Tolentino Argument Map by Simran G

Main Argument

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:13:46 UTC

Tolentino's main thesis throughout her writing is that the internet as she knew it as a child/teenager was better than the internet currently.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:18:20 UTC

She gives 5 problems that contribute to this: "first, how the internet is built to distend
our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our
opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it8

cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our
sense of scale." (Tolentino, 8-9)

Problem 1: Identity

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:19:21 UTC

Problem 2: Opinions

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:19:36 UTC

Problem 3: Opposition

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:19:51 UTC

Problem 4: Solidarity

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:20:12 UTC

Problem 5: Scale

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:20:33 UTC

What is scale?

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:21:58 UTC

In this text, Tolentino's definition of scale is more based on the importance of events, rather than the size of a physical object. She thinks that the internet makes us feel that things that are unimportant are important.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:25:19 UTC

"...social media was constructed around the idea that a thing is important insofar as it is important to you. In an early internal
memo about the creation of Facebook’s News Feed, Mark Zuckerberg observed, already beyond parody, “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in
Africa.” (Tolentino, 24)

What is identity?

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:34:06 UTC

Tolentino defines identity as a performance shaped by how one presents themself and how they are percevied by others.

Overvaluing Opinions

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:35:07 UTC

Tolentino writes that the internet encourages people to express all their opinions, leading them to believe that their views are the only right things.

What is opposition?

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:36:56 UTC

Tolentino says that opposition is when people choose sides in arguments and disagree on certain topics.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:38:21 UTC

In most cases, overvaluing one's opinions and having extreme views can lead to online opposition, especially on platforms like Twitter where many people dump all their views online for others to see and comment on.

What is solidarity?

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:44:32 UTC

Solidarity is unity towards a cause. Tolentino says users don't have a sense of solidarity anymore because they're always bringing themselves into it instead of focusing on the issue and offering support.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:47:24 UTC

People think that the issues that they see (due to their algorithm) are the most important, even if they may not be. Or they feel that issues that may affect them more directly are more important than maybe global issues.

Erving Goffman

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:52:52 UTC

Sociologist who wrote The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:56:32 UTC

"In every human interaction, he wrote in The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, a person must put on a sort of performance, create an impression for an audience...People often make faces, in private, in front of bathroom mirrors, to convince themselves of their own attractiveness. The “lively belief that an unseen audience is present,” Goffman writes, can have a significant effect." (Tolentino, 9-10)

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 19:58:24 UTC

"Goffman observes the difference between doing something and expressing the doing of something, between feeling something and conveying a feeling. “The representation of an activity will vary in some degree from the activity itself and therefore inevitably misrepresent it,” Goffman writes. (Take the experience of enjoying a sunset versus the experience of communicating to an audience that you’re enjoying a sunset, for example.) The internet is engineered for this sort of misrepresentation; it’s designed to encourage us to create certain impressions rather than allowing these impressions to arise “as an incidental by-product of [our] activity.”" (Tolentino 14-15)

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 20:00:47 UTC

The internet causes people to feel that they constantly have to perform, but Tolentino writes that before, everyone did their own thing on the internet, and no one was really perceived the way they are now, making the internet a more judgy and worse place now.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 20:17:23 UTC

"But you will never catch me arguing that professional opinion-havers in the age of the internet are, on the whole, a force for good." (Tolentino, 15)

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 20:19:45 UTC

In this section, Tolentino talks about how her job consists mainly of having and sharing her own opinions. However, she doesn't believe that doing this all the time is a good thing. Before, people's opinions weren't broadcasted to the whole world, you had to try to find other people on the internet, but now in the new age of the social internet, its too easy to see something and get offended, leading to opposition as well.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 20:30:51 UTC

"Web 2.0 had curdled; its organizing principle was shifting. The early internet had been constructed around lines of affinity, and whatever good spaces remain on the internet are still the product of affinity and openness. But when the internet moved to an organizing principle of opposition, much of what had formerly been surprising and rewarding and curious became tedious, noxious, and grim. This shift partly reflects basic social physics. Having a mutual enemy is a quick way to make a friend..." (Tolentino, 17)

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 20:33:07 UTC

Tolentino writes how the internet before was a much more welcoming place for opinions and people in general, but now everyone just wants to defend their views. This shows how Tolentino feels that the internet has changed for the worse rather than the better.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 20:38:46 UTC

"But the internet brings the “I” into everything. The internet can make it seem that supporting someone means literally sharing in their experience— that solidarity is a matter of identity rather than politics or morality, and that it’s best established at a point of maximum mutual vulnerability in everyday life...Of course I support the black struggle because I, myself, as a woman of Asian heritage, have personally been injured by white supremacy." (Tolentino, 20-21)

simrangunjal07 — 2025-02-25 20:43:04 UTC

Tolentino shares examples of how people trying to be supportive just end up talking about themselves and their own experiences. This shows how people overvalue their own opinions and experiences.

Hypervisibility

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-02 21:48:13 UTC

Individuals are constantly observed, judged, and expected to maintain a carefully curated self-presentation in the current age of the internet

Virtue Signaling

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-02 21:52:38 UTC

The practice of publicly expressing opinions or moral stances primarily to enhance one's social standing rather than to effect real change, and is fueled by the performative nature of the internet.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-02 21:58:14 UTC

This is a problem because during Web 1.0, everyone could do their own thing on the internet without interacting with people as much as you do online now. The web was mainly used to discuss common interests, but now people create online identities that can be constantly perceived.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-02 22:06:03 UTC

This is a problem because it leads to extreme polarization on the internet, and when people believe that only their views are correct, it leads to opposition and makes the internet more toxic.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-03 19:02:39 UTC

This is a problem because similarly to when people overvalue their opinions, people start to take sides and become very vocal about their opinions. When this happens, the amount of opposition and people arguing about anything and everything increases, making the internet worse.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-03 19:03:13 UTC

This is a problem because the internet turns these shows of solidarity into a performative action rather than actual unity for a cause. It makes it so these displays of solidarity seem very shallow and lacking actual meaning.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-03 19:03:36 UTC

This is a problem because people stop realizing what is important and what isn't. By treating small insignificant issues and larger more worldly issues with the same level of importance, people don't care as much about the things that matter.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-05 18:52:53 UTC

Instead of solidarity being used to unite people for positive reasons, people now unite in the face of opposition and band together to take others down and it becomes a negative force instead.

Performance Activism

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-06 04:36:16 UTC

Activism that's done for public show rather than actual change

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-06 04:41:53 UTC

The internet makes expressing an opinion feel as important as actually doing something. Tolentino uses Goffman’s idea that there’s a difference between experiencing something and performing that experience for others. The internet amplifies this performance, making opinions seem more valuable than action.

simrangunjal07 — 2025-03-06 04:53:39 UTC

Performative acts of solidarity and actual acts of solidarity may be treated with the same level of importance due to people's sense of scale being destroyed.