Talk:David Brownman

I have no idea if this is even in the ballpark for that I'm supposed to have done, but here's to hoping. Brownman (talk) 15:53, 9 November 2012 (EST)

Review by Patrick Riggs

Hey Brownman,

Let me start off by saying that this is a well written piece, but I'm not sure it focuses enough on the idea of identity on Facebook, and instead seems to focus on identity overall. Your narrative format and colorful commentary make the article really fun to read, but you don't even mention the word Facebook until the very end of the article. For people (like us) who actually know what the article is supposed to be about it makes total sense - however, if you aren't looking for the connection to Facebook it's almost impossible to find.

It's clear that you did put in a lot of effort to explain your story and use the theme of adventure and travel to tie everything together. However, you don't mention anything about how your portrayal of your travels on Facebook is a genuine reflection of yourself (it seems like it, since travel appears to be very important to you). One way to expand on that would be to talk about why you post pictures to Facebook of your travels: is it so you can see them, so people who were on the trip with you can see them, or for people uninvolved with the trip to see them? Maybe it's a combination of all of those reasons. In any case, that would be a great place to dive in and do some heavy analysis.

All in all, it was really fun to read and the quality of writing is really high, but I'd maybe put in a bit more analysis into how your identity online is shaped by everything that you talk about. Good job!

Patrick Riggs

Review by Jordan VanderZwaag

-David

The first thing that stands out to me in this piece is your impressive narrative voice. I think you do a great job creating and maintaining a strong and effective style through the third person perspective. I think what's most effective about this style is your narrator's use of adventure words to describe the process of going through your profile and reconstructing your life based on it while at the same time he tells the stories of your adventures that can be seen through your Facebook. It appears that this was a good theme for you to hone since you seem to have taken lots of adventures yourself and that this is an important of your identity. I did notice a few typos such as an "and" instead of "at" and "ove" instead of "over", as well as few issues with spacing, but these don't detract from the piece as a whole. Overall, you do a great job of sticking with the style throughout the whole piece that makes it distinct, creative, and fun to read.

I do think you could benefit from a few more pictures of your profile to help the reader know that all of this information can actually be determined from your Facebook alone. In many cases it's not clear that this is case. While you seem to have a profile that displays a lot of information, can it really be determined that, for example, your "introductions to foreign culture" really "began (your) love of networking and branching out into foreign cultures"? It may be entirely possible that this information can be gathered by an outside observer of your profile, but it's also not clear that your narrator was only able to know this because you wrote it. This bring up an issue with integrity of your profile that you try to address with the last section written in first person. In it, you make it clear that adventures are a very important of your life and thus makes it seem like your profile gives an accurate representation of this. I do think it would be helpful to include some more images of your profile to let the reader know that all of these details can be inferred from it.

As a whole, I think you did a very good job focusing on some specific aspects of your life that are evident in your profile and wrote an engaging piece that successfully got that message across.

Jordan VanderZwaag