In honor of Independence Day, The New York Times visualized America's would-be Facebook profile in its Op-Art section, translating the history of the U.S. into Facebook's iconic narrative structure.

The piece (below), "Like It or Unfriend It?" was created by novelist Teddy Wayne, Vanity Fair staffer Mike Sacks and designer Thomas Ng.

The graphic recalls a similar piece published by Slate's Christopher Beam and Chris Wilson in May, which chronicles recent U.S. events in an imaginary Barack Obama Facebook feed.

Last year the Washington Post published pieces of a real Facebook feed in "A Facebook Story: A mother's joy and a family's sorrow" to tell the tragic story of a young mother's illness and subsequent death.

All three pieces acknowledge a new kind of plot structure told through the incremental and often brief updates we post on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Notably, all three pieces subvert the reverse-chronological order in which these updates are normally displayed.







Image courtesy of Flickr, ladybugbkt