Is it more important to be liked or loved? In my opinion, I think there’s a time and place for both. In the long term, it’s more important to be loved, and less to be liked. So in a sense, I agree with Franzen’s concept of being liked and being loved. However, I disagree on the “mechanics” of being liked and being loved. Franzen implies that one has to fake their personality in order to be liked by people and that facade is hard keep up for a long period of time. Once that facade breaks, you’ll find yourself as being someone you’re not. However, I think you can have yourself be liked while being yourself. I think he also sees liking as a very superficial, negative thing, which I also disagree with. I think liking something can be a genuine attraction to something that’s just a less strong emotion than love. A like can slowly crawl into a love and a passion for that specific thing as well.
Based on Franzen’s basis of being liked, social media would play a big factor in this. Nowadays, getting clout, otherwise known as fame, on social media is seen as a very important thing. So many young individuals strive to be the next new thing. In order to do this, they have to be “liked” by others. And to do this, fake personas will be put on in front of the face of their audiences. This type of like is the superficial kind of like Franzen basis his idea of likes on. I personally dislike this whole culture of social media clout and the heavy emphasis our youth places on it. And this ties in with technology/smartphones because as our youth grows to be more attached to technology/smartphones, the bigger of an emphasis social media will have in our lives.
