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Sacrilege! Can there be such a thing? Yes! When the story is interesting, thrilling, but the main character is too mechanical, robotic, where her thoughts cease to reach a depth that make her seem believable. A movie will be able to depict this story without relying on the inner thoughts of a boring main character.
The Circle is a modern 1984 Orwellian outlook on the world, and its social media consumption, paving the way to a passive population and an ultimate monopoly controlling all information. Mae, the main character, easily turns to the dark side without having to go through the Winston Smith beat down. She is absorbed by The Circle through fame, but how this fame entraps the billions of other circlers, is not clear.
Eggers provides a great analogy for social networking when he compares it to eating junk food, arguing that a media binge is much like eating a bag of chips; the digital content is engineered to provide no nourishment, but keep the reader consuming, like empty calories, and just like after mindlessly eating a big bag of Doritos, you feel bad about it in the end, just as an hour on Twitter can leave one feeling diminished rather than filled up.
A couple weeks ago I removed Twitter and Instagram from my phone. I was a smart phone hold out because I thought my go-phone was good enough for me. Last fall, I decided to get an iPhone because of GPS. I was fed up with having to write down directions before leaving the house when iPhone GPS is so wonderfully convenient. After getting my phone, I went full steam ahead, and added Twitter and Instagram. My Twitter use quickly moved from moderate to out of hand, get a grip, you're an obsessive manic. I'm feeling much better about my usage now that it's limited to my laptop.
The book also highlights emergent neurosis when communicating through instant message. The anxiety from waiting for a response, and writing messages that are so short they could be interpreted a number of ways, makes communicating ineffective, and shallow. I didn't think we'd come to this so soon, where emailing seems like a thing of the past, but it's so nice to engage in email correspondence. Reading someone's message, sitting on it for a week, thinking about what to write back, and then putting time into writing a reply. It feels more personal, emphasizing the real physical distance between the two.
A couple weeks ago I removed Twitter and Instagram from my phone. I was a smart phone hold out because I thought my go-phone was good enough for me. Last fall, I decided to get an iPhone because of GPS. I was fed up with having to write down directions before leaving the house when iPhone GPS is so wonderfully convenient. After getting my phone, I went full steam ahead, and added Twitter and Instagram. My Twitter use quickly moved from moderate to out of hand, get a grip, you're an obsessive manic. I'm feeling much better about my usage now that it's limited to my laptop.
The book also highlights emergent neurosis when communicating through instant message. The anxiety from waiting for a response, and writing messages that are so short they could be interpreted a number of ways, makes communicating ineffective, and shallow. I didn't think we'd come to this so soon, where emailing seems like a thing of the past, but it's so nice to engage in email correspondence. Reading someone's message, sitting on it for a week, thinking about what to write back, and then putting time into writing a reply. It feels more personal, emphasizing the real physical distance between the two.
The book also dives into digital presence, referring to a constant online presence as being Transparent. The Circle believes that if everyone lives transparent, then no one will behave morally corrupt. There won't be crime, people will eat better, and little indulgences, like porn, will soon vanish because no one will want to jerk off when there is a camera in their face.
This reminds me of Ashley Madison, and the idiotic people who believed a statement like, "you're data is impenetrable, no one could ever find out you're on our site!"
The naiveté of an individual who can't comprehend they leave "fingerprints" when trolling the internet helped Ashley Madison sell porn under the guise, "you're digitally cheating on you're spouse, and can't be caught."
The ironic thing is, plenty of married couples are ok with their spouse jerking off to porn, but they'd be annoyed knowing they are paying for porn when it's available for free, and it's being done under a deceitful guise.
Perhaps deceit is the thrill. That being told you're cheating on your partner when wanking to porn, so you're left feeling guilt, is the intention, because that guilt propagates the desire to be an exceptional family man or woman.
The Circle emphasizes that anything done on the computer is accessible, and what that means for the population, as our lives become more dependent on the internet, is not really clear, but we should all know that jerking off in front of a camera at this time in not smart, unless you're looking to parlay a reality TV show, then that's likely one of the first steps to take.
This reminds me of Ashley Madison, and the idiotic people who believed a statement like, "you're data is impenetrable, no one could ever find out you're on our site!"
The naiveté of an individual who can't comprehend they leave "fingerprints" when trolling the internet helped Ashley Madison sell porn under the guise, "you're digitally cheating on you're spouse, and can't be caught."
The ironic thing is, plenty of married couples are ok with their spouse jerking off to porn, but they'd be annoyed knowing they are paying for porn when it's available for free, and it's being done under a deceitful guise.
Perhaps deceit is the thrill. That being told you're cheating on your partner when wanking to porn, so you're left feeling guilt, is the intention, because that guilt propagates the desire to be an exceptional family man or woman.
The Circle emphasizes that anything done on the computer is accessible, and what that means for the population, as our lives become more dependent on the internet, is not really clear, but we should all know that jerking off in front of a camera at this time in not smart, unless you're looking to parlay a reality TV show, then that's likely one of the first steps to take.
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| Bundred Billion? Hehe, catching a typo is so fun! |
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