The Circle

Okay, I understand the world described in this book: the one where no one has any privacy because, well, a shit named Zuckerberg declared privacy is dead and no longer the social norm, then spent $100,000,000 protecting his own privacy, but it doesn't mean that I agree with it or like it or didn't struggle to throw this book across the room when I was reading it.

The gist of it is there's this big social media payments company that forces its users to log in with real names then promptly begins absorbing everything so that it knows everything about its users and peer pressures its users into sharing everything, connects everything, tracks everything, until the concept of privacy is destroyed. It follows the journey of an idiot 20-something woman, Mae, as she becomes a sheep and stops thinking for herself, acting only on the whims of others, the opinions of others.

I wanted to throw this book across the room a thousand times, pick it up, and throw it across the room another thousand times. Sure, "sharing is caring," fine, yes, but forced sharing is bullshit. And "privacy is stealing"? YES, the obvious conclusion of a surveillance state, which is the direction the world is going, where, again, those in power stay in power.

Related: instantaneous, required democracy is called a lynch mob.

Eggers got his point across with this one. Problem is, the people who are listening already knew, and the people who refuse to listen? Well, they kinda deserve the future they get.

I recommend this for the rage inducing stupidity of the sadly realistically written main character, and the cautionary tale told.