We’ve all posted one at some point in our life. Facebook
statuses have a variety of purposes, but their main purpose is to inform your
friends, family, and acquaintances about what is going on in your life. For
example, maybe you were admitted to the college of your choice, and in
celebration, you choose to announce it through a status on Facebook. Or maybe
your boyfriend broke up with you and you want to let people know that he hurt
you by posting another status. In either case, statuses are there to help people
share thoughts, ideas, announcements, or to simply say something funny.
Typically, statuses are not planned extensively. One usually
decides whether they want to post a status just a few moments before they
actually do it and the only thing that needs to be done prior to posting a
status is to open Facebook, whether it be though a mobile app, or on the
computer. Statuses are usually not formal. There is no set of rigid guidelines
that determine whether a post can be classified as a status. Grammar and proper
punctuation are not extremely important. You do not need a draft of any sort. A
person simply opens Facebook, locates the status bar and writes whatever they
happen to be thinking about. The content of a status can fall on a very broad
spectrum ranging from the description of one’s day, to the announcement of a
pregnancy. Whatever the context may be, the purpose of a Facebook status
remains the same: to inform the people who know you about “what’s on your
mind”. Seeing as that Facebook has privacy options, a person may regulate who
can see the status. You may select your status to be open to anyone, or be seen
only by a particular group of people, therefore regulating the audience for the
reception of the status. For example, if you don’t want strangers reading your
timeline, or having your mom find out about your wild weekend, yet still want
to post a status about it, you may change your privacy settings.
The style and tone of a status may also vary greatly
depending on the content. The use of professional
language or jargon while describing a situation, for example, may convey a more
serious tone, while using improper capitalization and characters in place of
certain letters may set a more dismissive tone. The length of a status can also
influence the tone. When the targeted audience sees a large block of text, they
might mentally prepare for a more serious post.
So what makes a status a status? Well, for starters, the
input of text into the status bar at the top of one’s Facebook timeline. Another
feature of a status is the use of a more relaxed language, in order for the
wide audience to understand, relate and respond to the text. And lastly, the description
of some kind of scenario or story. Regardless of how short the status is, it
has to describe something for the audience to take away.
I liked that your style and tone of writing was very conversational and relaxed to go along with the fact that Facebook statuses are also the same. This also made the piece very quick to read and understand. Your thoughts are very coherent and fluidly move throughout the piece. The context of a status is easily found and understood with little room for questions as well as the audience. For those who are not learning about genre in a class, identifying each convention would be difficult on your post because it came across more descriptive than analysis. However, your post was constructed well and easily accessible and it was fun to remember when I would update my status on Facebook.
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