Title: The Circle Author: Dave Eggers
Published: October 8, 2013
Genre(s): Science Fiction
Page Count: 493
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users' personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company's modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can't believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world--even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.
The Circle is a dystopian novel not unlike the many other dystopian novels that have flooded the market for the past several years. In the not-too-distant future, society as we know it is greatly changed, and not for the better. Our young protagonist finds herself faced with the reality of this broken society and must chose her course of action. This is all standard fare, nothing alarming or extra special. Honestly, I found this novel to be extremely readable, interesting, and well-written (for the most part).
What I take great exception to, however, is who and what Dave Eggers vilifies in The Circle. The downfall of society, according to the book, is caused by social media—and the perpetrators are millennials.
If you honestly think I’m going to read a book by some curmudgeonly middle-aged dude about how millennials are fucking everything up with their selfies and their tweets and their snapchats and not have things to say about it, you are just not thinking. A reasonable critique of the overuse of social media and the dangers of the Internet is fine and totally acceptable; what is not acceptable is unresearched, heavily-biased propaganda that relies 100% on stereotypes and very little on facts.
I’m not saying social media, and modern technology in general, doesn’t have its bad side. Of course it does. However, the Internet has given way to a lot of good outcomes for millions of people, none of which The Circle addresses or even mentions. The book is all doom and gloom and “the sky is falling!”, harping over and over again on people and their screens and their apps and their messages and their disconnectedness and their apathy.
Well, to that I just say: fuck you, Dave Eggers. Seriously, fuck you.
How dare you tell me that social media is ruining lives when it fact it saves them. How dare you.
I’ve met my best friends on the Internet. I’ve practiced and become highly skilled at expressing myself on the Internet. The corner of the Internet I’ve carved myself is often the only place I can say what I’m thinking without extreme repercussions. I learned to be a feminist on the Internet. I learned to give a shit about people besides myself on the Internet. I learned about politics and health and history and science on the Internet. I learned to love myself because of the Internet.
And maybe overuse of social media is a thing—I’m not saying it’s not. But The Circle, with its vapid, two-dimensional protagonist who has no agency, does not speak to any truth about being a millennial. Mae as a character does not exist in real life except as a fictional scapegoat for out-of-touch people like Eggers who would rather talk about “the kids and their screens” instead of real problems like climate change, poverty, and war.
I have always stood by—and will always stand by—the assertion that social media does far more good than it does harm. And if Dave Eggers could get out of his closed-minded, uninformed, bah-humbug doomsday bunker, he might come to agree with me.
