Feed

Feed by M.T. Anderson, published in 2002, is a young adult dystopian cyberpunk novel set in a future in which excessive consumerism is at the center of human identity and technology-driven artificiality serves as a distraction for a world that is in the final stages of complete ecological destruction. The feed is a brain-implanted device that integrates computer and network capabilities into the user’s consciousness and biological functions.

For most, the feed is implanted at birth, and although it has become essential equipment to fully participate in society, the device is extremely expensive, and only 73% of the population has one. The feed allows users to chat silently, consume music and entertainment, and access all the information available on the internet. The feed also openly datamines, creating consumer profiles for corporations and then working to shape users into categories for simpler advertising. Everything is for sale, and trends change from moment to moment, bombarding users with ads and encouraging them to buy more and more.

When the novel was published in 2002, the first iPhone was five years away from being released. Facebook wouldn’t launch for another two years and Twitter another four. Feed reflects the technophobia stirred by the frenzy of the Y2K crisis, in which people panicked about the possibilities of widespread digital failure when computer internal clocks turned from 1999 to 2000. Although Y2K was ultimately anticlimactic and uneventful, it drew attention to potential pitfalls of having an infrastructure that relied increasingly on computer technology. In 2001, the attacks on the World Trade Center caused cellular service failure in the disaster areas and highlighted the insufficient speed of news transmission during a national catastrophe. As technological communication became more pervasive, the passage of the Patriot Act in October of 2001 allowed government agencies to secretly place American citizens under surveillance without proving probable cause, making the growing network of digital communications particularly vulnerable as a means of breaching personal privacy.

Although Feed was written in a world that was only on the brink of the explosion of the Digital Revolution, it predicts drawbacks and anxieties of pervasive personal technologies that remain relevant decades later. Although smartphones have yet to become brain implants, they have become ubiquitous and ever present and so addictive that they are rarely far from their owners’ hands. Despite the widely understood knowledge that smart devices are always spying on users for the reasons of targeted advertisement (and potentially even more sinister and unknown purposes), these devices only grow in popularity. Feed satirizes youth culture and its susceptibility to suggestion in the name of trendiness as well as the well-worn trope in young adult fiction of youthful love stories. However, beneath the satire is a serious warning about the destruction of the environment and the ease with which the privileged can be distracted from the plight of those who are less fortunate. Feed reminds readers that technology can be destructive and the importance of cultivating individuality.

Plot Summary

Titus and his five friends (Link, Marty, Calista, Loga, and Quendy) are a group of wealthy teenagers in a dystopian future who decide to travel to the moon because they are bored over spring break. Like most people, the teens have a feed implanted in their brains, an electronic device that allows them to chat with each other, access the internet, stream entertainment, and shop virtually for the merchandise that corporations constantly advertise on their feeds. They are perpetually unimpressed and looking for the next new thing. They also all have skin lesions, which they accept as normal.

On the moon, Titus meets Violet, a beautiful, smart girl who seems different from anyone he knows. Violet joins them at a club, where a strange old man attacks each of them—except Loga—and seven other people by violently hacking their feeds. The teens spend several days in the hospital with their feeds turned off. Violet and Titus become closer, and Titus learns that Violet seems different because she is poor, and her father is a professor of dead languages. Violet is unique because she is homeschooled and can read and write, and they eventually kiss. The group is ecstatic when their feeds are restored, and they are sent home.

Back on Earth, Titus invites Violet to a party, which she has never experienced. While there, Link and Marty try to persuade Titus to go into mal—deliberately causing their feeds to malfunction, which causes them to get high and hallucinate—with them, but Titus declines. Violet admits to Titus that her feed is still damaged from the attack. Violet decides that her new project is to confuse the feed by showing interest in a lot of unrelated things, destroying her consumer profile. Titus and Violet become closer and fall for each other, but one night during dinner with his family, her foot stops working from continuing damage to her feed. Titus’s parents decide to buy him an upcar—a flying car—because he has been so brave about being hacked. Titus believes that he will also have to go to court to testify and is shocked when Violet tells him the attacker was killed by the police in front of them. Titus finally meets Violet’s father, who speaks in formal, complex language as a protest against the way language is dying. Violet attends another party with Titus’s friends but gets upset when the girls are mean to her for being pretentious and wants to leave. Titus is angry at Violet, and they fight on the drive. Then Violet tells Titus that her feed is getting worse and that it will likely cause her to deteriorate and die, possibly soon. Titus takes her to see the seashore but doesn’t want to acknowledge her declining health. Lesions start to become trendy, and Titus hurries to tell Violet when Calista shows up to school with a large fake lesion, which Violet finds horrifying.

At another party, Quendy shows up with fake lesions all over her body, shocking everyone. Then suddenly, Violet has a seizure and calls Quendy a monster. Then she collapses, and Titus accompanies her to the hospital in the ambulance. Seeing Violet look so sick, Titus starts to lose interest in her. Violet’s feed efficiency decreases, and so does her control over her body. Violet and her father send a petition to FeedTech to ask them to pay for the repairs that they can’t afford. Titus pulls away more and starts to ignore her messages. She overloads his cache with the memories that she wants him to keep for her as her mind fails, and Titus deletes them. One day, Titus decides to go into mal with Marty and Link and ends up going to see Violet while high. Violet tells him that FeedTech declined their petition because her consumer profile is so confusing that she isn’t a good investment. Titus guiltily pulls away from Violet, who is becoming needy, but she shows up to ask him to go with her to the mountains, which she wants to see before she dies.

Titus reluctantly gives in, but at the hotel, when Violet tries to have sex with him, he admits that he feels like he's kissing a dead girl. He tells Violet that she is asking too much from a relationship that has been so short. They fight and break up, and Titus takes her home. Violet sends one last message saying that she loves Titus, but he ignores her. A couple of months later, Titus receives a message from Violet’s father that she wanted him to know when she stopped functioning. Titus goes to her house, receiving the cold shoulder from Violet’s father, and sees her lying unresponsive. Her father is angry at Titus for the way he treated her, and Titus leaves. However, a few days later, Titus comes back and talks to her about world events, and to promises to tell her the story of their love, a memory that he will keep for her for when she wakes up. It’s about two kids who meet, fall in love, and manage to resist the feed.