Feed: Consumerism

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    M.T Anderson’s Feed is a novel that takes place in an imaginary universe that involves only the care of the virtual things in the world instead of real-life tragedies. While reading this book, I came across a lot of interesting themes but the main theme that intrigued me the most is Consumerism.
In this story, a “feed” is a device that is implanted in humans which provides unlimited information, entertainment, and advertisement to all.  Of course, while reading this it was a little scary considering that it relates to what many of us have today, cell phones. Cell phones provide us with the same amount of resources that a feed would except they are not instilled inside of us. Seeing how this feed affects the different characters when they hang with each other is also a prime example of a problem that our society faces today: the habit of talking to each other more virtually instead of interacting while we’re in person together. “We all sat there for a minute, looking like we were smiling but in reality, not. Violet chatted me, This is like when I was twelve, and we had a slumber party and agreed…” (165) On the other hand, another example of the characters “chatting” in Chapter 35 was very relatable. “..because Quendy sat down next to me and chatted, Impressed? Ain’t even real.” (190) In this quote, the character Quendy is jealous of a friend name Calista so she chats Titus to explain how she feels. This was actually relatable for me because I believe we all have our moments when we have an issue with something and we’ll shoot a text to our friends across the room instead of saying how we feel out loud to avoid causing a scene. 
Sadly, I relate to the many habits of these characters and it is an eye-opener because as a reader I am on the outside looking in. My question is, do you think that there is a way that we can disconnect this bad habit of social media and virtual use or have we become too accustomed?

Comments

  1. Tiara A WintonNovember 4, 2019 at 6:50 PM

    I am quality of texting my friend about a situation while being in the same room. As a community we have moved away from basic human interacts which makes us more comfortable being internet warriors. For me it is easier to express myself online because my keyboard doesn't make me nervous like social interactions does. My online friend count is 3x times more than my personal social group and i believe that the internet makes it so much easier to connect with people who are like minded. Its concerning that i lack proper social skills, and while reading this novel i have made it a goal to put myself out there more in the real world.

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