead to pain for example he mentions breakup and death. Although the consequences of love could be painful, it doesn’t kill you and only makes you stronger and wiser. The characteristic of the text is defiantly the imagery language like, for example when he describes his phone as a human being (ll.13-28). The language in the essay is not formal because of Franzen’s use of the words “sexy” and “cool” and he is very passionate when he writes his thoughts in the essay, so the language is like daily conversations with your friends. He wants to convince, educate and inform about love. Love isn’t just something we can see or do through the material stuff, but something much greater than that, because it can hurt you as well. The “you” you build through the Internet isn’t real and you build up a façade that isn’t real. Franzen loves birds and is almost fanatic when he describes his love and passion of bird watching. At first he loved nature and watching birds, but afterwards he started to care about the environment as well. Because of the animals he loves in the nature will get hurt and he will get hurt as well. He is convinced that this passion and love for birds made him less self-centered: a side of him that he didn’t know existed. He wants to give the reader a message that shows his own way of finding love and real life, although it is birds that he loves. So to sum up the text, he starts with this addiction of materialistic things and ends the essay of him finding love and real feelings. Franzen is trying to spread his words with essay about love and technology and the audience would mainly be young people who are a part of the post-modern culture. He wants to teach young people not to live in vanity and they needn’t put up a façade just so other people can “like” them. You will eventually drown in consumer technology and it’s narcissist-creating features, if you don’t go out and see life for yourself and not through the media. He wants you to be strong and take the risks of learning how to love and live. The last sentence in the essay is “ And who knows what might happen to you then?”, it can only be greater than the superficial life behind the screens. Jonathan Franzen makes his opinions clear in this essay and trustworthy when he uses his own example of his addiction to the smartphones and the transition from liking to loving something or someone. Franzen’s essay is defiantly a nonobjective one. This essay is written by a man with great influence and many people will come to agree with his argumentation, even though it’s not based on any scientific theories, which makes it not completely reliable. This essay is very relevant to me and my contemporizes, because we are a part of that generation that has developed a love to consumer technology and this essay motivates me to not be a coward but to try taking chances, although it can be painful.