Feed

by M.T. Anderson

feeds were going fugue with all the banners. The hotels were jumping on each other, and there was bumff from like the casinos and mud slides and the gift shops and places where you could rent extra arms.

So the feed is definitely attached to their brains

The feed suggested “supple.”

Now that is invasive

hairstyles had changed.

Realy exaggerating trends with teenagers

“We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward. Children with smiles that can’t be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall.”

Prophecy

our heads felt real empty.

I won't say i am surprised

That’s one of the great things about the feed — that you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit.

High intelligence but nothing for wisdom

is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are. It can tell you how to get them, and help you make buying decisions that are hard.

Very relevant to today. Also seems comparable to a demon deal or a way to control desire

Everything we think and feel is taken in by the corporations,

So Google?

Of course, everyone is like, da da da, evil corporations, oh they’re so bad, we all say that, and we all know they control everything. I mean, it’s not great, because who knows what evil shit they’re up to. Everyone feels bad about that. But they’re the only way to get all this stuff, and it’s no good getting pissy about it, because they’re still going to control everything whether you like it or not.

Anoyingly fair

One was a message from the crazy asshole, which said, You have been hacked by the Coalition of Pity. The

No consideration about this!?

FORTRAN. BASIC.”

Coding!!?

She asked me, “Do you know how to read?” I nodded. “I can read. A little. I kind of protested it in School™. On the grounds that the silent ‘E’ is stupid.”

Yes so much smarter with an encyclopedia in your head

big bro? Big bro, you there? Mom says I should .

Ignoring his family

to believe the allegations that were made by these corporate ‘watch’ organizations, which are not the majority of the American people, I repeat not, and aren’t its will. It is our duty as Americans, and as a nation dedicated to freedom and free commerce, to stand behind our fellow Americans and not cast . . . things at them. Stones, for example. The first stone. By this I mean that we shouldn’t think that there are any truth to the rumors that the lesions are the result of any activity of American industry.

Oh yes our great freedom to stand behind our buisness as if they were people. Is the author psychic or something, this sounds so modern almost like Trump said it himself. Not to mention the atitude of being honored to serve a horrible company

But when I woke up, I didn’t remember that for weeks. What I remembered was just the games, which, once I was awake, I couldn’t find, and the elf gloves, and the bow, and the lizard that was all mine.

Sometimes he reminds me of a cartoon dog. Just only thinking about a new treat or bone

because the stars of the Oh? Wow! Thing! had started to get lesions, so now people were thinking better about lesions, and lesions even looked kind of cool.

Celebrities really decide opinions more than individuals

“What I’m doing, what I’ve been doing over the feed for the last two days, is trying to create a customer profile that’s so screwed, no one can market to it. I’m not going to let them catalog me. I’m going to become invisible.”

Mark me as interesed

like, da da da da, this happened in fourteen ninety-two, da da da da, when you mix like, chalk and water, it makes nitroglycerin, and

A that is very important for an American B I can see why you are stupid

Now that School™ is run by the corporations, it’s pretty brag, because it teaches us how the world can be used, like mainly how to use our feeds.

That is so much worse

it’s good because that way we know that the big corps are made up of real human beings, and not just jerks out for money,

So propaganda and generating sympathy so they can still profit when they do something horrible

Nothing’s ever going to happen in a two-party system. She was like, da da da, nothing’s ever going to change, both parties are in the pocket of big business, da da da, all that? So I was like, You got to believe in the people, it’s a democracy, we can change things. She was like, It’s not a democracy.

Hey anderson could I get some lottery numbers? I know this existed to a degree in his day but this is the kind of conversation one would expect in 2021

A republic. It’s a republic.

Obviously. How is your school better than government schools again?

Except, she said, only about seventy-three percent of Americans have feeds. Oh, I said. Yeah. And so I felt stupid. There’s that many who don’t?

Very privilaged of him. Though this is very american with high poverty and everyone ignoring it.

Because of the feed, we’re raising a nation of idiots. Ignorant, self-centered idiots.

“Honey, he was the most beautiful actor ever. So we went into the conceptionarium, and told the geneticists what we wanted, and your father went in one room, and I went in the other, and . . .” “Hey — hey — I don’t want to hear!”

So they are in 2 seprate rooms and he is still scared.

by tomorrow I would be driving to pick up Violet in my own goddamn upcar, and suddenly, suddenly, I didn’t feel so stupid anymore.

So literal retail therapy

It has to be understood that when the President referred to the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance as a ‘big shithead,’ what he was trying to convey was, uh — this is an American idiom used to praise people, by referring to the sheer fertilizing power of their thoughts. The President meant to say that the Prime Minister’s head was fertile, just full of these nutrients where ideas can grow.

Modern politics at their best

We should say again that any attempt to withdraw the Alliance’s diplomatic presence from American soil will be taken as a sign of ill will, and, uh, we are likely to respond with the most stringent

American Idiot starts playing

“He died a day after we went into the hospital. Contusions. Broken skull.” “What are contusions?” I looked it up. “Oh.” “He was beaten to death at the club. We saw it. The police, remember? They beat him over the head.”

Lotery numbers happily accepted here! But seriously this book is so ahead of its time it is scary (See Black Lives Matter 2020)

Mom and Smell Factor crinkled up the disposable table together and threw it away. Violet was still in her chair, near where the table had been. She was alone in the middle of the rug.

Wow that is wasteful

Everything had words on it. There were papers with words on them, and books, and even posters on the wall had words.

How dare you insult words!

“He says the language is dying. He thinks words are being debased. So he tries to speak entirely in weird words and irony, so no one can simplify anything he says.”

“Can I tell you what I see? Can I tell you? We are hovering in the air while people are starving. This is obvious! Obvious! We’re playing games, and our skin is falling off. We’re losing it, and we’re making out.

That describes our class system now

Violet was screaming, “Look at us! You don’t have the feed! You are feed! You’re feed! You’re being eaten! You’re raised for food! Look at what you’ve made yourselves!” She pointed at Quendy, and went, “She’s a monster! A monster! Covered with cuts! She’s a creature!”

The hive mind always breeds monsters, and there is not wrong about what she said

She waited. Then, she admitted, It felt good. Really good, just to scream finally. I felt like I was singing a hit single. But in Hell.

Nothing wrong with some honesty

There had been some funding cuts. The school band was gone, and so were the alive teachers.

What was that about corprate schools being an improvement

You’re the most important person in my life.

"that is really sad"- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

I deleted everything she had sent me.

he deleted his girlfriend's attempt to confide her most personal moments with him!!!?

It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it. I felt like I’d been running toward it for a long time.

Literally through the whole book only to fail constantly

“I’m not a jerk,” I said. “We Americans,” he said, “are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they were produced, or what happens to them” — he pointed at his daughter — “what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away.”

American Idiot plays louder

Go along, little child. Go back and hang with the eloi.”

Accurate, and I love the reference

“It’s a reference,” he said, snotty. “It’s from The Time Machine. H. G. Wells.” I stepped closer to him. “What does it mean?” I asked. “Because I’m sick of —” “Read it.” “I’m sick of being told I’m stupid.” “So read it, and you’ll know.” “Tell me.” “Read it.” “Tell me.” “You can look it up.” “You can tell me.” “Will you ever open your eyes?”

Never even bothers to use the limitless information

There’s always that subliminal message seducing us and bullying us: If you just get this, and buy this, and order that, you’ll be cool, and you’ll be loved. See how much fun these kids are having? If you want to be wanted, then you need to want what other people want. And other people — what they want is this. Buy it. Buy it now.

makes advertising feel as predator as it is

And this would not have been an effective satire, in my opinion, if I hadn’t also been seduced by what I was mocking.

Honestly true. The book did seem more self aware than judgmental

For democracy to work effectively, there must be an educated and informed electorate. By the same token, for the free market to work, it requires informed and intelligent consumers. We have to comprehend the long-term effects of what we buy, or we are nothing but dupes.

And yet life doesn't sem to give us the time. Or is that just an exuse. We really do fail in educating ourselves about what we take for granted