"Advertisement in Feed and our society"

Fausto Benitez

Feed by M.T. Anderson is a story one hundred years into the future from now. It’s a new society where 73% of people have a chip implanted into their brains. This chip is called feed. Feed is an advance form of the internet. They show advertisements. People who have a Feed have easier access to anything.

In the United States, we are a consumerism society because people want more and more stuff based on what they see. Advertisements are seen everywhere from movie theaters to bathrooms all the way to sporting events. A person sees advertisement everywhere and it has become part of our society. Advertising causes many people to be consumers in this society. Advertisement is commonly used to make people believe their product is the best of all and it’s tries to convince people.  

There are many types of advertisements such as television commercials, posters, online pop up ads, etc.

In Feed, Advertisement is shown throughout the whole novel. They have become a consumerism society because they constantly want to be up to date. Titus explains, “It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me” (Anderson 279). Similar to our society, we buy things because they are cool and everyone wears them. We mainly get our dressing ideas from celebrities. Many men try to copy other artists style by wearing similar things like them. For example, men are constantly victims of this situation because they wear Timberlands or Jordans like DJ Khaled or other artists. They copy what they say like ," they don't want us to succeed". They spend hundreds of dollars on these products. We are influenced by artists or famous people based on our looks and style.

In the article, “online videos of advertisement industry”, by Abhishek it gives us information about how online advertisement has increase and what makes advertisements to be successful. It talks about a “new era of advertising” meaning that they are many new ways advertisement such as YouTube advertising, google and Facebook ads, etc. There are many new ways of advertisement. Everyone can relate to this because we all see YouTube videos and we have all gone through seeing a thirty second ad. This is a form of advertising commonly seen now a day.

The author says, “But the braggest thing about the feed, the thing that made it really big, is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are. It can tell you how to get them, and help you making buying decisions that are hard. Everything we think and feel is taken in by the corporations, mainly by data ones like Feedlink and OnFeed and American Feedware, and they make a special profile” (48). In other words, the Feed knows what you like and what are you interests. Based on this information, the Feed knows what to advertise and it knows what you will buy. No matter what we search up, the internet is making a profile for our interests similar to what feed does to Titus and the other characters.

We can compare their society to our society because we are living in similar situations. What we search up on the internet stays there. If a person has something in interest and constantly search it up or views videos, pop up ads will most likely appear on the side of a website you are in.

For example, in our society soccer players constantly look at reviews of soccer cleats, videos of soccer players, or even their favorite thing. Next thing you see is a pop up ad about a soccer cleats and jerseys on the side of the website.  

According to Abhishek, “the basic barometers (like shares, views, comments, likes, and watch time) contribute a lot for deciphering audience responses, which turns helps the strategists to interpret the quality content (what the audience likes)” (1). We know that the basic barometer is like the the Feed.

Similar to the novel, consumerism is a social issue. Advertisement is placed in each character’s head which is put there by the government. Many people are constantly getting advertising by cooperation’s and want them to buy their products. People in this society are attracted by advertising because it is chipped inside of them.

Similar to our society, we are attracted to what we see on commercials. For example: Peyton Manning is a famous NFL football player who has a sponsorship deal with Papa John’s. He advertises pizza and makes people believe that the right moment to buy pizza is on Sunday night football games. This isn’t good for society because there are many child suffering from obesity. The irony here is that Peyton Manning is perfectly fit and is advertising pizza to consumers. We are attracted to pizza and sports. We decide to buy pizza and watch Sunday night football based on this advertisements.

In the novel, one of the advertisement that caught my attention was on page 157 and it says, “’eye of the needle’ is just another name for a gate in Jerusalem- and with the Swarp XE-11s mega-lepton lift and electro kinetic gyrostasis, you can flip ninety degrees to the ground and back again in one-point-two seconds- so getting through the gate won’t be a problem anymore” (157).

In other words, if people purchase the Swarp XE-11s they have a spot in heaven. This is an example of false advertising. Similar to our world there are many fake advertising. A common advertisement is people buying a product in order to lost weight. Many of weight loss advertisements are either fake, they don’t work, or they just want your money.

Advertisement in both feed society and our society relate in many ways. We want to be up-to-date on everything we see. Advertisements help us make decisions on what we should get as well as our profile we create based on our search history. Advertisements are not always positive, they can be the opposite and lie to us. In our society, we use advertisements to be up-to-date, to help us what we like, and to attract us to buy their product.

Fausto Benitez, Prompt 4

Works Cited 

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2002. Print.

The Newest Disease

There’s a huge epidemic that has been spreading around the world. This disease starts when you are about 11 or 12 and does not go away. It actually gets worse as the years go on if you decide not to acknowledge it. It starts to consume your whole life to the point where you start to lose social skills because you are just stuck in the house all of the time.

You didn’t choose to have this disease and you didn’t choose for it to get worse and worse as the years go on.

It all just kind of happened.

What is this disease you might ask?

Technology.

There has been a lot of talk about how technology is so much more hurtful than helpful, which is why I decided to use the example of a disease to explain it. Some people might even think that these advances in technology are extremely positive, which they are in some cases.

We can now talk to people instantly. I do think that texting has some benefits because you can keep in contact with people you may not have kept in contact with if texting didn’t exist. Video chat helps a lot when it comes to keeping in contact with family in other states or over seas.

Technology has gotten to the point where it is beginning to take part of our whole world. It is already deemed a necessity these days, and like Violet’s dad, if you don’t have it, then you’re looked at differently. In Feed, technology is the only way that these kids can exist. Having the feed is essential to their life. If the feed malfunctions, then their whole life can be at risk since it is connected to the brain. It controls their entire body.

Although we are not as advanced in technology as they are in the world of Feed, we still suffer the same social downfalls. A lot of younger kids have trouble talking to people. They are lacking this social skill because their main form of communication is through texting. Also, the fact that kids are spending a majority of their day using technology doesn’t help.

The characters in Feed use something called m-chat to talk to each other. There’s a scene in Feed where Titus and Violet are in Titus’ upcar and he is m-chatting Violet instead of talking to her. She has to tell him to “talk in the air” or something along those lines. The feed has affected everyone that has it so much that they barely talk out loud anymore.

Since the feed is hooked up to your brain, it knows what you're thinking. When you're trying to think of a word, it'll suggest words that would be good to use. It's kind of the the feature that currently on the iPhone. On the iPhone, instead of giving you the actual word you're thinking of, it will give you what it thinks you want to say.

Titus tries to describe how the feed is a good thing in many ways throughout the book. He tells us about how because of the feed, he can find out “which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in” (Anderson 47).

You read that right. “Which battles of the Civil War that George Washington fought in.” Hopefully you know that George Washington didn’t fight in the Civil War.

He wasn’t even alive then…

Titus just thinks that you can be “supersmart” just by having the feed, but as you can tell, the feed isn’t always correct. He trusts in the feed too much.

We use technology as the only source to get information too often. I honestly don't even know of anyone that uses books to get information anymore. The people that do use books to get information look them up online. They don't go to the library and open a book unless they absolutely have. I'm even part of this and I know that it is wrong and getting out of hand. I'm not trying to say that all information on the internet is probably false, because it isn't, but you need to know how to distinguish something that is legit from something that is completely false.

The only cure that you're going to find for this "disease" is to find at least 15 minutes to get away from technology for a little while. Play an instrument, draw or paint something, go for a walk or a run without any music for a change. There's so much you can do to just get away from technology. I know that it will be hard because we're all so addicted, but it's possible and it's only going to help us in the future.

-Emily C. Prompt 4

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2002. Print.

Titus Analyzed

The growth of Titus’s character is inspiring. It is proof that even the dullest minds can develop and see the bigger picture. He started off as the typical teenager with only parties and hook-ups on his mind. As he gets to know Violet, the catalyst for his change, he starts to realize that there is more to think about in life. I get this sense that M.T. Anderson wanted us to dislike Titus at first, just to make us feel bad about how technology can affect us. To make us distasteful towards how ignorant our minds become when technology is so powerful that results in not being able to come up with the right words to describe something we like. How we would become less empathetic if most of our human interactions took place in a virtual setting.

Titus is neither a hero nor a villain, he is merely an example. I don’t blame him for not being more aware of the things Violet was aware of. He grew up with parents who award him for being dumb just so he can feel better about himself.

““We’ve decided you need a little cheering up,” said my mother.

I started to feel a little better. I could feel their feeds shifting toward a common point, some kind of banner they were pulling up.

“We’ve decided to get you your own upcar,” said my mother.” (Anderson 118)

With this kind of mentality that Titus grew up with it is very easy to think you can do no wrong. As he progresses through the novel he starts to question the world he lives in and even though he does not like what Violet is saying he still thinks about it. In this conversation that Violet and Titus were having, Violet is explaining to Titus that the world they live in is not a democracy and even though Titus doesn’t care he was still thinking about it.

“Because if it was a democracy, everybody would have to decide about everything,

I thought about that. We could have everybody vote. From the feeds. Instantaneous. Then it would be a democracy.

Except, she said, only about seventy-three percent of Americans have feeds.

Oh, I said. Yeah. And I felt so stupid” (Anderson 112)

Titus even realized how uneducated he is in this conversation which was one of the major events that changed him.

People always say the first step to self-help is to admit that you have a problem and without Titus realizing things like this he could have stayed stubborn and not even cared when Violet was on her death bed. I think M.T. Anderson really did a good job with Titus. His character is understandable and one we can learn from. And even though I might not have liked him in the beginning I see that he is just like any other kid in this age. 

Kamelia A. Prompt 6

Work Cited

Anderson, M. T. Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2002. Print.

Advertisements in Social Media

“It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up”.  (279)

Feed  by M.T. Anderson tells the story of a group of teens in a life where everyone has the internet (their feed) inserted into their heads, about 100 years in the future. Throughout every moment of every day, companies are able to promote their products to these people through their installed feeds.

The use of technology has played a major role in all of our lives for sometime now. With these new changes come a new way of living, in every aspect. It is incorporated into everything and major businesses are not left out. The way companies market their products has changed so much in the digital age. They can now reach even more people through the use of social media platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter, and even Snapchat. Now, all it takes is for one celebrity to promote their product and they have a whole new clientele. With that being said, I believe that one of the major concepts that M.T. Anderson is trying to present to us through Feed is how powerful the impact of advertising is on us and how easily we are convinced into buying products through different trends.

While strolling through social media, like Instagram, you will encounter a number of different people. There’s always the pages that take us all around the world, show us a great collection of food porn, and ones that are filled with nothing but, of course, selfies. Though every page is different, it is easy to pick up on a certain trend: advertising. Every couple of pictures consisted of someone, usually a celebrity, promoting a new product for some unknown company on Instagram. They were advertising everything from clothing and jewelry to teeth whiteners to weight loss pills. After seeing this, I didn’t really think too much of it. That was before noticing how much people actually fed into what they were promoting.

One of the first instances where I noticed the impact of these celebrity advertisements was with waist trainers. They are basically more modern versionsof an old school corset. People, typically women, are supposed to wear in order to train their waists to be smaller. When I first saw an Instagram ad for it, I never thought that people would actually buy it. That was until I saw different celebrities, such as Kim Kardashian, promoting them to their fans. After that, waist trainers took off. It felt almost everyone on Instagram and their mom had one. This reminded of Feed when it came to their lesions. The text reads, “Violet was standing near the fountain and she had a real low shirt on, to show off her lesion, because the

stars of the Oh? Wow! Thing! had started to get lesions, and lesions even looked kind of cool”. (96) Even if the stars of this show didn’t know it, they were still advertising their lesions to everyone that watched that show, much like how social media works. Social sites are an amazing way for companies to network and get their products out there. All it takes is one well known celebrity to spread the word.

Another idea that is relevant to us today is the advertisement of body modification, aka plastic surgery. It seems like almost everyone these days has had a little something done but there has been a surge in a certain area within the last year. If you have spent at least even little bit of time on the internet, then you will know all about Kylie Jenner’s lips. Ever since she got them done,

they have been the talk of the town. Even though most people bash her for it, her actions did “inspire” at least some people to follow in the same direction. It became somewhat of a trend amongst females and to this day more and more women are getting lip injections. Following this, handfuls of companies decided to come out with “lip puckering devices” to duplicate her look and style. This idea of how trends can shape the decision that some people make is also shown in Feed. At one point, the text reads, “I was all going pretty good until Quendy arrived. When she got there, it was like —silence… wwwwwwwwww (wind)... wwwwwwww… ping (pin dropping) — because her whole skin was cut up with these artificial lesions. We were all just looking at her. They were all over her. She raised her arms. The cuts were like eyes. They got bigger and redder when she moved” (191/192). Quendy would have never gotten those artificial lesions without it have been advertised on TV and unknowingly by her friends. This brings me back to my point today. Kylie may not have been thinking that getting her lips done would have an effect on people but it did. It was an

advertisement for the procedure and people saw it and ran with it.

The point I am trying to make is that many of what we do and buy is just the result of what we see. Even when a picture isn’t our technical definition of an advertisement, doesn’t mean that is isn’t one. These ads really do have an impact of how trends are started, and how they integrated into our lives.

Brittany H. Prompt 4

Work Cited

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2002. Print.

*Disclaimer: This blog does not reflect my personal opinion on the topics presented throughout. It is strictly for educational purposes.

Is Feed something we have now?

Fausto Benitez 

In the first couple of pages I was confused and asked myself “What is this feed thing they talk about”? In the novel, Feed by M.T. Anderson, feed is a chip that is inserted in people’s heads which is supposed to make them wise and intelligent. “It allows them to have access to digital databases, online chat, and entertainment. We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck” (Anderson 3). This is how the novel starts and it is 100 years from now where everything is different and people are introduced to this new thing called feed. The people in this society believe is an advantage for them because everything is easier to access. Anderson says, “People were really excited when they first came out with feeds. It was all da da da, your child will have the advantage, encyclopedias at their fingertips, closer than their fingertips, etc.” (47). Everything is at their fingertips and can access anything very quick. They can even travel to the moon something new we never expect to happen in hundreds of years from now.

This novel speaks to my personal experience because it’s has strong connection to what technology has made me turn into. For example, I always use my cellar device to search up an answer to a question I might not know the answer to. I simply go onto google and type the question. I search it up and the first thing that comes up are answers.com or yahooanswers.com. I always assume their answers are right. Similar to the novel they believe that feed is going to give them an advantage from everyone who doesn’t have them because it will give them access to anything they ask. But this is making them stupid. iPhones or any device in a similar matter are making us more stupid as. Why? You might ask. Well, first we aren’t reading textbooks anymore because we can access every answer online so we don’t simulate knowledge into our brains. We simply search it up and assume that it’s the answer. iPhones, computers, tablet, etc., are the new feed in my life and in everyone’s life.

As the author writes, “People were really excited when they first came out with feeds” (Anderson 47). Similar to fans of the iPhone they have a huge excitement when a new iPhone comes out. I feel a strong excitement because I expect something new on the new device. Everyone goes crazy for this new piece of technology. iPhones have become the new feed in our society. 

Is feed something we have now? YES. When a professor first walks in to class the first thing they see is everyone on their devices. There is no socialization anymore. This has become the new thing in many college campuses and socialization with other students is stopping. Seeing students talk to one another is rare. Anderson says, “I looked around me. Everyone was nodding their heads to music, or had their eyes just blank with the Feed cast. It was just a party” (83). I relate to this situation a lot because in high school during study hall all my friends and I were on our phones and used them as our way to communicate to one another. 

The author says, “this big educational thing, da da da, your child will have the advantage, encyclopedias at their fingertips, closer than their fingerprints” (Anderson 47). Similarly, this also has a strong connection to my life because when the internet first came out everyone thought it was going to be used as something helpful. My parents thought it was the best thing that could have happened. As years past by, we realize that the internet can be harmful. The internet can be turned into something bad if it isn’t used correctly. There are hackers, inappropriate sites and false information. For example: cyber bullying is common now a day where people insults others and use this peace of advance technology in their favor. They bully others by name calling them or exposing them for something they did in the past. This is the feed because as we read in the novel, the guys got hacked by someone which caused them to not have control of it. Ever since my parents knew the reality behinds the internet I had many restrictions throughout middle school and some part of high school. They read articles of what the internet can cause to someone so this opened their eyes. I was given a certain amount of time to use the computer. If I used it for homework it was only for homework and nothing else.

People have turned the internet into something bad because there are hackers who want to access your information. This is happening now where hackers want to hack people Facebooks accounts or they want to access you banking accounts to steal your money. The author explains, “he told us that we could be off-line for a while, until they could see what had been done, and check for viruses” (Anderson 48). Even in this world of feed, people still experience viruses and hackers. This is no different from the world we are currently living in. 

According to the author, “everyone can be supersmart now. You could look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought and shit” (Anderson 49). This states a false statement indicting that the feed isn’t that smart itself. Similar to the internet we use now. I remember once in high school I had to do a history worksheet and the first thing I did was go on the internet to search up the answers and bammm… I found the answers to my worksheet and used them. The next day I handed it in and got a 50 because some were incorrect and incomplete. I honestly thought all the questions were right but my teacher was looking for textbook answers. The internet has had a negative effect on my life because I learned that many things in the internet are fake and are trying to fool us. We all believe everything we search up online. When we need to look up an answer we search it up and we don’t really know if the answer is correct or not. This is making us dumber as human beings because we aren’t taking the time to think about what the answer could really be or simply opening a textbook. 

Feed and the internet/iPhones are very similar. First, the internet/iPhones are the feed in today’s society. I believe they are similar because we used text in order to communicate with other. In Feed they use chat and that’s they way of communicating. Second, the internet is making us the human beings dumber similar to what the feed is causing to people in the book. Lastly, I believe everyone can connect to my situations that has happened to me so please watch out because feed is happening now. So yeah guys our feeds are iPhones and internet so be careful. 

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2002

Print.

Fausto

Question 2

The Adjustment

Whenever something is taken away from us, we naturally have a hard time adjusting to whatever it is not being there.

Here’s an example:

When I was in middle school, I wasn’t the best behaved kid, so this resulted in me getting in trouble a lot. My main form of punishment would be getting my phone taken away. For a kid in middle school, this is the absolute worst thing in the world. To be honest, I don’t even know why it was the worst thing in the world because looking back, it wasn’t like I was missing out on anything. I still got to see my friends and I was still able to play music and softball, so why did losing my phone for maybe two days seem like such a big deal to me?

In Feed, a young adult novel about earth 100 years in the future where there is a chip installed in almost everyone’s brain which acts as a computer, all of the young character’s feeds get hacked and shut down. They have absolutely no clue what to do when they lose their feeds. They have a hard time adjusting to the fact that the feed is no longer there. They actually have to talk without using the chat feature on their feed. Crazy, right?

I began to notice a certain relationship between the way I felt when I got my phone taken away and how Titus reacted when his feed was shut off. It was kind of like we reacted in stages.

Stage 1 – Shock. Picture this: You’re 13 years old again and you just got into a huge fight with your parents about something very minor, like not doing your daily chores. They say “give me your phone” multiple times and you resist and resist. Finally, you hand over that device and just sit there staring at a wall, a painting, or anything really. You’re just in shock that this actually happened. You feel like your entire life just got taken away from you and now you’re just sitting there. Every thing is dead silent. For Titus, this shock was more of a feeling of fear. He just woke up not being able to connect to the feed at all, which is not normal for him. He even says, “Everything in my head was quiet. It was fucked” (Anderson 44). He was shocked and scared that something that has been a part of him all of his life was gone all of a sudden.

Stage 2 – Denial. Now, denial is something that either hits you soon after shock or takes a little bit of time before it starts to affect you. For me, the denial would start the night after the punishment. I would wake up and automatically reach for my phone to see what I missed while I was sleeping. For Titus, not only denial, but also confusion, begin to set in pretty soon after he wakes up without the feed. The denial seemed to set in after Titus and his friends find out that the hacker was identified. Not only did the denial begin to set in, but Titus was still in shock. He says that they "were frightened, and kept touching [their] heads" (Anderson 46). Titus and his friends touching their heads is just like me trying to grab my phone when it isn't there. For both of us, that realization of not having "the thing that made our world go 'round" was the worst part of denial.

Stage 3 – Yearning. In the days in between when I would get my phone taken away and when I got it back, the sense of yearning for having my phone was very strong. I would feel physically sluggish because I wasn't connected. Titus was yearning for the feed so much that he was thinking about it all the time. On page 47, he even says that he misses the feed. He started reminiscing on all of the old feeds that used to exist, like the computer for example.

Stage 4 – Acceptance. Finally, I would just accept the fact that my phone is gone. When I say gone I mean like gone for good and never getting it back. Of course I would accept the fact that my phone was gone right before I would get it back, which wasn't a bad thing. Titus' acceptance begins on page 57 when he and his friends begin to blow needles through tubing at a skinless anatomy man. Titus' acceptance lasted for longer than one would think, but the longer it lasted, the more he seemed to enjoy not having the feed.

Stage 5 – Normality. The day that my phone was put back into my hand, it was like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders. It was like finding the missing puzzle piece to a puzzle. For Titus, getting the feed back seemed like the greatest thing that ever happened to them. Titus says, "It came down on us like water. It came down like frickin' spring rains, and we were dancing in it" (Anderson 70). I think that those two lines are a great description of what it felt like for Titus and his friends to get their feeds back.

As cheesy as this whole post sounds, this is actually how I felt when I was in middle school. I'm sure a lot of you that are reading this probably felt the same way back then. Although I had a life before technology and knew what it was like to not have that resource, I still had an extremely hard time adjusting, so I can't imagine what it would be like to have technology implanted into my brain and have it as a permanent part of my life and then just completely lose it. 

-Emily C. Prompt 2

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2002. Print.