Feed, A Must Read for Every High School Student

The first few pages convinced me that I was destined to have the story narrated in the voice of Jeff Spicoli inside my head; it was frightening. By about page thirty, it was like whoa, unit, this is meg. In other words, the book is simply brilliant. Though it was published eleven years ago, M.T. Anderson makes an unmistakable statement about American consumerism and the sheer dependence we have on the ever increasing forms of social media “feeds”. There are very few among us who aren’t tied into Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, subscriptions to any number of product based websites that send updates to your email. And clearly, we’re moving in the direction of Feed. We already have cars that have readable screens embedded in the windshields, and the military (the source of all things technological) have feeds directly into the face masks of fighter pilots. The next logical step is having these feeds physically embedded in us, which is the premise of the novel. The conclusion is that these innumerable feeds attenuate our ability to sort out the relevant from the mundane to the detriment of our society. Couple this with the dumbing down of entertainment, the worst culprit being reality TV, and you have the makings of a disaster. Anderson blends news flashes into the novel about very serious issues taking place in the country, all of which go unnoticed because in the next moment the characters are being convinced to buy the newest fashion accessory. The novel is a satire of our world, but it’s also a startling wake-up call that, once read, you can’t help feeling a bit shaky, because he makes it so easy to recognize the pitfalls in our own lives.