Feed A

First I would like to say that Feed was a good enough book that it kept my attention and has been the first book I have read and finished in a really really long time. :) Although it was quite depressing I really liked the creativity and the allegory of our society. I think that Anderson's allagory was quite successful and accurate in my opinion. This was based on certain parts/ sections during the book. It says a lot about the teenager life style and its association with technology. I mean for one we may not have computer chips planted in our brains.....yet but we do surround ourselves with digital devices probably twenty four hours, seven days a week. We even bring most of these devices around with us in our pockets or purses such as our ipods and cellphones. I know I do for sure and many of these technology just push corporate advertisements into my mind like crazy. I just can't imagine how many commercials I have watched this week let a lone my whole life living. Even on the computer we are drowned with pop ups and advertisments.

In class we spoke about how sometimes on the internet, while checking our emails there are advertisements on the side of the page that may be advertising something that may relate to whatever it is you are typing, as if it is highlighting your words. I have always noticed this but I never really thought about how weird this is. Weird wouldn't really be the right word, more like creepy. This reminded me the part of the book where Violet and Titus go around shopping for things they did not really want, their Feeds would read and advertise for things they seemed interested in. Also when Violet's Feed would ask her things like "It seems like you have not made a purchase on any of the things you have wanted, would you like some assistance with your shopping?" Something along those lines. It makes me thing about how private our emails really are. We have all these accounts for emails, myspace, facebook where we can make our profiles confidential with passwords but how confidential can it actually be when there are advertisements saying "Chloe, get your degree online now!" or something like that. Its weird that I have noticed that I have been getting a lot of advertisments for college and online school and such ever since senior year kicked in and I have been doing college apps and such. As I said...creeeppy. I guess this would kind of be like the Feed in the book where they are send corporate advertisements for stuff that are "in style". The hot new trend. We get our information from the internet and from the television.

The teenage lifestyle/ perspective in the book is very much life teenager lifestyle and the way teenagers converse and interact in real life. For example they use words like "meg" and "unit", as like we use hip words like "son", "yo", "ma nigga", or whatever slag words we use to converse to each other. Sometimes teenagers make it seem as if you didn't speak like this you would be shunned from the teenage social scene. I remember a few years ago I met someone (not going to say names or say their race but...), and while we were having a conversation he said "yo you talk laikee a white person sonnn." This was a few years ago and took me by surprise because I could never imagine someone being so ignorant. My thoughts were 1. I look more Chinese so I apparently should have some sort of chinatown accent where I couldn't pronounce my "L's" or 2. I ma nigga I aint speak laike diss. This is where I try not to follow teenage speech norms. I do not speak like a white person nor do i speak like an "unsocial teenager", I just speak proper English. Or I at least try to. But either way I still have friends and I still am social. So speaking slang as everyone else does does not necessarily make you seem like a total weirdo as Violet's speech seems to her fellow friends but the way the teenagers interact in the book is significantly similar to the way teenagers converse in real life.

We also try to fit in certain images that are depicting or are "in -style". For example I wear what either makes me look good but also what can be seen as in style. Something that will fish out compliments or be noticeable to people as needy and sad as it sounds. At least I am aware of this. People may not always style themselves exactly as it is shown through media but most of the time it is. When a new celebrity is wearing some sort of new shirt or new hairstyle most people try to imitate. I do not always imitate what I see a celebrity is wearing, doing, or styling but I do wear and style myself in a way that is noticeable and would be popularized plus most of the stuff I buy from stores, where do you thing those ideas of those clothes came from the first place? Thats right, the media. So I guess it would be contradicting to say I do not follow style that I see from the media and that is marketed.

Sometimes people wear and make themselves look ridiculous even when they do not notice, like when I wear polkodot leggings or panty hoes as Andy calls it (Although I kind of know they look weird). Sometimes people even wear things like shirts with certain symbols and words on it when they do not even understand the meaning of it. Like in St. Marks they sell shirts with Anarchy signs on it or peace signs, and I think for people who actually wear those shirts, do they even know the true meaning of these symbols. Luckily Andy taught a little about about the meaning of Anarchy last year. This is where it relates to when the group of kids in the book wore riot clothing/gear. They wore this type of clothing because apparently the Feed said it was in style but they did not even know what riots were in the first place or even why they were actually wearing them. I don't think they even know what riot gear looked like so they just guessed. People can be really ignorant when it comes to fitting a image using articles of clothing. I remember when Andy called my leggings "panty hoes" and the whole class laughed and said "there acutally called leggings". This relates to how ignorant people can be, people do not even know what the article of clothes are called because in fact my polkadot "leggins" are really called "panty hoes". Leggins are made from thick jersey fabric. Jokes on everyone else huh?

Also the lesions in the book were something I took notice to as well. I never really found out or understood what the lesions were all about in the book but it seemed like self infliction or something. I think maybe it was due to the fact of how unhealthy the people in the society were? It was odd because something as weird as a lesion started to become popular and something to show off in the book. In the book the group of kids would talk about their lesions and show it off to each other as if it was some cool new tattoo or piercing. It was most defeintly not related to a pimple because teenagers definitely do not go around showing each other how big our pimples are. There was a part in book when Titus was meeting Violet he describe what she was wearing and how it seemed she intentionally wore her skirt so low to show off her lesion on her hip. I use to have my lip pierced and a surface piercing on my cheek, it was really admired by many of my fellow friends and such but I ended up taking the one on my cheek even if it was seemed as cool of because i realized how bad it was for my skin. My skin started to reject the piece of metal. And I took out my lip piercing because it got annoying. Sometimes I think back and wonder why I would ever intentionally scar myself and why I would even intentionally get something that would annoy me. Although a lot of us wear things no matter how uncomfortable they are to fit an image. Ever since then people seem to have been getting more and more piercings from lip piercings to tongue piercings to even guageing their ears (which is stretching your earlobes). Which I must say that tongue piercings really freak me out. Tattoos are all the rage as well, making our body canvases for art work. Some people have tattoos of something meaningful like of something they sketched or something they wrote as other just get simple things that are not as meaningful such as stars, hearts or doves. Some old lady once said to me "Our bodies are art, we do not have to cover our art with others art." Some random old lady on the street. It makes me wonder why people would go to such great heights as to do self infliction to fit into a certain image. This is one thing about the image of teenagers that the author of Feed definitely had significantly correct.

ANOTHER things noticed by many of us was the scene in the book where Violet is informed by Titus's father that all the trees at a park was cut down to built a air factory. This was really amusing but depressing since trees are a source of air to earth. Plus they are really pretty and nice. This relates to how society, especially New York for they do keep cutting down so many trees for unnecessary reasons. For example around my block which is a pretty big block they cut down all the trees that were around the perimeter. They were really nice trees and made my neighborhood feel a little nicer as well. Unfortunately it is a shame because they chopped the all and they did not even have a good reason im sure since all they did was cover over the dirt with black concrete. This really upset me cause now my block looks like shit. Although in the book they seem to not give a shit about trees or any natural resource at least there are those in real life who are trying to make a difference in bringing back those trees that were chopped. When I sit on the subway I see those adds about "300,000" trees were planted, be a good neighbor and plant a tree in your yard. Or something along those lines. At least our whole society is not a fully lost cause. Although cutting down trees to make air, it sounds like using natural resources to make "artificially natural resources" like using up energy to make more energy, that is just dumb.

The last thing was the School with the "Tm". How the schools were owned by corporate businesses or something. I remember when in the book Titus spoke about how great and wonderful school is now that some guy bought the schools out and that they are being taught more useful things like how to get good buys on there Feed. I mean our schools are not really run by corporate business but I most of the time our we are not really being taught anything that is greatly significant or eye opening that could relate to us outside of school. This is why when I first experienced Andy's class is was something completely different, refreshing to finally learn about something that matters. I mean I do not exactly use the quadratic formula when I'm living my daily routine. At least even if the school if Feed is completely brainwashing and are being taught stupid things at least it relates to their lifestyles and daily routine. This makes me want to bring up how my boyfriend keeps telling me how crappy and how waste of classes his college could be because he found out that there is a class called "How to Text". This was actually quite amusing to me as well since he told me that it is a legit class that you can get credits for. As if they just needed something to fill in a space during schedules. Although as sad as it is texting is something that has dominated most of society, so would you say it is bad to learn how to do it? Like in the book, is it necessarily bad if the whole society is corrupted and they seem to not really want to take notice. The whole society in Feed are so ignorant, brainwashed, and corrupted but at the same time they all seem pretty fulfilled and happy with it. So should they be forced to cal it a bad thing, should they be forced to try to break their lifestyle? It is life everyone in real life with their digital experiences. I get the kick out of watching television, people like being on facebook and projecting a certain image and talking on their phones, and texting, etc. So if it makes us happy, should be give it up? This is one reason why I think people will never want to give up their digital lifestyles no matter how bad they know it is for them. For example Juliette mentioned she was going to get a black berry, even though she knew it would probably one day give her cancer since it had the highest radiation. But she still was going to get one, despite the risks she could get in the future. She wanted it because it makes her happy, it helps complete her imagine whatever it was. so my finally few thoughts are what would be that if it makes us happy, why give it up? And what would it REALLY take to make us realize and want to give it up? I mean we already know the consequences and how fake certain things in society is, mainly digital technology and such. What else would it take?