Since the internet has expanded to almost everywhere in the world, there has been an ongoing debate about whether reading and writing online is bad for our deep thinking, or just a new way to help grow our imaginations. Nicholas Carr explains his hate toward the internet in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” but Kathleen Fitzpatrick expresses her love for reading and writing online in her article “Reading and Writing Online, Rather than in Decline”. Being in an age of technology reading online is a relevant topic that I can relate to since I use the internet on a daily basis. Flowrestling, an online wrestling site full of articles, is a big outlet for my online reading. I will always scroll through the endless pages of articles Willie, one of the editors on the website, post always getting a hilarious spin on the wrestling news around the world. Through reading Flowrestling articles I sympathize with Fitzpatrick’s points that online reading involves community, convenience, and portrays the overall amount of readers online global in size.
The internet is thought to have decreased the amount of reading people do, but this has been misinterpreted since more people read online than ever before. Carr makes the points in his argument that reading online has shaped everyone’s minds to not be able to dive into long text and immerse themselves with the reading. According to Carr, concentrating on long reading is impossible because any vital information needed is only one Google search away. Fitzpatrick refutes Carr’s point saying people not reading as much is a misconception, but they’re just reading more in new fast paced ways: “Given the fact that Westerns who are active on the Internet arguably read more in their daily lives than they ever have before”. Fitzpatrick demonstrates even though there might be a decline in the amount of physical novels there is not a decline in reading as a whole. Flowrestling has been a way for me to consume much of my online reading on a daily basis. I scroll through my Instagram, a source of social media, seeing on Flowrestling’s page a new article was posted, then I proceed to immerse myself on the site reading many articles. Once I read an article about the United States World Team Member, Jordan Burroughs the four time World Champion and 2012 Olympic Champion. Then I clicked on another article about the rankings of all the United States World Team Members. Moving from one article to the next I spiraled into loads of reading without noticing. Reading online increased my reading to an everyday activity. People read through many outlets such as blogs, ebooks, and articles, online reading has spike reading to all people in the world with access to the internet.
Online reading has grown in large amounts because of the community that comes with it. Most all of online readings have a comment section, which incites a community. Spending so much time online on social media may seem like a waste of time and not beneficial, but while I look at posts I actively read and write comments. Today I read an article on Flowrestling about the World Championships asking people of the internet community which wrestler they thought was going to win. The comments were flooded with how some people thought James Downey the underdog, was going to win, along with many other World Team Members. The community of wrestlers from around the world commenting on their favorite wrestlers brought a sense of community and even made reading fun. The internet has opened up reading to me as a more entertaining and engaging way to gain information. Reading online has definitely helped me read a lot more than I would have without it.
Convenience is the most prevalent reason reading online has progressed to a mainstream activity. Carr even admits that reading online is convenient making more people read. Carr makes a great point when he says, “A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after”. He explains that more people are seeking to use the internet for research because of the internet’s easy use. Carr believes this fast pace reading is shaping his mind to also seek convenience, and he cannot keep his mind concentrated on long articles or novels. Fitzpatrick also believes in the convenience of the internet accessed through social media platforms. She explains the social media site Twitter holds many online scholarly reading and writing, “The standard dismissal of Twitter as a scholarly tool, for instance, suggest that no serious argument can be made in 140 characters”. She portrays that although social media platforms can just be dismissed as a waste of time, scholarly work is done on them everyday. Because most people around the world have some type of social media, many people debate and have conversations regularly. Reaching into my pocket I can pull out the internet where I take part in reading many Flowrestling articles, so therefore I read and write consistently everyday. This sort of ready availability is exactly what Carr points out about reading online because of convenience. While Carr believes convenience cuts away at our deep thought, I think it gives more opportunity to reading and writing in more engaging ways. Being able to have the entire internet in your pocket makes most everyone use it constantly, which leads to move overall reading.
Fitzpatrick and Carr both make insightful arguments giving details to support both claims. While reading online may seem to cut down on the amount of physical novels being read, it does not reduce the amount of reading being done everyday. Reading has increased through the internet having platforms such as social media, online blogs, and ebooks. Carr points out the internet is just a place of convenience and no deep reading is ever done on it, but Fitzpatrick argues convenience leads to community and more over all reading. I agree with Fitzpatrick’s idea of community in online reading leads to more reading overall because it has lead to more reading not only in my life but to many others around the world.
Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. “Reading (and Writing) Online, Rather Than on the Decline.” Reading (and Writing) Online, Rather Than on the Decline, 2012, www.dropbox.com/s/1521lrhxqthxn6t/Fitzpatrick.pdf?dl=0.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 13 June 2018, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/.
Honor Code: DB
Strength: You have strong points and convey them relatively well through your own experiences along with Fitzpatrick’s and Carr’s
Weakness: Avoid to be verbs by rearranging the sentence with verbs that the subject does rather than say is/was.
Think about: Try making your conclusion more broad making this essay relevant to not just your experience but everyone in the world
Wow! You’ve done a great job setting up Carr and Fitzpatrick in conversation and using your own experience of Flo-Wrestling as a source of original evidence and data to contribute to the debate. Congratulations on your ability to adopt and adapt a new template. I also appreciate the way your argument develops in a logical manner, with each paragraph devoted to a single topic: how much we read today; how online reading generates community; how online reading is spurred by it’s convenience. While some might argue that this three-part structure echoes the 5-paragraph essay, I say 3 parts are justified because they support your thesis in important ways, rather than simply being topics used to fill a template.
You’ve also done a good job writing in your own voice, and reading aloud has allowed you to catch many of the errors you discovered in drafting, so this argument is much more clear and coherent. You can still weed out clutter and repetition, but rather than aiming a clutter, I suggest you focus on going deeper. One way you can do so is by engaging more deeply with your source material. The essay includes only two short quotations (one from Carr and one from Fitpatrick). Instead of just summarizing them, quote them to provide evidence of their positions. Then dig into what they say to see if it matches your experience–or doesn’t. Dig more deeply into FloWrestling–quote from a specific article or provide evidence to show how you get a sense of community on that site. Do you comment? Have you ever engaged in a conversation with an author or other readers? If not, do you still feel like you get to know certain writers and share their interests– as if they were your friends?
Something to think about is how writing fits into the discussion. Your title promises a focus on reading, which the essay fulfills, though it never really tells us anything about the bad or the ugly. What is bad or ugly reading? Does it happen on FloWrestling? The essay also mentions online writing more than once, endorsing Fitzpatrick’s claim that it’s happening more online, but doesn’t provide any evidence about how you write on the FloWrestling site. Rather than opening up your conclusion to more general relevance, I suggest you stay specific but go deeper. Ask yourself whether or not FloWrestling does help you become a better, stronger, and/or more active reader AND writer. Or consider whether the kind of forum it creates might be harnessed for more academic and scholarly purposes. After all, you are a professional student right now, and not (yet) a professional wrestler!
Please change your discussion settings so I don’t need approval!