Feed As an Allegory of Our Current Machine FAaAoOCM - Assignment 12 -Draft-

Feed is an allegory of our current state. The slang may be rewritten and we might be hanging out on the moon as opposed to union square, but all the pieces are there. We are all Titus in some respects, and we are all heading down that slope. I have had my share of moments where I wished for things to be similar to feed, everything instantly available for the simple sake of luxury, for things to be just effortless. I had, for a while, lost sight of what a little added effort can do for something. Just knowing you struggled for something makes everything all that much more rewarding when it all pays off. When you put your own hard work into something instead of being handed it on a silver platter, the experience is much more fruitful.

Case in point would be the skateboard I made, as I described in post 11. By not choosing to have it all put together for me and receiving a finished copy, I made it so that I collected every part individually and assembled them all by myself. I got as close to making the whole thing as I could without gathering the wood in the deck and forging the steel in the trucks. Feed demonstrates how, with instant satisfaction, people are no longer encouraged about doing things themselves, they only want to be waited on. This instant gratification robs the people of their drive, not only ruining their drive for a deeper happiness, but also furthering their growing depression based in consumer products.

Feed is a tragedy for a handful of reasons. Besides the obvious, surface-level observations, such as Violet's 'death' and the undying commitment to the feed. If we take this latter concept and push it deeper, we see how the commitment to the feed and what it does to people led to the ending being a hollow experience for Titus, where he felt deep regret for Violet's passing, but nothing more. There was nothing accomplished, which is what makes this such an excellent allegory of current times. There was no conclusion, the book just left the ominous taste of "everything must go" in our mouths. This feeling of inconclusiveness reflects incredibly well on the average person, who can grow to feel apprehensive of "the system", a general paranoia that they can't place. Some may go further and identify what makes them feel so, but ultimately, we don't act on it, so beaten down by the machine that we give in before we start, insisting that our struggle would be fruitless and nowhere near worth it.

I think Feed addresses the point rather well,depicting to us an exaggerated (but not by much) version of our current state, our lives as they exist, plugged into the computer, forever accepting the corruption of the digital wave. These teenagers are living totally empty lives, emphasized by Titus in the early pages of the book when he says "you need the noise of your friends, in space." Titus acknowledges discreetly how life is as empty as space, and without these flashy noisy products and commercials, you'd go insane, you'd fall apart. You need the noise of your friends, in space. You need to be distracted to survive.