Feed: Utopia

After having left the moon, Titus and his friends do not want to remember the experiences they went through for the last few days. They are discharged from the hospital and go out to Earth with their feeds completely working so they do not feel out of place anymore. The group of teenagers go out and do crazy things like go in 'mal' just to feel like they are alive and do things that are the popular thing to do. Titus is in a tight spot because he is surrounded by people who conform to society and follow all of the fads. A great example of this was the lesions that people were getting on their bodies. The lesions were occurring because the environment was less able to sustain human life because of the detrimental effects of all the damage done by man. Once the famous people from "Oh? Wow! Thing!" got the lesions, people started to think it was really cool so if they didn't already have them, they would go get some made without any second thoughts as to why people had those lesions in the first place.
This section had the largest part of the plot; especially most of which has to do with Titus and Violet getting to know each other and their dating. Titus was in a tough place because he was stuck in between his friends which were conformist and his girlfriend which was a nonconformist. Titus wanted to fit in with the group he hung out with as it is human nature to fit in with a group but oddly enough, he was attracted to Violet because she was different from everybody. He was always jumping from one of their sides to another and at the end of the section it did not work out for him. They were at a party and wanted to have a good time but then Violet started to criticize Quendy's lesions and bring stuff up that both parties did not agree on. Then when she could not move because she had problems with her brain because of the feed and passed out, all of Titus' friends were unmoved and wanted her to leave instead of trying to help. Titus was the only one that helped her out and had some compassion for Violet to get help but could not imagine his friends acting in such a crude manner. Thus, Titus was faced with a dilemma as to what he chose to be: conformist or nonconformist.
Another part of the section that stood out to me was the way the consumerist and political systems were manipulating the people. The president could say whatever he wanted to say about other countries or people and then later another announcement would come on talking about how the whole nation misinterpreted the president and his curse words actually meant something nice. Then the companies were trying so hard to figure the consumers out so that they could get them hooked on buying something. That is the very reason Violet did not get to receive help to fix her feed because when she went shopping with Titus and looked at a lot of weird things and did not buy any of it, they could not figure her out so she was not an asset or something they cared to help because it was not going to benefit them in any way. What was amazing to me is that the companies are already trying to do something similar to this on the internet. According to what we search, look at, listen to, and buy the search engines like google are formulating our persona and through the use of mathematics try to figure out what we would like or would possibly buy. It is kind of scary how things are already so similar to the story although it seems far fetched.