In the Young Adult novel “Feed” by M.T Anderson,
Anderson describes a future in which most of society is completely shallow, uneducated
and manipulated by consumerism. Throughout the novel, it is clearly portrayed
how in the future most of teenagers don’t worry about their own level of
intellect and how the feed has them completely ignorant of their natural sense
of self. Education is not important anymore because through the feed students
can find out any information they want at any time. Since with the help of the
feed everything for teenagers is so much easier than nowadays, most of them
only worry about having fun and consuming anything of interest that comes up in
their feeds.
In many chapters
of this book, there are very good examples that show how shallow people are in
this non-too-fictional future. One of the most evident examples is when the
main character Titus begins to feel intimidated by the intellect of his
girlfriend Violet. He begins to worry and starts to wonder whether he is considered
smart or stupid. Because of this, he goes and asks his parents if he is
considered smart or stupid. His parents tried to talk to him and convince him
that he is smart and not stupid but they couldn’t. The only solution that they
could think of, was buying him something that would make him happy enough to
stop worrying about that subject. They bought him his own up car and sure
enough he stopped worrying: “I could feel their feeds shifting towards a common
point, some kind of banner they were pulling up.”…and it unwrapped in my head…
a banner for a dealer… and I didn’t feel so stupid anymore.”(1138)
Something that takes part
in making these teenagers so ignorant is the education system. The main purpose
of school in this novel is to
promote the consumerism that overcomes the world. Students really think that
education is not necessary because through the feed they can access any
information they want and that it makes everyone “supersmart without ever
working” (425). It is this lack of work that makes them so stupid. Violet is
homeschooled and the feed was implanted in her when she was seven years old. As
a result she demonstrates to be smarter and more insightful than Titus and his
friends and family. The truth behind these facts is that the more we rely in
technology and external things to think and make decisions the more
unintelligent we will become and our lives will be as shallow as Titus and his
friends and family.
Finally, the key thing that makes this future society
so shallow and unintelligent is the consumption of products that are constantly
advertised through the feed. When it comes to advertising, the feed is like one
of those websites where a lot of windows of advertisements pop up. Imagine
having that in ones brain constantly; what would be the result? A perfect
example of how this constant flow of advertisement influences Titus and his
friends is when they are in the moon and they decide to go shopping because
they are bored. They go to a mall and Titus tells us “I wanted to buy things but I didn’t know what they
were.”(270). Violet, who is the one with more experience living without the
feed and is more compelled to thinking out of the box tries to resist and
defeat the feed creating a customer profile which is “so screwed no one can market to
it. I’m going to become invisible.”(916).
Corporations pretty much
control people with their advertisements; “they do these demographic studies that divide
everyone up into a few personality types, and then you get ads based on what
you supposedly like.”(906). Once the corporations do their demographic studies “they
try to figure out who you are, and to make you conform to one of their types
for easy marketing. . . . they keep making everything more basic so it will
appeal to everyone. And gradually, everyone gets used to everything being
basic, so we get less and less varied as people, more simple. So the corps make
everything even simpler. And it goes on and on” (906).
In conclusion, the futuristic society described in
this novel is messed up due to how people over the time became more manipulated
by consumerism. The feed is what makes this manipulation possible to its
greatest extent and as a result people are unable to freely think on their own
and be aware of the damages that this manipulation does to them. This novel
helps the people of today become more aware of how technology is making us
slaves to consumerism. Anderson did a great job exposing the truth behind this
novel and hopefully enough people will get the message as not let the feed
become a reality in the future.
Works
Cited
Aderson,M.T. Feed.
Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2002. Kindle Version
I really liked reading this
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