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Amanda Sirkedzhyan
Professor Vana DerOhanessian
English 115 Progression Essay 2
27 October 2014
The Ultimate Society
We have this set perception of our society as this perfectly neat photograph, it was
created for us even before we could do simple things like walk or talk. Readying and sculpting us
for the moment we are old enough to take charge and be adults, preparing us for the real world so
that we do not let ourselves fail under the pressures of life. This current society we live in has
made us believe that it has no faults, no flaws, and no deeper hidden issues but is simply a
figment of complete and utter perfection. When in reality, every society or group has flaws and
that is what separate's it from any other group of people. Social media is one of the major
examples of something that pushes being the best you could be to impress your viewers. From
photoshop to filters, social media pushes you to change things about yourself only to appeal to
the broader audience of the image. It could be anything from a simple selfie of yourself or even a
picture with a group of your closest friends; you spend so much time changing the lighting,
contrasting the colors, removing your red-eyes, and even blurring out your tiny blemishes.
Having the power to do all these things just creates a want for people to use it, but who really
cares about the lighting or the contrast? The viewer should be viewing the image for fun, not to
judge and examine the little details. Here is my question to everyone reading this, without having
any faults or failures are we still human beings or are we slowly turning into perfect robotic
machines that this society deems as worthy? Although Instagram and Twitter have created such a
powerful image of being the ideal human being, it does not mean that people who are different in
their own special way should be labeled off as weird or unwelcome.

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One of my favorite articles that touches down on the topic of the perfect society is
titled, The Journal of Philosophy. It was written by a powerful author named Robert D.
Cummings and it examines the ideas of another great author Gabriel Marcel. Here is a passage
from the article that talks about one of Marcels writings, Of course, if we press the implications
of Marcel's remarks about American technological society, we would have to recognize that an
American's ontological sensibility, instead of remaining fluidly ambient, may have itself become
the harshly analytic and hardened product of the machine age. He branches into the simple fact
that with all of these new modern images and ideals of how we as humans should behave, we are
slowly turning into machine copies of one another. Which touches into the idea of homogeny, the
need to be identical to the people around you or the need to fit in to a larger crowd of people. He
attempts to get all of his readers or audience to question the way they live their everyday lives, to
begin to spot out or realize all the little things they do to fit into this society or to reach that
perfect standard. I just do not see what the advantage is in being perfect and being the same as
everybody else, it is better to be unique and to have that one thing that just makes you stand out
in a crowd of people. God purposely created people different from one another with the obvious
intention of having them differentiate from each other and be their own person, having that one
mysterious talent or beautiful flaw that makes each person who they are. So why would we
possibly want to change that for a stupid idea of being perfect? A celebrity that really pushes
the boundaries and tried to stand out and be different is Lady Gaga, she pushes herself on the
idea of being different than the people around her. The idea of being different from everyone
around you used to be widely known and extremely popular, but it was soon pushed off to the
side for the idea of meeting societies new and improved standards of being this doll that never
messes up.

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Social media, it has slowly become a blessing and a curse all in one. Yes you have the
ability to share your thoughts and moments with your friends, but now you also have to deal with
the pressures of always having to look your best in everything you post up for the world to see.
From Instagram to Twitter, there is so many different websites used for so many different
objectives. But lately Instagram has become a phase that a lot of us do not wanna be apart of
anymore, it lowers self esteem and leaves us wishing we could change the way we look. I do not
know about anyone else, but for me it really does make me doubt myself when I scroll past a
beautiful girl on my timeline. But then I always like to remind myself that, that picture was most
probably posted after hours of photoshop and editing. No matter how perfect someone tries to
make themselves seem, we just need to remember that we all have flaws. Recently singer and
songwriter Justin Bieber, posted a picture that really reached out to me. It is shown in Figure 1
and it states, Dont let Instagram define your self worth. This was something that truly hit
home, have you ever looked at a picture and wondered why you could not look like that? I do not
necessarily think Justin Bieber posted the picture with the intention of touching such a sensitive
topic, but in the end it did. It shows all of his female fans and followers that Instagram has no
right to define who a person is based on what filter they use. I know I have and I am pretty sure a
large majority of people do the same thing.
Another example of a social media that is starting to slowly fall down the wrong path is
Twitter. It started off as a way to just communicate with your closest friends and see what the hot
new celebrities were up too. But sadly everything has to come with a downside, there has been
too many recent cases were a small incident on Twitter has led to a an even larger and
unnecessary form of bullying, leaving the victim in a horrible state. Since when did bullying
become okay? Since when did Twitter become a center for bullies? Cyber bullying on Twitter

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has gotten so out of hand that its beginning to be geared towards not only normal people like you
and I, but also celebrities. The issue of "cyber bullying" has been receiving increased attention,
with many celebrities and even Olympic athletes falling victim. Zoe Smith, Rebecca Adlington
and Tom Daley may have won the support of much of the nation, but they were all victims of
offensive comments posted to their Twitter pages. Twitter was supposed to be a fun way to
communicate with the celebrities we loved and get a glimpse into their everyday lives, it was
never meant to be a place to publicly attack them. One incident on Twitter that really got me
angry was the negative attention turned onto Zelda Williams, daughter of loved actor Robin
Williams. Instead of being left in piece to grieve over the loss of her father, she had people
insulting and attacking her all over Twitter. Do you really think a girl who just lost her father
receive gruesome and unthinkable images? The tweets and rumors got to be so much that Zelda
Williams got so fed up she had to delete her twitter to escape from it all. Figure 2 displays the
reason she deleted her Twitter and her last tweet before departing the website. This absolutely
made me horrified, it is something that is not and will never be okay.
All in all I have come to the sad conclusion that having a society expect so much from its
people only leads to chaos and problems. Yes we should strive to be the best we can be, but we
should not be bullied and put down if our best is not as good as someone else. We each have
something about us that is unique and made specifically for us, so why do we bullies and why do
we tease each other? There are so many reasons as to why our societies slowly crumbling, I
believe one of the main reasons is social media because of the powerful effect it plays on todays
generation. It started off as a great new thing but as always, you have people who do not know
how to use something without ruining it. Along with the all the people who use Twitter and
Instagram for a form of communication and enjoyment, there are the people that use it to hurt

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others in an attempt to boost themselves. When we learn to love ourselves and not allow
ourselves to harm others or fall to their attempts of harming us, that is when websites like
Instagram and Twitter may end up standing a chance. Do you think that time will ever come? I
truly hope so.

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Work Cited
"Bullying policies should also cover social media." Caterer & Hotelkeeper 26 Oct. 2012. General
OneFile. Web. 29 Oct. 2014
"Instagram - Fast, Beautiful Photo Sharing for Your iPhone." Instagram. Justin Bieber, 27 Oct.
2014. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.
Metaphysical Journal by Gabriel Marcel; Bernard Wall; The Mystery of Being. II. Faith &
Reality by Gabriel Marcel; Ren Hague; Man Against Mass Society by Gabriel Marcel;
Donald Mackinnon; G. S. Fraser
Ridley, Louise. "Robin Williams's Daughter Zelda Is Back On Twitter With This Quote About
Bullying." The Huffington Post UK. N.p., 9 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.

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Figure 1

Figure