Intro

Social media has grown so fast and so large that it is quite difficult to picture a world without it, this is no accident. The world before social media seems so foreign to today's youth, to the point where old dystopic literature is beginning to mirror modern day. Take Feed by M.T. Anderson, (2002), a dystopian text where the at the time foreign idea of a brain implant that gives you internet access, instant messaging and a bombardment of ads feels very similar to modern day smartphones. This similarity makes Feed very successful in portraying its message even in modern times, persuading the audience that unregulated smartphone usage is driving our world into decline. Anderson uses a dystopic setting, figurative language and a regressed colloquial diction in order to show to an audience the detrimental aspects of our own social media society, to warn us about the power companies may gain if social media usage goes unchecked, and cautions the reader by showing the regressing nature of a society where social media is absolute, culminating in a text that successfully persuades a viewer to view social media with a more apprehensive lens.

An example body

The dystopic setting in feed is effectively crafted using visual and auditory imagery of a broken world rooted in artifice and ambivalence in order to convince a reader to be more cautious of their consumer habits and smartphone usage. The setting of feed is a futuristic earth where humanity has developed technology to an intangible degree, at the cost of the ecosystem that once was. The protagonist, Titus, can be seen sitting on one of the hills during the middle of feed, describing scenery that has "Spotlights wobbling over the clouds™". This casual mention of artificial clouds serves to flesh out the world of Feed as one where the ecosystem is in such disarray that people have had to make artificial clouds to replace the ones that naturally occurred in the past. Consumerism to this degree creates a frightening picture of a world that is so involved with technological development and consumerism that it has no problem destroying the life on the planet to do so. This can also be seen at one of Titus's family dinners, where after they eat his mother "crinkles up the disposable table and throws it away". This visceral description of throwing away the table provides a link to the crinkling of plastic packaging or tin foil and accentuates that the society in feed has developed so much that people won't buy a reusable table to minimise waste, as there is no more ecosystem to protect. Anderson effectively crafts this horrific, unnatural setting to accentuate the fact that we can be blinded by consumerism and escapism into the internet, and that if we continue to use our phones and buy needlessly, the world may suffer for it.