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The Circle is a chilling book. Some have likened it to Brave New World, and while it falls short of the mark in terms of the writing, it is an apt comparison.
The story centers around Mae, a young college graduate who gets a job at The Circle, the coolest and most influential company in the world (if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google all combined into one giant company). At first the company seems harmless enough, and even has implemented some great ideas, one of which is to have one username and password for every website, eliminating the need to keep track of every password for all of your log ins. The Circle has outlawed anonymity, and in its place is the application called “TruYou” where every comment or post a person makes is from one account with his or her real identity. Even this doesn’t seem so bad as it eliminates a lot of harassment and online threats.
Of course, this is all a slippery slope. Things change rapidly and eventually the real agenda of The Circle is revealed. The idea is to eliminate privacy and commodify every human experience. The company begins to promote a new product, a small camera called SeeChange that can be placed anywhere and is attached to live online video feeds. Gradually, these small cameras are placed everywhere from California to Fiji.
Their slogan to go along with SeeChange:
ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN
The company promotes the use of “transparency,” that is, to wear miniature camera necklaces so that all that one does is known through a video feed online.
Further on in the story Mae inadvertently helps to create new catchphrases for the company:
PRIVACY IS THEFT
SECRETS ARE LIES
There are dissenters to this new world order. The most prominent is Mae’s ex-boyfriend, Mercer. I think he acts as a sort of author avatar for Dave Eggers, allowing him to express his personal opinion on what has been happening over the last several years concerning social media. A quote:
“I mean, all this stuff you’re involved in, it’s all gossip. It’s people talking about each other behind their backs. That’s the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay, and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication. And besides that, it’s fucking dorky.”
I suspect most, but not all, readers will consider Mercer’s story to be the most tragic of all the characters.
The love scenes aren’t as bad as I expected with a female protagonist. Mae goes cock carousel riding with a few different Circle employees, one of whom is a premature ejaculator. Eggers has some insight into the female psyche because there are a few occasions where Mae experiences jealousy and sleeps with a guy she doesn’t even like in order to regain the feeling of being desirable. She also uses her knowledge that a certain employee finds her attractive to fulfill her own need for attention.
Mae’s argument with her female friend is a nice peek into how females treat each other. Mae surpasses her friend in status within The Circle and we get to see the crabs in a bucket theory in action. It’s actually quite Red Pill—something I didn’t expect from reading a mainstream book like this.
Overall, this as closest book our generation will get to Brave New World.
The writing is straightforward, easy to breeze through 30 or 40 pages in a single sitting. The world within the book is similar enough to ours that we can imagine, without stretching our imaginations too far, that something similar could happen in reality. The ending is particularly bone-chilling. Highly recommended.
