Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and three other Harvard University students. It had therefore been in existence for only seven years when Alexie wrote “The Facebook Sonnet.” By the end of 2004, the social networking service had one million users, a number that continued to grow rapidly as the decade wore on. By 2008, Facebook had overtaken Myspace as the most popular social media website in number of visits.

Although Facebook was free to join (and still is), the company profited from its advertisers, so it tried to keep people logged on for as long as possible and encourage them to come back quickly after they logged off. Facebook accomplished this by allowing users to accumulate feedback on their posts, photos, or comments in the form of notifications and “likes,” so they could see who was reacting to their posts and what they were saying. People liked the instant gratification this provided, and the use of Facebook soon developed an addictive quality. It is human nature to want acknowledgement and praise, so users would keep returning to the site to see how many likes a particular post had accumulated and whether anyone was commenting on it. The more a person participated, the more feedback they got, which led to even more participation.