The Facebook Sonnet

The speaker’s dislike of Facebook, or the way people use Facebook, is immediately apparent in his relentlessly ironic tone: He assumes the role of a certain kind of Facebook user but denigrates them at the same time. His own stance becomes crystal clear in the final couplet: “Let’s sign up, sign in, and confess / Here at the altar of loneliness” (Lines 13-14). During the course of the sonnet, he has in effect disguised this theme; it exists out of range of the constant chatter and sharing and commenting on posts that characterize the social media site, in which everyone pretends they are always having a great time. They find support for this frame of mind from the people they “friend,” who are all too ready to relive, electronically, the good times of the past, while ignoring their present realities, which may have quite a different color. While some may find this harsh or not universally true, this is the speaker’s unequivocal perspective.

The word “loneliness” (Line 14), as the last word of the sonnet, has much force. It is what resonates in the reader’s mind immediately after reading the sonnet. It shows directly the speaker’s skepticism about the value of social media connections, which are not what people

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