Internet and American culture Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Internet and American culture - Research Paper Example r different aspects of culture that have been impacted – the way that we interact on-line, the way that we meet new people, the way that the Internet can make a star out of ordinary people, and the impact that the Internet has had on businesses due to services like Yelp! One of the affects that the Internet has had on our culture and society is in personal interactions and social circles. That is, it has made many of our social circles infinitely wider and more impersonal. Take for instance, Facebook. With 400 million users as of February 2010, and an additional 25 million users added each month (Kirkpatrick, 2010, p. 334), Facebook has officially become ubiquitous. Facebook has made one’s social circle wider, but much more shallow, with some people having 1,000s of â€Å"friends.† And, since it would presumably be impossible for any one person to have that many â€Å"friends†, a person’s friends list is mainly populated by â€Å"weak ties† who might be mere acquaintances – â€Å"it might be someone they met at a conference, or someone from high school who recently ‘friended’ them on Facebook, or somebody from last year’s holiday party. In their pre-Internet lives, these sorts of acquain tances would have quickly faded from their attention. But when one of these far-flung people suddenly posts a personal note to your feed, it is essentially a reminder that they exist† (Thompson, 2008, p. 7). While this is an accurate description of the vast majority of â€Å"friends† on one’s Facebook account, it often gets even further removed. Some of the â€Å"friends† , in fact, for a lot of us, many of the â€Å"friends† are people to whom one has never spoken a word – random people from school that you know of, have seen around, but have never spoken to, along with many â€Å"frenemies† who you maybe never liked, all show up on one’s â€Å"friend† list and proceed to bombard you with their everyday mundane activities. Yet these silly, mundane, borderline