Talk:Patrick Riggs
Hi Patrick,
I immediately found interest because you incorporated the element of time and history into your feelings on authenticity. Facebook time periods are very significant and made me look differently at my own autobiography, in which I only focused on Facebook activity from this semester. Because you used a consistent tone filled with a bit of sarcasm and wit, following your chronological story was easy and enjoyable. I immediate got an excellent grasp on the direction your story was going, something almost all readers value. I found your profile very relatable to many people’s feelings, and you articulated such thoughts effortlessly and with resolute grammar.
In addition to your direct commentary towards your online identity, I felt as though some of your observations were implied in your writing. As you progressed through your essay, your attitude was clearly reflective of your feelings towards your profile and to Facebook in general. Your candidness throughout the piece cannot be underestimated as you always directly addressed what you deemed important, and did not beat around the bush. I felt as though I got a good understanding of your personality at the time, even though you tended to not emphasize on that aspect in particular. That leads me into a critique: More commentary about your actual personality through the years would have useful. You briefly discuss how genuine your page reflects your own personality, but after reading I felt as though you primarily focused on your attitude towards Facebook rather than your attitude towards your individual Facebook identity. I also would have liked if you elaborated a bit more on the “November, 2012” section as it would give the reader a better appreciation to why you feel the need to privatize your profile from employers.
Overall –great read. Job well done.
Best,
Alex.
Patrick-
I like your piece! I think you had some really interesting points concerning the how and the why of people posting on facebook (re: the cool kids vs the less cool ones). You also have a good, analytical writing style that made looking through your writing fun and easy. Also, I liked how your essay was structured much like a facebook timeline itself, which I thought was neat. One of your strongest points was not only identifying why other people used facebook, but how it related to you. Hand in hand with that, the changes present in you over the course of your facebook account. My only big suggestion for that part would be to focus not only on uploaded pictures, but more on the holistic profile. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd imagine that you (like all of us, of course) were into all the popular apps? Bumper sticker, graffiti, super poke, etc? I always considered those a huge part of the developing profile and probably bear (bare? behr? what even is that?) mention, especially considering they're now all but erased from facebook.
Overall, the writing was great. There weren't any grammatical or punctuation-y errors that I saw and the flow was easy to follow. My only real gripe is that it seemed like paragraphs ended a little abruptly. An apropos transition here an there wouldn't hurt. I liked it though, solid writing!
~DavidB
