It is not what someone says, it’s how they say it. In many occasions, important information given to us tends to go in one ear and out the other. However, if someone makes you think and uses certain strategies that force you to listen, they can get their point across. In Jurgenson’s essay, “The IRL Fetish,” his use of a sarcastic, superior tone strengthens his argument that those who spend more time offline are not superior to those who are constantly online, but it can be a bit misleading and it prevents him from proposing a solution to this problem.
In Nathan Jurgenson’s “The IRL Fetish,” the author is arguing the concept of being “online” and “offline” and how people truly do not know or understand the interconnection between the two. Jurgenson …show more content…
He begins by bringing in Sherry Turkle’s ideas of the offline world - touching base on the importance of face to face conversations and enjoying the natural world. Turkle’s view on the online vs. offline world represents the common argument that children have an unhealthy attachment to their electronic devices. Jurgenson purposely introduces this point of view before his own in order to tear it down. He criticizes the idea that “having to navigate without a maps app, eating a delicious lunch and not being able to post a paragraph, having a witty thought without being able to tweet forces reflection on how different our modern lives really are” (Jurgenson, 127). Here, Jurgenson is mocking the belief that people of today cannot live without their phones. In reality, if you look at a group of teenagers, 8/10 of them are on their phones. While at a restaurant, they’re taking artsy pictures of their food and tweeting about their night. Although it may appear that they are glued to these electronic devices, they can put them down. Through the use of sarcasm, Jurgenson helps demonstrate this and his disagreement with the initial statement . Not only does he disagree with it, he recognizes the attack and judgement being passed on to those constantly online. Sarcasm is his way of rebutting and defending this …show more content…
He is simply trying to demonstrate that both groups are in the same position and have no right to act superior over the other - especially those who spend more time offline. More often than not, people who appear to be infatuated with the digital world are criticized by those who seem to be attached to the more “realistic” world. Not often do you hear someone being ridiculed for being outdoors and partaking in interactive activities. This is where Jurgenson’s frustration lies and when he strongly emphasizes that “to obsess over the offline and deny all the ways we routinely remain disconnected is to fetishize this disconnection” (Jurgenson, 129). In his opinion, those who consider themselves to be connected to the offline world rather than the online one cannot consider themselves better than those who are connected online because both groups are doing the same thing - fetishizing over an inanimate object. This statement brings awareness to the fact that tapping someone on the back for not using their phone for an hour is equivalent to rewarding an elder for being able to use an iPhone efficiently. Realistically, these people who claim to be offline are doing so in spite of being online. They want to break away from the group of people who cannot detach themselves from their electronic devices to the point where they begin to obsess over the ‘real’