FaceStupid

“It can be tricky to bring Facebook or any other popular literacy into the classroom as an object of critique without seeming to frame it as a lowbrow object of intellectual contempt” (556). 

Perpetuating stereotypes.  What I mean by this is, the point of this article is to get us to want to or want to try to do a rhetorical analysis of FB in our classroom.  So, Jane, is trying to convince us that this could be useful for us.  Is she arguing for it? Maybe not, maybe more presenting it to us.  But by presenting it, you are inevitable going to sway us or not sway us and either way we know we are either moved or not moved but someone tried. 

Which then I guess makes that sentence and the intro to her work okay in that it is shedding both negative and positive light on the issue.  Pros and cons and rebuttals and blah, blah make ideas and arguments and what not more complex.  At least this is what we are taught, and this is what I have also taught to students.  However, I am not an undergraduate student anymore and I’m not more or less convinced by the tactics of your presentation.  Meaning I am extra sensitive to the manner in which you approach your topic from your structure, organization, word choice, sources or lack their of, references, tone, title, etc.  I am paying attention to your composition as an end product not for it’s content alone but rather for how it’s content is tied to, reinforced, or challenged by the form or forms it takes.  As a graduate student of rhetoric and composition pursuing my PHD in the field I am obligated, kinda not really, to take your seriously, Jane.  Especially when I see things like, 2010.  This wasn’t written in the 1920’s or the 1990’s! (notice that the 20’s and 90’s are basically the same now because technology is so fucking insane that information is consumed and produced at speeds never known to man i.e MIT freshman students cannot use the very shit they just learned in their sophomore year because it is already obsolete, and we, teachers, are still sitting here creating a paper that rhetorically tries to appease audiences so that “I can be taken seriously” or so that “my argument will be solid”) Let me get to my point.

What we feel is irrelevant.  *** This is not a negative or positive thing. It just is.  

 “Although I feel that Facebook, in all of its facets, can be used for a rhetorical analysis, I feel just about anything can be used for a rhetorical analysis. –I’m one of those people that feel that almost anything that we encounter is an argument, and that it is working to push an agenda. Because I am not comfortable on where I sit with Facebook, I can’t determine whether it is socially responsible to use Facebook in the class. I feel like, by using Facebook in the class it’s validating everything I feel is wrong with it (along with what I like about it” (Eddie)

The points Eddie brought up in his journal are all good!!! Valid, interesting, cool.  However, to allow your own feelings/bias literally overwhelm you to the point you can’t teach something that is a reality, I think, is bs.

Eddie, you aren’t alone by far.  I have several instructor friends who feel the same, actually much more negative and bash FB and it’s use in the classroom as well as in our lives and can’t stand the thing.  But my thing is- since when do your personal issues dictate the possibility of instruction?

The fact that FB has the narcissistic and negative qualities Eddie points out- “I feel that Facebook is systematically creating a generation of narcissists who have a superficial perspective of reality. I feel that more than not, Facebook creates a passive compliance among its users, and it does little to empower them”- makes it already a fruitful space for analysis.  

The fact that FB has positive attributes as Eddie points out- “On the other side of things, I appreciate what Facebook is capable of being... With the emergence of Facebook, I feel like that my Facebook profile can be my legacy to my family. Every aspect of my profile is a representation of me and my life”- is again, another reason it should be looked at.

YOUR personal feelings of a lack of understanding or rather lack of control of your students understanding and feelings- “  I feel a teacher presents the data, and it’s up to the student to reach their own conclusions… But that’s exactly where part of my problem lies, if I’m not comfortable with their potential conclusions, then how can I comfortably say I am being socially responsible?” -  as a reason for not teaching something is …

I am fucking blown away by this.

Anyways.

Check out the Facebook rhetorical analysis Ron and I created and did as an icebreaker activity for our students during the summer.  This ice breaker approach is an interesting way of using it, I think.  I’ll preface this by saying the activity was followed by a discussion of the fragmentation of identity via FB and how facebook can be used for… I will refer to Thaddeuse now….”Everything on Facebook is a mask, just some people's mask looks more like what's under it than other people's”, moreover, we may wear multiple masks at the same time or switch masks in the same day or confuse flesh with plastic. 

It is this aspect of FB that creates a third meaning or third space, again, I’ll refer to Mr. Thaddeuse: “Facebook is a way for people to present themselves in a strict format. It could be how they want to be seen, it could be how they actually are, it could be some third thing”

ThirdSpace---- Homi K Bhabba et al.  check this shit out homeslices.. great stuff.