In Ian Daly's "Virtual Popularity Isn't Cool - It's Pathetic" he explains how having friends on the
Internet is especially easy thanks to Facebook. Referring to Facebook as a 'rare tropical disease' that infects grown men. He believes that Facebook is a huge waste of time, "friending, in Ian Daly's opinion, has gotten a lot of grown men acting giddy, spending hours online tending their Facebook pages rather than doing their work" he continues to give examples by comparing grown men's behavior to teenage girls. Ian Daly also talks about the fact that people on Facebook sometimes have up to 10,000 friends. He points out that these 'friends' aren't really friends. Besides what they see on their Facebook pages, they don't really know anything about these 'friends.' However, he explains that people feel some sort of accomplishment merely by being on these sites.
Response:
While I was reading this essay all I could think was, 'wow, this is so true.' Although I do not have a Facebook, I have an Instagram, and I could still relate. I have some friends on Instagram that will post certain things (that they really shouldn't be posting) just for attention or to be 'cool.' Some of them post these things hoping to become what they call 'Instagram famous.' One way that they do this is by adding EVERYONE, even people they don't know, in order to get thousands of followers. The idea is, the more followers you have, the more likes you will get, the more people will start to notice you, the faster you'll become famous. Pretty pathetic. What's even more sad is that Ian Daly hit it right on the nail when he said "adult-male converts to behave like 13-year-old girls" because there are grown men posting 'selfies' of themselves crying (typical 13-year-old girl move) so that one of his followers will ask the petty 'are you okay?'
