In lieu of a review here is a rant inspired by Feed, using actual examples from real-life teens to illustrate the possible retardation of our culture and language. Enjoy.This is a discussion from the Emo Girls/Boys r HOT!! group on Goodreads. I wanted to see what our youth really talk like. I figured I'd get them at their best, discussing politics. Here's a sampling:I"M BLACK BITCH!! i'd b racest against ME!! no....Obama is just a fag...plain & simple!! ill bakk out right now... BYEZZZ sorry....gotz a BIT too into my whole rage thing there....hehe *SO embarasseddamn, well i really don't see why ya'll are getting so mad i mean he does have the privlege to say what he wants i mean we do have a feedom of spech you know? but i don't really care who is president, i mean i'm moving out of the country so i see no point in careingokay...so...? what is going on here? who has violent anger right now? lol i just saw a picture of Obama smoking some kill yo, hahaThese are some of the more outrageous things said, but most of the in between comments were things like: wat tha...!?, lol, and okai.Yeah, this is just a very small group of people, but similar comments, and spellings can be found in any of the 'teen' groups I've ever looked through for shits and giggles. These kids don't seem to write much differently then the people talk in Feed, a dystopian teen novel about the a society all jacked into the internet through their heads. Their world seems awesome, they party and buy shit all the time, and party more, and goto School™, where they don't have to learn stuff like reading and writing, but how to get a killer job, and find good bargains online. They hang out and don't talk to each other, but message each other in their heads privately. Oh they also have lesions on their bodies, their skin is falling off, and most of the planet is dying from the effects of the consumer lifestyle these kids enjoy, but that's a downer and anyway they don't have to worry about it because the feeds in their heads are customized to optimize the users preferences and enjoyment of life. To sound like a curmudgeon would be to say that this isn't to far fetched from how things are now, like we don't have lesions on our skin, and we also don't have flying cars (I forgot to mention that). We do have linguistic books though that stress that teens should be allowed to express themselves in their inane LOL speak because, well I don't know why, I only looked at the book jacket. We no longer have libraries in schools, but school media centers where kids are taught how to use the internet, because they probably aren't getting enough of it at home and they are instructed by School Media Specialists. I guess these really are librarians, but we've got to make it hip and happening to get kids into MEDIA and not just stodgy old books that have review processes and editorial control over content and that can't be interacted with and consumed like right now. Lets see we also have all those stupid fucking people on their handheld devices who are constantly texting messages, looking up things, reading their custom feeds and can't seem to go a couple of minutes without having to check up on what's going on in their cyber world. What else. Lets see during the last broadcasted UFC fight (ok, I'm not immune to stupidity either, watching fighting has become my most recent foray into mindless enterainment), they kept telling the viewer to log onto Twitter to follow the fights from the comments UFC President Dana White was Twittering ringside. I mean, isn't watching the fight and listening to Joe Rogan's commentary enough, but now we also need to have the experience mediated another step through micro-blogging? Ok, or maybe we can look at a group of kids sitting on the floor of a bookstore all on top of each other like cockroaches and they all have their sidekicks out texting away, maybe even to each other, but it's like hanging out to be online or something. How much easier would it be for all of this to happen if it could just be broadcast to our heads? I'm sure most people would sign up for it immediately. Then you wouldn't have to miss anything on any of the RSS feeds you're subscribed to, any of the news or gossip that keeps getting churned out to keep people checking back constantly, you'd never have to be bored because you could just call up a YouTube video and see it right there in your head. Who wouldn't want that kind of immediate access to the whole wide streaming world? I might sound a tad self-righteous here, but I'm as guilty as anyone. We are an increasingly retarded society being swayed by a profit driven media culture. Some of the conditions in the world created in Feed may still be a bit far off, we still have forests in our world; but the conditions for the ultimate consumerist culture are not too many steps away from what we are at now.
I started this book over a week ago and only got through the first page before all the "likes" turned me off. I took a break, read a few other books, and tried again. This time I got through two chapters before I closed the book and took a breath."I can't do this," I told myself. "I hate books that overuse our obnoxious vernacular. And the made-up words are annoying and stupid. I much preferred the made-up slang in A Clockwork Orange.""So you're going to punish Anderson for using slang that is more realistic? You're going to punish him for making you uncomfortable with the world the way it is, for yourself because you know you use that word, like it or not.""Okay," I told the stupid analytic part of my brain. "If you'll just like shut up. I'll keep reading."And that is how I ended up reading this book.And it did make me uncomfortable. It's everything obnoxious about our media-frenzied, frantic-paced, impulse-driven, uneducated-praising society exemplified megawatt. In Anderson's world people are hardwired into corporate feeds that advertise to them according to what they're thinking, feeling, saying, looking at, etc. They chat with each other, watch shows, check the internet, invade each other's privacy, all within their bodies. Schools have quit teaching them facts because all that's accessible at the push of a button-no simpler than that, with nothing more than a thought. All their interactions are interrupted by this internal conversation/shopping/distraction. Through a combination of advertising and ignorance these shallow people don't care that the feeds are destroying them after they've destroyed the world where they continue to live in vertically stacked suburbs with fake air and fake sun and fake food. And they all (adults included) speak in that valley-girl like/dude hollowness, only their words are mega and unit and still plenty of like and f words. I picked up this book weeks after my disenchantment with facebook over the debacle on targeting advertising for us. I can see spelling and vocabulary plummeting in this text-typing generation and the interruption of technology into every moment of our lives. I fear for the laziness in education when information is at our fingertips. I can fathom technology being introduced where electronic devices are implanted so kids (okay me too) stop breaking them and losing them. I don't think we're that far off from biological computers. I can see the pitfalls of our society heading in something akin to this direction and it's disturbing. No more jokes from me about my surgically implanted cellphone. But those "likes" are too ingrained. I just have to keep kicking myself mentally whenever one slips out.ETA: I've been thinking about this book ever since I read it. I can't stop thinking about it. For all the dystopias I've been reading, I'm amazed that Anderson's world could discomfort me this much. And I've been thinking about his main character. While reading it, I was often disappointed with his choices, but now I think he was the perfect embodiment of this shallow world. I loved that Anderson offers no judgment or solution, just shows us this world with all its many flaws and lets it creep under your skin and make you uncomfortable with where the world is headed. M.T. Anderson is amazing. I look forward to reading his other books.
Do You like book Feed (2004)?
As seen on The ReadventurerI might feel uncertain if I actually liked Feed or not, but one thing I know for sure - the audio version of it is excellent. The book itself is unique because of its narrator - a teen in a future with a device in his head that directly connects him to the internet. Titus, who is constantly fed a cocktail of advertising, entertainment and targeted info, has an almost atrophied brain, he lacks in basic knowledge of speech or reading, because why bother if all communication can be done through the Feed? His "voice" is highly stylized and peppered with "likes," "dudes," "fucks" and "dadadas." This voice can be annoying at times, but the audio truly brings it, as well as the Feed - a constant stream of information - ads, news, chats, whathaveyou, to live.But other than the high quality of the audio production, Feed didn't really impress me.For one, I guess Feed failed to properly scare me. You see, even though I am not a particularly tech savvy person, I am sooo far from lamenting the advancement of technology and the "loss of humanity" that comes with it. Yes, yes, Feed draws from present day culture of teens and tweens tweeting and texting in never ending OMGs and LOLs, but I am still not concerned. Somehow, these ignorant pubescents manage to grow up and become functioning members of society and in fact are often at an advantage in our Twitter and Facebook-driven world.People have been predicting the end of the world due to technological or cultural changes since the dawn of days. Burn those astronomers and scientists! Don't let them women go to school and vote! Nobody writes letters a la Jane Eyre any more! Those telephones are EVIL! EBOOKS will ruin literature the way we know it! Every time there is a change in technology or culture, someone is crying apocalypse.You know what? I am not scared of the changes. People evolve, communications evolve, and life goes on. Will there be time when internet is directly plugged into our brains? When we communicate mostly electronically? Maybe. So what? I am already plugged into my iPod/laptop/cable a significant amount of time. Would I be better off spending more time outside planting potatoes, picking cotton, turning over hay, grinding flour? You tell me. In addition to the Feed concerns, there is another layer of the novel where human population seems to be decaying, physically, with people developing lesions on their skin and the planet being destroyed, but that's a completely different story. All of that doesn't seem to be attributed to the evils of the Feed. Just carelessness of people. I am not even sure why Anderson put it into the story, without significantly connecting it to the rest. Was it all supposed to be a treatise against American over-consumerized culture, the cause of everything bad in the world? This side dish of social commentary wasn't flavored enough for my taste.To me, Feed read a bit dated and a bit young. In spite of massive cursing and sexual content, the book's message is delivered in a simple and obvious way. But that's a normal thing. After all, this YA novel is over 10 years old and lost some of its bite.I enjoyed the novel's "voice" (thanks to the fabulous audio), but did it provoke any thoughts or emotions in me? Not really. The highly satirized and stylized narrative might be at fault here. Satire doesn't work for me usually. Making a joke out of serious issues doesn't compel me to cheer for the cause, no matter how legit it is.
—Tatiana
The irony of seeing all the ads on goodreads to get me to this page is not escaping me. Feed is a novel that needs to be experienced. Anderson projects a world where fast-paced internet consumerism has taken over society, where people have the internet basically wired into their bodies, directly feeding them a stream of advertisement based on their every random thought. It's cleverly done. Anderson beats the reader over the head with a devolved and annoying language (the people are so dumbed-down that the hit show is called Oh! Wow! Thing!) It's annoying to read but that's the point. Simultaneously, he buries observations about what's happening to the larger world. And his burial of these details mimics the mindset of the characters, who are so entrenched in their immediate but monotonous consumer-based lives that they have no clue what has happened to humanity and Earth. They don't even realize that they could have a clue.It can be hard to read the book. The plot isn't the most compelling mainly because few of the characters are (but again, that's the point); the cleverness of the book lies in how the story is told. It's a prolonged example of form-following-function. Even the chapters are just tiny little chunks: one doesn't have to concentrate on any single plot development for long, just like on the internet. It wasn't a page-turner for me, and I usually give 5 stars to books that suck me in as well as make me think, at least just a little. But I keep thinking of things I didn't like about the book and then realizing that the author really couldn't have written it any other way and still maintain the effect. I hope the fact that I didn't enjoy it terribly was part of the point.Well gotta go shuffling through this website's recommendations of other books similar to it that I might like. That's like, brag.
—Jean
Like, it's not really five stars, okay? Like one major thing was meg cool and the other was meg emote, you know? But they didn't really mesh up together in the best way.Okay, so like--yeah. Like, the satire, and the, like, writing style that should have gotten on my nerves but didn't because it was satire---that was like...like, whoa, unit. You know? And some of the lines and such were just, like, funny and still a statement. Like how even the parents and president talked like...I'm doing right now.The other element was the romance factor between Titus and Violet. By itself, it was...good. Not "good" as in a "good romance," but good reading. Like damn. Like, how I hate it when people call Wuthering Heights a "beautiful romance" and I'm like, "Dude, it's an amazing book---but 'beautiful romance,' it is so not." (Subsequently, when people rate it low because it's "not a beautiful romance," I'm like, "Well, DUH. Duh to the nth power, unit." Ahem.)Not that I'm fragged enough to compare this to that classic. No, I'm not. But there were some poignant things in there that were more "real" than most sappy so-totally-unrealistic teenage romance crap.I appreciated that. It just didn't quite fit with the allegory-on-modern-life-in-the-form-of-futuristic-sci-fi satire stuff. It could have, but it just didn't quite do it. (Omigod, I was so, like, gratified when, after having that hyphenated thought, I read in an interview with the author that was how he even meant it. I'm so, like, not stupid!)But I enjoyed the hell out of the ride. And reading it, like, so totally made me mal in my speech and writing. I wrote a review and had to concentrate not adopt this writing style.That's high points in my book. Totally not stupid.
—Chy
