Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet Rhetorical Analysis

            Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet by Amanda Hess was written with the purpose to inform about the plight of women on the internet and to argue against the way that society treats the cases. While Hess does make some good points about the way that society treats women on the internet her argument is flimsy in many places and relies on pathos to get the audience angry and thus more easily convince them. The main problem with her argument that women specifically are being treated in a way they should not is that almost every one of her examples is of women in positions of power. Not so much power in the traditional sense, but the power to write and inform. All of her examples of women being mistreated on the internet are when a woman wrote something controversial. While she is right that no person should be threatened for stating their opinion on a matter she is wrong in saying that these women in her examples are being treated this way because they are women they are being treated this way more so because with controversy comes adversaries to that controversy and some are not intelligent enough to handle it in a civilized way. On the other hand Hess’ voice seems to help her argument. Her voice is one that is being victimized and through this the reader starts to feel sympathy for her. She often mentions the situations that she and others had to go through with law enforcement and does well to make the reader feel as though she had been treated unfairly even though at some points, when looked at closer, it feels like she is grasping at straws to help her argument along. There are a few different audiences in this essay. The main one is women on the internet. At times the feeling is that she is trying to empower women and make them specifically feel that they have been mistreated and must force change. The two secondary audiences are men that threaten on the internet and law enforcement. She makes a call to law enforcement to do their jobs and protect those that need it. Hess also is trying to tell men that threaten that they have no place on the internet and should stop. Overall Hess’ argument is flimsy and does not convince.

In The Loneliness of the Interconnected by Charles Seife the author attempts to persuade his audience in the idea that the internet is changing our ability to create new opinions from new information. The author comes to one major conclusion, which he then goes on to explain in very fine and explicit detail using real life examples. The important conclusion that Seife writes is this, “We are becoming ever more resistant to the effects of uncomfortable facts--and ever more capable of treating them as noise.”(Readings for Writing at Virginia Tech, pg. 225). From here he goes into a process of writing that supports this statement. He starts with a small anecdote and uses it to build onto his argument. The story that is one about Hyde Park in London where the author explains how groups of strong belief speak to passersby and can more easily get an audience because of the amount of people in Hyde Park. Once this is thoroughly explained he goes on to compare this to the internet, he says that the internet is exactly like this, but on a much bigger scale where almost anyone can go and read whatever a person of strong belief has to say. After he explains the idea he continues into further detail by using another example that is closer to the topic. He speaks of a time when people actually managed to get the CDC to look into a disease that was all in their heads because so many people believed it to be a real thing. The CDC proved this disease to be all in in the head of the person that believed to be inflicted and yet many still think that this is a real disease. The author explains this belief to be powered by the internet. Seife clearly outlines facts that prove his statement to be true.