In this essay, I argue that popular culture strongly portrays and greatly determines a person’s experiences with friendship. In recent years, the popularity of social media platforms, such as Facebook, have risen portraying a new form of communication for friends and strangers alike. To say that the growing age of social media has impacted popular culture would be an understatement. Traditionally, friendships have been formed off of face-to-face interaction, and with the steady rise of social networking, those types of connections seem to be few and far between. In the article, Why I Am Not a Friend, Mariam Thalos expressed her concerns on the topic saying that “…social networking might make a wide range of face-to-face interactions obsolete, …show more content…
People often look to the small screen to see fictional versions of their own lives mapped out for their viewing pleasure. Having said that, the friendships that are often portrayed on television shows, such as Seinfeld, accurately portray those of real people. Television is one of popular cultures biggest assets and can have a great impact on its viewers. The friendships formed in real life could either be mimicked by the characters on shows such as Seinfeld, or they can be influenced by the characters portrayed on Seinfeld. The viewers stay tuned into this program because they are able to see their friendships being reflected back to them by the characters’ quirky behaviors. Jennifer McMahon, author of Seinfeld, Subjectivity, and Sartre, claims that the characters in Seinfeld “…offer us useful insights about human nature, ourselves, or our times” and goes on to credit the show’s success to “…the fact that viewers can see a bit of themselves in the sitcom.” Even if a person’s own friendships aren’t similar to those on television, they’re still impacted by the behaviors being shown to them, and one might argue that they’re being conditioned to build a friendship as captivating as the ones they’re enjoying on screen. Television shows, being the pop culture monster that they are, carry a certain ability to either portray our lives and reflect them back to us or determine a template for us to …show more content…
Aristotle’s first form of friendship, the friendships of pleasure, are often seen in bonds made through social media networks such as Facebook. Friendships of pleasure are formed when people share a mutual enjoyment of a certain thing or activity. Facebook operates by encouraging users to input their own personal likes and allowing others to view them. This means anyone can notice a shared commonality between themselves and someone else and create a friendship based off of that mutual interest. The second form of friendship according to Aristotle, the friendships of utility, are formed when people can serve to one another’s own advantage. In the article, Why Can’t We Be Virtual Friends, Craig Condella claims that “…friendships of utility [are] more common as we age.” On the contrary to that argument, a friendship based on utility was popularized by two youths in the 1986 film Stand by Me. In the film, two of the main characters, Chris and Gordie, become friends who despite genuinely caring for each other, often use each other for their own benefits. The boys don’t necessarily share the same interests like those in a pleasurable friendship, rather they both shared a common need for a friend and a confidant. They used one another to further their success in school and to distract from their dysfunctional