Hey Teen Books Hey

If you’re like me, and love dystopian novels, you’ve learned about plenty of dystopian futures that have oppressing, totalitarian governments that go to extreme lengths to control their citizens. In Uglies, the government surgically puts lesions into the brains of their population to make them easier to control. 1984 has Big Brother. Brave New World had genetic conditioning. In The Hunger Games, the Capitol has, well the Hunger Games.

Feed is unique in that the government is not the main antagonist. Actually, the government in Feed is pretty useless. The real power is held by the corporations.

Feed takes place in the indeterminable future, when clouds have become Clouds™, school is School™, and the internet has evolved into a brain implant called a feed. Children like Titus, the main character, are given their feeds at birth, to reduce complications. From there, you can access information like we do when we use our computers. Characters m-chat, which is effectively telecommunication. They find out where the coolest clubs are, then use their feeds to get them there. They order products through it, find out what’s cool to wear…the feed tells them how to think. Corporations rule this world. No one feels the need to learn, because their feeds tell them everything. They receive target adds based on what they’ve bought in the past.

Titus meets Violet on a shuttle to the moon. Violet is unlike anyone Titus has ever met. She actually speaks instead of using m-chat. She reads books. And she can talk about philosophy. Violet spends the novel trying to convince Titus and his friends to think about what their consumer lifestyle actually means. Violet actually cares about the world, and that intrigues Titus.

There are probably a lot of you out there who aren’t interested in reading a satire about consumerism and global awareness, which is a damn shame, because you’re the ones who need to read Feed the most. As for the rest of you, Feed is absolutely brilliant, funny, thoughtful, sad, and I wish every literate person on the planet would read it. I think it’s that important.

-Allyx