These last few weeks, I've been spending day and night at Wawa to survive my robotics build season. Since we are spending up to 40 hours a week stuck at the high school, my friends and I make multiple trips to Wawa a day to buy heaps and heaps of sandwiches, Monster energy drinks, coffee, and junk food. An article that definitely hit close to home this week was a NY Times article that explored the cultural divide between Sheetz and Wawa fanatics throughout the state of Pennsylvania. I didn't even know what Sheetz was, but the article implicitly explained why I didn't know what Sheetz was. It's because I lived smack dab in the middle of a Wawa fanatic region. The article explained things so well and in such an entertaining manner that I was able to actually get through an article and enjoy it.
This article was really fun to read and very different from many other NY Times I've read so far. NY Times is usually my source of news and informational editorials that usually have a very serious overall tone, but this article had such a lighthearted purpose. Its purpose seemed to parody the "religiousness" of chain convenience store fandoms and have a whimsical mockery of how serious people take the "cultural divide." The first thing I noticed was that the article used a lot of irony in their diction, and that they made it ironically serious and used a lot of sweeping and general words that made the convenience store followings seem really grand. Just the fact that they called it a "cultural divide" was amusing because they made it seem like the "convenience store culture" is such a serious thing.
Another effective strategy they used to parody the convenience store fandoms is the interviews of the Sheetz and Wawa customers. It was laugh-out-loud hilarious because the article presented it like they were serious in giving these customer testimonials, and it seemed like the customer didn't even know the writer was making fun of them for being so "die-hard" about "the Wawa sandwich-ordering touch screens."
It was also really entertaining because of the way they organized the different opinions on Sheetz and then Wawa. The author alternated the Wawa and Sheetz testimonials and gave the article a flow that made it seem like a live debate between passionately fat Americans.
The author's persona is one I really enjoyed and would like to achieve in my writing. It was really effective in the way they built up the controversy and how he implicitly teared it down as a trivial issue. I thought his purpose of parodying the controversy was achieved because he was able to entertain the audience with his diction, use of testimonials and organization. I would definitely like to read more articles by this author.
This article was really fun to read and very different from many other NY Times I've read so far. NY Times is usually my source of news and informational editorials that usually have a very serious overall tone, but this article had such a lighthearted purpose. Its purpose seemed to parody the "religiousness" of chain convenience store fandoms and have a whimsical mockery of how serious people take the "cultural divide." The first thing I noticed was that the article used a lot of irony in their diction, and that they made it ironically serious and used a lot of sweeping and general words that made the convenience store followings seem really grand. Just the fact that they called it a "cultural divide" was amusing because they made it seem like the "convenience store culture" is such a serious thing.
Another effective strategy they used to parody the convenience store fandoms is the interviews of the Sheetz and Wawa customers. It was laugh-out-loud hilarious because the article presented it like they were serious in giving these customer testimonials, and it seemed like the customer didn't even know the writer was making fun of them for being so "die-hard" about "the Wawa sandwich-ordering touch screens."
It was also really entertaining because of the way they organized the different opinions on Sheetz and then Wawa. The author alternated the Wawa and Sheetz testimonials and gave the article a flow that made it seem like a live debate between passionately fat Americans.
The author's persona is one I really enjoyed and would like to achieve in my writing. It was really effective in the way they built up the controversy and how he implicitly teared it down as a trivial issue. I thought his purpose of parodying the controversy was achieved because he was able to entertain the audience with his diction, use of testimonials and organization. I would definitely like to read more articles by this author.
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