Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Instant access to all the information, gossip, fashion, and social networking you could ever want: awesome. Just look at what the feed does:
And the feed spoke to me real quiet about new trends, about pants that should be shorter or longer, and bands I should know, and games with new levels and stalactites and fields of diamonds, and friends of many colors were all drinking Coke, and beer was washing through mountain passes, and the stars of the Oh? Wow! Thing! had got lesions, so lesions were hip now, real hip, and mine looked like a million dollars. The sun was rising over foreign countries, and underwear was cheap, and there were new techniques to reconfigure pecs, abs, and nipples, and the President of the United States was certain of the future, and at Weatherbee & Crotch there was a sale banner and nice rugby shirts and there were pictures of freckled prep-school boys and girls in chinos playing on the beach and dry humping in the eel grass, and as I fell asleep, the feed murmured to me again and again: All shall be well... and all shall be well... and all manner of things shall be well! (29.35)
The Facebook news feed has nothing on this. Check out the active language that creates the effect of all of this taking place right before your eyes: "drinking, "washing," "rising," and "humping." Everything is geared to make you want things NOW! And once you sate your consumer urges, the feed "murmurs" (a calming form of speech) that "all shall be well."
Seems harmless enough, plus it's all way cool! We'd be first in line, and we bet you'd be right behind us.
Come to the Dark Side
Not so fast. The feed is one sharp and nasty double-edged-sword of a symbol. Think for a moment about the image the protestors use on their signs for the feed: "a head with a little devil sitting in the brain, inside the skull, with these like energy bolts coming out of his mouth" (30.3). Yikes.
Violet points out exactly what's so bad about the feed:
They try to figure out who you are, and to make you conform to one of their types for easy marketing. It's like a spiral: 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. (22.12)
Think about this next time another Starbucks pops up in your city: according to Violet, corporations (like Starbucks) manipulate people into wanting more and more uniform things, making it easier on the corporations. (Brain Snack: weirdly, a lot of marketing works the exact opposite way. Corporations offer more and more choices, so you'll be fooled into buying more. Think about trying to buy toothpaste. You really think all those different kinds of toothpaste do different things?)
So, the marketing angle seems a little off—but then there's that whole dumbing down of society angle. Remember how Titus says feed was heralded as this great innovation in education for children? Check out what this fancy innovation teaches: "how to work technology and how to find bargains and what's the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom" (25.4). Sure puts a sinister spin on efforts to get iPads in the classroom, doesn't it?
It's Complic8ed
Look, on the one hand, the feed sounds awesome. We love having instant access to information at our fingertips; now, imagine having it in your brain. You could be hooked up to Wikipedia (and Shmoop) 24/7. From that perspective, the feed symbolizes the potential of technology—a potential that, twenty years after the book was written, is starting to seem a lot more science-fact than science-fiction.
On the other hand… eesh. Do you really want marketers in your brain? Isn't is bad enough that they literally track everything you do on the Internet, from what you look up to who you stalk on Facebook? Yeah. Doesn't sound so great when you put it that way.