In M.t Anderson's “Feed” I feel it is an allegory to the internal issues we face today living in a 1st world country that can pride themselves having the most advanced technology than any other civilization in existence currently.What I am specifically targeting is how we communicate with one another on a daily basis using what the internet gives us and don't recognize the all this information we are taken in and may take it for granted.the internal issues i think many individuals face is the reliance of it by how we could use it to support our conversation or potentially receive unwarranted spam messages giving out our own personal information.i personally have felt this occur when I am trying to prove a point and use phrases like “ I read an article somewhere”, “that they had a statistic showing this” and “therefore this is why i think this is true or false based on this statistic i read from the article because it seemed persuasive enough to be true”.There is a problem with how I am relying on the internet to back up whatever I am saying because the article i may have used may have presented bias statistics which could be completely false and support my argument with fallacies. We have made “just google it” not a suggestion but inculcated it to our everyday language and the collateral damage are biased results when we do “google it”. Id i were to just “google it” I am not only jeopardizing my own knowledge, but someone else’s if they do take my word for whatever bias information I use to support what I am saying or allow us both to be completely wrong and agree with such biases and pat ourselves in the back for thinking the same way.Ultimately it came become this endless cycle of bullshit (with bias information being passed around ) or a circle jerk when relying on the internet for information (with people agreeing to the same bias).
In the “feed” Titus experiences this same misinformation when he is explaining how the feed makes everyone super smart. he says “people were really excited when they first came out with feeds” and goes on saying the advantage of having the encyclopedia at your fingertips and says “that's one of the great things about the feed -that you can be supersmart without ever working”.”everyone is super smart now. you can look up things automatic like if you wanted to know which battles of the civil war George Washington fought in and shit” (Anderson, 47).Titus foolishly had accepted whatever information the feed gave him to thinking George Washington fought in the civil war when we know historically that is false.we can further go on and say he has accepted such fallacies the feed gave him about history or any general knowledge about the world and he can't critically think if it is true or not.you also see that he feels the feed is a part of his soul and he cant live without it and clearly points out on the reliance of it and says “he missed the feed” (Anderson, 47).Titus enforces my own argument when he says “ the braggest thing about the feed is that it knows everything you want or hope for,sometimes even before you know what those things”.the feed doesn't even allow him to develop his own identity but it specifically does not allow him to think for himself.the feed can give information just based on what you prefer or give you information that you think you might prefer.this is problem because we can see today when we get random phone calls or messages of promotions based on our online shopping experience or intentional exchange of personal information .there is even a website giving advice on how to stop unwanted text messages in “how to stop unwanted text messages” (Derek Johnson founder CEO of Tatango, 2011).
He gives us steps on how to deal with these spam messages and even points out in the sixth step that you can sue them for spam. I really can't believe that it has come to the point that we can actually sue for text spam and as Johnson puts it in his last step “it's now time to teach the spammers a lesson” “those assholes are going to fucking get it where it fucking hurts : in their wallets”. alright he didn't say the asshole or any of cussin part that's just how i read it ,but it really is funny and sad that the internet has gotten so personal we can sue for messaging spam.i believe if we continue on relying on the internet and not question what information we get from the internet it would be counterproductive to our own growth as individuals ,and end up living in a world of fallacies based on what seems persuasive enough to us that we take it to be true.
Erik L.
References cited:
M.T. Anderson. "Feed." ,
Candlewick Press, 2002, 2012
Derek Johnson, "How to stop unwanted text messages", July 20, 2011.Web.
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