The Circle is a book written about Social Medias and their heavy impact upon society and individuals. The main character of the book Mae Holland, is asked to work, by her best friend Annie, for The Circle, a company working to be the top Social Media in their time The company has three bosses, known as the “The Three Wise Men”. When first starting at The Circle, Mae is given a Zingi It is a profile that knows her inside and out, her personal information, any diseases or allergies, or things she loves When given to her, she is told her name is MaeDay in her Zing; which foreshadows that there will be disasters at hand. Throughout the book Mae fights with being accepted, finding love, keeping her friend, and understand how to use all of the new sites placed before her. She looks up to her best friend for most of the book, “she was known by all as effervescent, seemed incapable of letting anything bother her for more than a few moments.
But towards the end Mae begins to question if she should give all the credit of her success to Annie; and The Circle begins to tear them apart Mae struggles with her interactions with her new Circle life with not being involved enough and then being fully committed to all one of her bosses has to offer, It is still believed that Mae needs to be saved It is also interesting to connect the Social Medias in the book to the ones in our daily lives. When comparing Mae with her Inner and Outer Circle as well as her Zing, to our Facebook and Instagram, as well as Twitter, it is hard to find differences When recognizing all the similarities, it becomes clear that we ourselves need to be saved from the social Medias we interact with At the beginning of the book it is easy to assess that Mae is exploring the new company and does not need saving.
She is simply figuring everything out and she has the chance to leave if she is not comfortable with anything. She goes into the job having what they call an Outer Circle (what I believe to be Facebook) and they give her a preset up profile of Zing (Twitter), “Mae admitted she hadn‘t been, but wanted to be. Mae admits the wanting a Zing and now she has one, connected to everyone in the company, It is a great start for her, seeing that it is a good idea to be aware of these Medias and to be able to work them. Mae takes the time to get to know her new profiles, the new pieces of her life, She did not realize how dedicated all of her coworkers and bosses were to these until she realized she had actually missed a meeting that she should have attended During Mae’s development of Book One, the reader is just as excited as Mae is to get all of the new technology and to realize how far behind Mae is in the company.
She meets new people and new love, It is hard to not root for the weird nerdy boy, Francis, or the mysterious ex- boyfriend, Mercer, but the one most interesting was Kalden, You get a glimpse of the kind of person each of these men represent in Mae’s life and I concluded that Francis was the part of Mae that was needy and self-conscious, Her ex, Mercer, was the person she used to be, family oriented, independent, and someone comfortable with being on the outside of the box. Finally, Kalden, the part of her that questioned The Circle and was hesitant and saw the red flags Unfortunately for all the men that defined the transitions she was going through, they all lost her. In the end seeing the person Mae became, was probably more disappointing that I had expected She was the good kid who had her wayst She became someone who was a company product and they used to Mae to the full extent, Mae does need saving, but even though Kalden (Ty) tried, and Annie at some point even suggested to be careful, and her parents and ex hiding from her, Mae continued.
Whether or not it is agreed that she needed to be saved, Mae does not want to be, and that makes it hard to decide if she really needs to be saved If I were Mae, I would want my friend, Annie, and Kalden to save me, but ifl put them in danger, or turn them into my Boss (the authorities), then why would they bother saving me? Mae needs to be saved, but she does not want it, and to some degree she does not deserve it. But I would want to be saved, so she should be saved. It was easy to realize that Eggers was most likely talking about Facebook, and Twitter, and lnstagram. The way he describes how many followers and posts Mae needs to make daily, suggests that her job connects to the type of life style and twitter, lnstagram, and YouTube star would have to work. They are expected to keep up with all messages, and filter at least ten posts a day if not more, and they always have to look good in front of everyone; no mistakes “Mae saw she missed a meeting, deemed “pretty much mandatory” for all newbies, That had been last Thursday. Why hadn’t anyone told her? Well, stupid, she answered herself.
They did tell your Right here” (p. 103). People expect others to read Social Medias more than texts, so we have little event notifications that pop up constantly. I think that Eggers wanted to make a statement about how some people are not involved at all, some have no choice, others are casually involved, and the rest who are heavily involved in Social Medias. It seems that Eggers decided that Mercer was the only one not involved at all, Kalden and Mae‘s parents had no choice, Annie was casually involved like the other coworkers at The Circle, and Mae and Bailey were heavily involved. Eggers describes them all in their own unique way, and soon enough the unimportant ones say goodbye to Mae and leave her with Annie, Kalden, and Bailey. it makes it easier to keep an eye on her in some sense. She no longer ventures outside of The Circle, and no one outside of it tries to see her. When they make Mae go transparent, it shows that she is fully emerged into the Social Medias and now the sites can watch her.
They can see what she does and decide if it is appropriate; to a degree, they now control her every move. With Social Medias today we often give out too much information on websites and can easily be watched, controlled, or taken advantage of in certain ways. I can see how each of these Social Medias in the book can easily be related to ones in the present day. We constantly seek people’s acceptance on what we are doing. We want them to hear the happiness in our voice. We want them to see a video of exactly what happened so they know it happened, And when something terrible happens People post about it, They want people to feel sorry for them and to give them sympathy because it has to be public now. Everything has to be public, If it is not public, it’s not real (my favorite lien in this whole paper), You have to post that you‘re in a relationship, or that you found Jesus, or that you got a new pet, or you just, literally just had a baby, or that your aunt passed away.
Everyone has to know and sometimes we still cannot explain why we have that urge to tell people exactly what is going on or why we are feeling what we feel. Eggers points out clearly that we, like Mae, often let others decide what will happen, We let them take over, and show us that we have to inform others as to what is going on. It is terrifying that we cannot help ourselves but to tell people gossip. Much like Mae when she rats out Kalden as ty, or when she is sitting with Annie; “They needed to talk about Annie, the thoughts she was thinking. Why shouldn’t they know them? The world deserved nothing less and would not wait”. We have an urge to tell people. This was probably the most contemplated question of this class, Do we need saving? Do I need saving? It was a lot harder to answer than I thought.
Yes to a point, people need to be saved from, not the Media, but the amount of time they spend on it Like Mae, people are always on Facebook, and Twitter and lnstagram, Even with friends and family, they always have to post that they were together or that they went here and there The only time they do not post seems to be when they are actually asleep, but as soon as they are up, they post selfies of “I woke up like this #nofilter on Instagram, and then proceed to Facebook a selfie of them and their friends eating at McDonalds, saying, “Cheap friends, but best friends”. They then end the night tweeting about people they like, but they ‘sub-tweet’ so that if the other person is dumb enough, they will not realize it is about them. There is never am moment alone with people nowadays. “Mae opened the intra-company streams and began. She was determined to get through all the Inner and Outer feeds that night”.
People are always doing this, trying to keep up with the social norms and the appearances and how to act and talk It is really disappointing to see Like Mae in some instances, I see my own eldest sibling constantly needed to check her phone and post what she is doing, and tell her friends she is having a good time. She, in some senses, is attempting to prove to everyone that she is fun and carefree and happy. Mae does the same, She wants to prove herself, so she willingly dives into the Social Medias of The Circle. The big question I recently stated being the toughest to answer, do I need saving? It is hard to give a definite yes or no, To some extent, yes, I need to be saved from the amount of time I actually spend on my phone, or Social Medias. I would have more free time if] did cut back on my interests of the internet. But at the same time, I am one of the ‘old school people‘ who do not see a real importance of having a Twitter or Instagram.
Yes I do own an account in each, but I only focus on Facebook and Snapchat. It is interesting how many excuses I actually came up with on not needing to be saved, but regardless, I do need to be saved. In high school, I did not have any social Medias because I was not allowed. I still survived and lived life very happily. I would not wish for another past in that sense. So I think to some degree, yes, I do need to be saved, we all do, but I am not sure to what extent. Iarn not like Mae, or a lot of my friends, butI could spend less time on my phone, I do recognize that spending time with family should be just that, and I am very thankful that unlike Mae‘s family, mine demand that] put my phone down and connect with them. So In a sense, maybe I am being saved.
Maybe I am just fine. Guess, like Mae, I’ll never truly know when enough is enough. The Circle is a book filled with compact meanings of being part of the family and work as well as friends and when lines between them and our personal lives are crossed. It also shows the lack of interaction and emotions between the main character and her friends, coworkers, and family. Mae is, in most senses, us We represent her and she represents us. She is new to these Social Medias and a lot of people either want her to dive in or they want her to be weary and stay out of the Social Medias in The Circle. Granted she started out with an Outer Circle, but it sounded like she had not used it in a rather long time; suggesting that she had the Social Media but that she was not into them like everyone else. Mae needs saving from who she is becoming because of Social Media. We need to be saved from who we are becoming because of Social Media.
