SciFi Dealing with Social Networking

[[deleted user]]

So, as Mr. Zuckerberg was offering his reassurances last week, I was thinking that there wasn't a whole lot of science fiction that either predicted or dealt with "social networking" either now or in its future. Compared to genetic engineering, climate change, environmental abuse, etc, it seems under-served.

Even in recently written science fiction, whether near or far future, they don't seem to be all that many characters constantly updating their future Facebook/Twitter/Instagram feeds.

Anybody run into anything interesting in that sub-sub-genre?

Only two readily come to mind:

David Eggers' The Circle looked at such a near future that it's closer to satire than predictive (and Eggers is a mainstream writer, not really a SciFi type.)

Malka Ann Olde's Infomocracy (and its sequel, Null States) looks at a slightly more distant future global networking, including the potential for considerable misinformation.


I can think of a lot more short stories that focus on the social networking theme:

Dominica Phetteplace has a series of near-future short stories: "Project Empathy". "Project Entropy" & "Project Symmetry" (I may have those out of order) about social ranking from PoV of a hostess at hip SF nightclub.

Nick Wolven has written a couple of humorous stories about social media run amok, "Caspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do?" and "We're So Very Sorry For Your Recent Tragic Loss"

Suzanne Palmer's "The Streaming Man" is among many stories about people with lots of live, real-time "followers".

And I can remember the plots of several more whose titles/authors sadly escape me.

[Andrea]

I've seen it show in up an episode of The Orville, where people have to walk around with a badge showing how popular by how many thumbs up/down they have (and if too many downs they have to be rehabilitated), but not in a book.

[Bryan]

In Wilson's The Affinities people join social groups according to several criteria and some of those group become very powerful. Much like The circle, it's so recent that it's mostly extrapolating a bit from what was already a strong phenomenon, not inventing.

In the tv world, there is a great episode of the show Black mirror called Nosedive that has people rating every single thing including human interactions, and they belong to classes according to their rating with the >4 * being superstars.

[Rachel]

It seems like visual media has more to say about this. I am watching WALL-E with my girls (4) for their first time and the way all the humans never even see each other except in their screen seems SO ...prophetic.
And apparently leads to all births being in vitro! Which also seems believable.

Actually the more I think about it I think the future will either be WALL-E or Idiocracy.

[[deleted user]]

Bryan wrote: "In Wilson's The Affinities people join social groups according to several criteria and some of those group become very powerful. Much like The circle, it's so recent that it's mostly extrapolating..."

I'll give that a read. I don't think I've read any Wilson since his Spin trilogy.

A novel I should have thought of earlier is Scott Westerfeld's Extras, the 4th book in his YA "Uglies" trilogy. In that story's city-state, "face rank" is everything, your relative social network recognition.

[Book Nerd]

Sci-fi seems to always leap to the next logical step: the hive mind.

[NekroRider]

I was originally going to say Infomocracy but you already mentioned it. Imo a great and a bit underrated book. Can't wait to read the second book once it's available in paperback here in the fall.

I wasn't a big fan of the show but I remember at least one of the episodes I watched of Black Mirror dealt heavily with social media in the future determining social status even as fair as ability to buy certain houses, jobs etc depending on social media profile ratings.

Lauren Beukes Moxyland also deals with a social media in an alternate present/near future sci-fi setting. She wasn't as successful as she could have been but was a decent book.

[Faith]

The Feed by Nick Clark Windo

[Aaron]

Seveneves somewhat deals with this subject; all of the refugees in the Cloud Ark use social media as the main form of communication between "arkies". One of the main characters was a blogger/journalist that aligns himself politically with one of the more divisive characters in the book, and the "distractive" social media is believed to be indirectly responsible for the almost calamitous event that nearly wipes out humanity.

[Paula]

Feed is about a group of bloggers during the zombie apocalyps