Like Omigod, Please Don't Shut Me Off

            One of my pet peeves in life is when people excessively use the world “like.” When people say “and then like…” or “like why…”, the word like is not needed. It makes a person sound less intelligent. So, if in M.T. Anderson’s Feed, the feed or neural implant enables a person to become intelligent, why is their word choice so pitiful? I understand the appeal of the feed in that is knows everything that a person wants and hopes for in their life. The feed is also a dictionary, a network to communicate with friends, and information source that increases intelligence. However, I personally can’t imagine living in a world where I am connected to a feednet, as I would feel transhuman.

            In the feednet world, there is no learning and there is no appreciation of culture. Most of the characters do not know how to write or read because they can rely on the feed. As Sven Birkerts believes, there is an issue of language erosion and flattening of historical perspective among students. The characters illustrate this issue perfectly, as they say “like” every other word and probably don’t know about significant historical events without their feed. Also, when the narrator, Titus, is sitting in his hospital bed staring at a painting, he claims that he can’t find anything interesting about the picture. Where is his appreciation for art? It’s nonexistent. All art, whether it is simple or complex is beautiful and interesting. Sometimes it requires deep thought and analysis to determine what the artist is trying to convey through their work. However, characters in Feed don’t need to think because their feed will think for them.

            As I read Feed, I was disturbed when the Coalition of Pity hacked the feednet. The hacking affected many of the characters and the police shut the humans off. In a quote from the novel, “‘We’re going to have to shut you off now. We’re going to have to shut you off.’ And then they touched us, and bodies fell and there was nothing else” (40). In my everyday life, what do I shut off? My TV, phone, and computer. No one shuts me off and I don’t shut off other human beings. It scares me that this could happen in the future.