TOW #19: "The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral"

Could Aristotle have been the key to finding the next trends on twitter?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/the-six-things-that-make-stories-go-viral-will-amaze-and-maybe-infuriate-you.html

     Undeniably, the internet is one of the most significant ways to share information. That said, certain content is shared more than other content. What exactly distinguishes how much content will be shared? According to Maria Konnikova, there are several specific ways to achieve "shareability". Maria Konnikova is a writer and journalist who focuses primarily on psychology and literature. She is currently writing her first book. She graduated from Harvard University and studied the science of self-control at Columbia University in 2013.
     As a consumer and a daily user of the internet and its contents, it is important to understand what becomes popular and why, so as to avoid being an uneducated consumer. Konnikova wrote "The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, And Maybe Infuriate, You" is both to educate internet users and explain the science behind how content becomes popular. This article is applicable to all internet users.
     By appealing to ethos early in her essay, Konnikova follows the classical oration model, effectively establishing the credentials of the various sources she uses (which she later uses extensively). She writes, "When Jonah Berger was a graduate student at Stanford," then describes his interest in the five most-shared articles of each day from the Wall Street Journal. In providing this credible account, Konnikova gives readers a reason to care about her topic. If a Stanford graduate is interested in her topic, why shouldn't the average reader be interested as well?
     Konnikova uses rhetorical questions to transition from her introduction to the narration, once again following the classical oration model. She asks the reader, "What is it about a piece of content– an article, a picture, a video– that took it from simply interesting to interesting and shareable?" If the reader was not enticed by her appeal to ethos in her introduction, surely their drive for curiosity provoked by her use of rhetorical questions would entice he or she.
     Her second paragraph, which serves as the narration, provides the reader with an analogy relating Aristotle's philosophies to twitter. Such starkly contrasted ideas proves the relevance of shareability. She compares Aristotle's beliefs about rhetoric to the shareability of, say, a tweet or a Facebook post. This strategy adds another appeal to ethos to reestablish the universal presence and relevance of "shareability". Several times in her essay, Konnikova references several of Aristotle's beliefs previously described to strengthen her argument. Since she isn't an expert on the topic she writes about, this strategy is very effective.
     To end her essay, Konnikova addresses a possible counterargument. "We may be changing what will become popular even as we're studying it." With this point, Konnikova brings her topic into the real, dynamic world. Although she essentially undermines most of her essay by including this point, she understands that to not write it would prove her lack of understanding of the study as a whole. Had she ended her essay on this point, it would have been considerably weaker. However, she instead ends with a trending title to disprove the counterargument presented and regain her idea's strength. She writes that at the time she was writing the article, the top trending story on a popular website is titled, "Her Little Boy Has No Idea His Mother Is About To Die. What She's Doing About That Is Amazing." This example hits almost all of the points she mentions that make for a trending title: it appeals to pathos, it is positive, it is inspirational, and it is sensational. The fact that it is current at the time she wrote this article makes the reader realize although her ideas may be irrelevant in the future, they are certainly relevant as of now.

TOW #18: "The Death of the Moth" by Virginia Woolf

The cover alone depicts Virginia Woolf's struggle with mental illness in The Death of the Moth.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91d/chapter1.html

In her post-mortem publication The Death of the Moth and other essays, Virginia Woolf begins by talking about a seemingly benign subject. Woolf’s book was written in 1941, the same year she committed suicide. The collection of essays was then published by Leonard Woolf, her husband, in 1942. In her first essay of her book, “The Death of the Moth,” Woolf describes an insignificant moth’s slow, hopeless death. Although only implied, the true purpose of “The Death of the Moth” is to describe her own struggle with mental illness, as shown by her suicide not even a year later. Virginia Woolf was an British essayist, novelist, and critic who was educated by her parents. Her childhood was fraught with illness and death, starting with her mother’s death when Woolf was only 13. As shown in her writing, the hardships and instability she dealt with have heavily influenced her thinking. The audience of Woolf’s work included those who were interested in the effects of mental illness and appreciated the same style of writing as her father, Leslie Stephen, who was a notable author and critic as well. In “The Death of the Moth,” Woolf employs various rhetorical devices and strategies to compare her own struggle with death to the physical struggle of the dying moth. She personifies death, saying “the insignificant little creature know knew death”. This tones down the intensity of death. Rather than saying “he died,” which sounds much more brutal, she eases into the idea by suggesting that death was just another person to be met. By downplaying death, she is possibly rationalizing to herself how suicide was insignificant – just another idea. Additionally, Woolf describes the moth’s death in excruciating detail to emphasize the struggle of living with a mental illness. She is drawing a connection between the slow and sure death by mental instability to the drawn-out death of the moth. Overall, Woolf provides interesting insight into the mind of a person with mental illness at a time when mental illnesses weren’t as widely recognized through her use of personification and excessive detail. 

IRB Introduction: The Big Short

The Big Short, by Michael Lewis, discusses the banking crisis of 2008 from his view with a focus on the different people involved. I chose this book because it has been recommended to me several times by various people as a crucial read for my generation and because, at this point, I am interested in economics and finances. From what I've read at this point, I have come to understand that The Big Short is not so packed with financial jargon that I couldn't read it, given my limited experience in the field. Just having read so far, I notice several fresh metaphors which gives me reason to believe that Lewis's writing style will be interesting in addition to the book's interesting topic.

TOW #17: "Loving and hating the superbowl"

"Loving and hating the superbowl"

What better time to bring up the morals surrounding football than the morning of Superbowl Sunday?

Source: http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2013/01/31/super-bowl-xlvii.jpg

Right after the Superbowl every year, everyone is eager to talk about the winner, the loser, the bets, and the advertisements, and this year was no exception. But who is going to talk about the mental, emotional, and physical toll the game takes on the players? That would be concerned spectators like the author of "Loving and Hating the Superbowl" Gene Seymour, a film critic who has written for publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Newsday about media and culture. By writing this opinion-based editorial just hours before the giant event, Seymour's purpose is to present the reader, presumably a football fan, with the more negative side of football and ultimately lead him or her to consider their own stance his ideas. To achieve his purpose, Seymour uses allusions, rhetorical questions, and comparisons. To begin his somewhat controversial article, the author makes an allusion to John Matuszak from "North Dallas Forty." This serves to softly introduce his idea in a non-offensive way. To transition into his main point, Seymour pulls from the movie, quoting,  "Every time I call it a game, you call it a business. Every time I call it a business, you call it a game." Seymour shows that just as there is blurring contrast between business and football, the line between cruelty and entertainment is blurred in the NFL. After Seymour delves into his main point regarding immoral excitement, he poses a question for his audience, asking, "How does one stay passionate about football in the face of the grim, steadily mounting number of cases involving ex-players undergoing physical and mental injury and anguish over the sport's long-term effects?" Seymour sympathizes with fellow fans by expressing his desire to be able to enjoy football while still conveying his message. Also, the question itself invites the reader to think about how they're participating in this potentially wrongful form of entertainment. Lastly, the author wraps his article up by tying back to his original allusion by comparing football to business. He says that business has a powerful edge over the game (implying further confusion between football-watching morals) and that soon, the game might loose (implying that the allure of immoral entertainment will win over the crowd). 

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/31/opinion/seymour-super-bowl/index.html?hpt=op_t1