Analysis Of Nick Riggle's 'High Five'

Nick Riggle is the author of “High Five!” He is a writer and a philosopher. Riggle is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy at the University of San Diego. His work has appeared on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. In his article, he claims that being awesome is the desired achievement for many people and that it is the proclaimed antonym of “sucking”. He also mentions that a “high five” is a gesture of showing appreciation. He provides the readers with an interesting clever main argument; however, he does not provide enough reasoning to support his sub-arguments. Furthermore, he occasionally uses misleading examples that weaken his argument instead of supporting it.

In his article, Riggle (2016) explains that awesomeness is

Also, the high-five is used to show appreciation. This argument is an appealing and interesting argument. The author’s opinion is clearly stated with no ambiguity, and a careful read of the article will show this. Additionally, this topic will appeal to a broad audience, it can be read and interpret by a young or old audience. The argument will provoke readers to think about the meanings of “awesome” and “suck”. It will cause them to reflect these two words on their own life, to wonder if they are awesome, or if they suck. In order to prove his main argument; the author relies on sub-arguments that combine together to produces the main argument. He first starts by defining what he means by the words “awesome” and “suck”. Then goes on to explain how they are used in the daily lives. The arguments about awesomeness eventually lead to the high-five, his second part of the main argument. He mainly uses various examples to prove each of his

The author will usually rely on his examples to prove is arguments. He does not explain the claims he makes, which decrease the strength of his arguments. For example, he mentions that a high-five is “not the mutual appreciation of achievement, but the feeling we get upon the achievement of mutual appreciation”. This statement is arguable, some people perform the high-five to actually show appreciation of achievement rather than of trying. The author does not signify whatsoever why the high-five does not mean “job well-done”. He gives another argument that each and every person uses the word “suck”, which is a broad claim. However, in his following paragraph, he does not reason why all people use “suckiness”, but rather gives two examples of political leaders who do use it. This is a weak inductive argument, as he assumes that if the famous political leaders use this word, then so does the average person. Here the author should have probably listed a psychological reason that explains why humans react either positively or negatively. This might have increased the strength and acceptability of his argument. In addition, most of the arguments the author uses are inductive arguments rather than deductive arguments. This means that he relies more on probability and giving examples than on providing reasons. Deductive arguments are arguably stronger than inductive