It's a small thing, but the direction to 'go to the company store' really struck me. My dad grew up in a mining town. Late 19th and early 20th century, the miner's HATED the company store. It was a symbol of how the company controlled way too much of your life. Debts at the company store tied you more tightly to the company. So did the fact that most miner's lived in company housing. The Circle has both, pitched as ways to help the Circlers, but clearly a way to further dependency.
As part of a long, bitter strike in the 1920s, every company store near where my dad grew up was vandalized or burned to the ground after some rioting. One miner was killed, and 100 years later William Davis Memorial Day is still celebrated in former mining towns across the region. The stores and housing were 100% a means of control and the workers and company both new it.
Company towns are so intriguing to me. Pullman, Illinois or Olivetti which pictures make it seem stylish and futuristic for the 1950s.
There’s a quote I often reference when teaching this part of history (Labor Unions vs. Capitalists): “We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shop, taught in the Pullman school, catechized in the Pullman church, and when we die we shall go to the Pullman Hell.” -Pullman Employee
It seems the Circle’s Three Wise Men saw this quote and took it as a challenge.
The dawning response I had reading Mae’s interactions with the Circle was that she had joined a cult. This was predominant in the scene where she was castigated for not attending the Portugal interest group. Their demands and her responses were so stilted and inauthentic. But this doesn’t help me appreciate the book because I don’t understand how Mae is inducted into the cult so quickly, or how this Circle cult has been so successful in dominating the tech industry with a product I feel nobody really wants (TruYou: the enforcement of real name interactions on line) and the main selling point seems to be if you engage in a wildly unrealistically seeming amount of online discourse (which isn’t qualitative? Just the quantity seems to be enough?) can make you go up a leaderboard and get prestige? I feel like this has been tried and doesn’t work.
The one grounded person, Mercer, provides maybe the best insight/justification for the satirical unreality of the Circleers which is that their speech is arrested at Junior High, which is where digital life for many youth begins and maybe that's why the maturity of the very young employee base might have even been influenced by the Circle (which is 6 years old, if I recall correctly but it doesn’t quite push them back to junior high age).
But I just feel like very stupid people have to exist for the plot so far to even work. I appreciated Jared Henderson's point that he seemed to see realism in the 2013 tech world he was in, but I haven’t seen it so it just seems crazy. The idea that idealism of building something world-transformative (that makes you a ton of money and power) drives many in tech can explain some of the cultishness of the Circle crew. But it still nags at me
Kaldan is the interesting character for me, and also makes me question what Eggers is really doing. I want him to be a supernatural injection into the narrative, maybe a real spiritual evil force of some kind that lies behind or manifests in this (Infernal?) Circle with its underworld Big Red Box (I think I have that figured out already in advance of any big reveal to come in the future sections) That would be interesting. He plucks fruit for Mae, maybe like a symbolic serpent in the garden.
One thought I had about the both junior high level of the discourse and the stilted cultishness of the discourse is this might be a 1984/Brave New World riff, where Newspeak has to replace normal discourse because other words for what’s going on are too fraught for the cult. Transparency, participation, etc. have sinister meanings as the story unfolds. And the total surveillance or “sousveilance” (the Circles are doing it to themselves, but coercively) resonates with 1984 and BNWs “everyone belongs to everyone else” and nothing should be secret. Interestingly we are told later that you can have your camera off in the restroom, which is were Kaldan has sex with Mae (eww, also: he climbed over the tops of several stalls to get to her? He seems more like a demonic alien entity to be that lithe)
Harbor seals and Houseboaters are an interesting contrast to it all: they drift from each other, are challenging to approach, and have below-the-surface lives that can’t be seen
I will think I need a real explanation of why Mae is so oblivious first to the boundary crossing of the various men (and women!) in sexual banter in a corporate environment where the joke is normally that HR/Metoo has ended any such sexual banter but maybe it’s just that Metoo wasnt big until 2017 after the Circle was published?
and here I am, making a "First Post" and waiting with bated breath to see if I get likes. Maybe I'm being overly critical of Eggers, .... but I'm choosing this for myself.... Zing!
1. About the sex: I think that tech had a reputation for being a bit libertine, maybe with the idea that it wasn't going to conform with 'old' workplace standards. But also, in the novel the sex and bawdy talk serve as an example of boundary-crossing, which of course is a huge theme throughout the rest of the novel. Mae is steadily giving everything to the Circle.
2. About the speech: I don't think speech online is merely 'arrested' at junior high. I think it actively causes speech to revert to a simpler form. Think of the way that memes spread and then become a part of ordinary speech. I notice it in myself!
3. About the realism: I do see a lot of similarities between my experiences and the Circle, but I'd note that I went into tech after MeToo (which I think signalled a larger cultural shift, not just about sexual harassment). The patterns of speech and the way 'the mission' was talked about constantly are what is most familiar. However, the Circle does increase the intensity of this a good bit for rhetorical impact.
these are good points thanks! My perception is meme talk seems deliberately ironic and distancing. The way many of the characters talk seems just inauthentic but they don't know it. Some memes would make them more real seeming
I think The Circle is supposed to be like Weixin (WeChat) in China. It's a super app that does everything. At some point I think they mentioned The Circle having 80% of the payment processing market share. Except instead of government control like with Weixin, The Circle is the one in control. The Chinese surveillance state with Silicon Valley characteristics.
For context, my in-laws in China use WeChat for personal communication, to handle payroll for their business, to find news, to do their shopping, and much more. Westerners have a hard time imagining it because we're used to using a bunch of apps, but in China you could plausibly have a smartphone and exclusively use WeChat.
"One thought I had about the both junior high level of the discourse and the stilted cultishness of the discourse is this might be a 1984/Brave New World riff"
Definitely lots of Brave New World vibes. I also remember thinking "is everyone ok with this?" in Brave New World.
On the stilted discourse: Mercer - God bless him - is an example. He spends whole paragraphs talking AT Mae. I like his points but it's hardly persuasive given the audience. This is often a problem with true believers - just repeat your 'obvious' points and people will agree. Ah, nope. Mae's parents seem to be a bit more middle of the road: 'hey Mae, your job is cool and we're pumped, but we're a bit worried about all the unwanted attention we are now getting.' They seem a bit more like people and less like characters standing in for a certain perspective.
I feel unnatural dialogue is often an issue in books that tackle heavy philosophical issues. I read the big Russian authors and think: "is this how intellectuals talk?" Is this a convo or a philosophical treatise? Perhaps it's just hard to get characters to seem both real and very philosophical during the same conversation. I think George Eliot did a good job blending philosophy, plot, and dialogue in Silas Marner. I think 1984 does a decent job, where a lot of the arguments happen via 'the book' or between O'Brien and Winston during an interrogation; both places you'd expect long debates.
one of my favorite writers is Gene Wolfe, and BOTS is also a "novel of ideas" and Severian for me works with odd discourse patterns because 1) its a scifi world different from ours 2) Severian is a wierdo raised in a torture cult 3) Severian has a special mental quality of never forgetting anything. Mae needs an explanation like that :). BNW explains why everyone is OK because there was a revolution that needed to happen. New political order. the tech world is a kind of political order that has come to dominate but I don't see the revolution as being called for beforehand.
Some Circlers do seem to be coded on The Spectrum tho.
From the opening of the novel I felt Mae was entitled and shallow. I guess that is enough justification for me - she is buying most of this and happy to drink gallons of the kool-aid. She's just not super thoughtful. Also, she's what 24, tops?
Yes, she's a pretty young woman. She's also someone who is frustrated at her life: her longtime romance ended, she hated her old job, and her parents talk about how much they love Annie even though they've never met her.
Interesting points, Paul! It has been fun to read a novel after our first month’s reading. We are told throughout the novel that many young people want to work at the Circle. I think Mae’s deep gratitude to be there causes her to plunge heart, mind, and soul into the mission and ethos of the Circle (as it is revealed to her bit by bit over time). Her youth also seems to make her enthusiastic along with the fact that she feels rescued from a job that was killing her.
All of this busyness, of zinging, posting, sharing, makes it impossible for Mae to pause for a moment of contemplation (one of the important things we read about in January).
Oh, and I forgot all about the green lemon that never turned yellow. Kalden was disappointed. Does anyone have more thoughts about this?
Another way I noticed the Circlers use language as a builder of identity and a means of social control -- very often, when Mae is conversing with her colleagues, they will constantly check in with her. "Sound good? Clear? Cool? Isn't that flattering?"
It's like they're inserting these positive connotations into her mind during their conversations, so she will associate positivity with the company and its culture. It leaves Mae feeling more committed to the company, where all these people want the 'best' for her (when in reality, they just want her as a number for their own metrics).
'That Mae finds Mercer so annoying and Kalden so intriguing is something worth thinking on.'
I think Mae's attraction to Kalden, as opposed to her disdain for Mercer, can be explained by the fact that she knows Mercer, whilst Kalden remains a mystery.
We know that Mercer is Mae's ex-boyfriend, so it's safe to assume she knows him well, including his habits, preferences or just the general day-to-day life. They have known each other for some time, he's even close with Mae's parents. Mae has intimate knowledge of him, and I think it could be said here that familiarity breeds contempt. There's not much left for Mae to learn about Mercer (at least not in terms of information), and on the off chance that she did want to learn something, she could. Mercer is reachable.
Kalden, on the other hand, is a complete unknown. He comes and goes as he pleases, and aside from the occasions when he (literally) emerges from the shadows, Mae has no way of contacting him. There's no information about him anywhere, either, and while this may be dangerous, as Annie perceives it to be, there is also the allure of not knowing. In the space of the unknown, imagination thrives.
On top of that, Mercer firmly proclaims his anti-Circle views, while Kalden's stance on the Circle and their transparency policy is not immediately obvious. He could be a spy, but he also has access to the mysterious, undergroud Circle-dungeons – so maybe he's an important figure who, for some reason, needs to remain in the shadows? The fact that Mae does not question him being so secretive in this world of oversharing is odd, but she does not strike me as someone who particularly wants to question anything.
Also, the appeal of mystery is wonderfully ironic in a world where 'all that happens will be known.'
The Circle is feels like a cult or somethings similar, it's scars me because also feels similar like our worlds, or how we interact online and want to share everything and the constantly feel the need to post daily, even if the experience isn't good or we feel bad after or feel like isn't good of our health. I think so far in the novel, Mae didn't have this realization yet: ''everything feels super amazing, cool'' at this point. I like Mercer, I think he is my favorite character, and we don't like the ''voice of the reason'' most of the time, and the stage where Mae is, you just don't want to hear it.
For me this novel feels like a horror novel, I think I can watch horror and not make me this upset, like this novel. I think privacy is the highest value for me, and this company really doesn't value that. This novel reminds me of The Wicker man( 1973 version) for some reason. After that conversation reminded me of even more Wicker man vibes and I thought to myself: ''Mae run"
I think of Kalden as the ''mysterious dark stranger'' which is a thriller trope.
Also, this company's privacy violations, similar to the excuses the tabloid press used in the 80s and 90s( maybe they still use today): ''if you are a famous person or a public figure you don't have the right for privacy, you agree to give up on that right when you become famous'' I think the circle use some twisted version of that.
The aspect which has been the hardest to wrestle with, is that so far most of the surveillance tools they have shown either feign empathy or seem fo come from a genuine position of wanting to improve the world. One understands why Francis would wanna make something like childtrack, or the fact that the Circle has made the Mae's life materially so much better, and practically saved her father's life and dignity, or the seechange being used to record police atrocities Egypt or many more. Eggars is very careful to not create a 1984-esque surveillance system, but one who's certain members at least want to be the force of good. This raises larger questions about good intentions and side effects of wanting to improve the world without thinking of the ripple effects.
A note on the prescience of this novel. I received this email today:
"Also wondering if you can do me a huge favor. Today, XXX should have emailed you a 2 question survey titled “share your thoughts”. Those surveys are extremely important for me to receive as they are my direct report card and reflect my performance as your advisor. If you don’t see the survey, let me know and I can have it resent or update the email that it gets sent to. Any scores less than a 10 reflect negatively against me as well, so I would be extremely grateful if you could provide me scores of 10 as it helps me out tremendously!"
As someone who was interested in measurement scales, the idea that anything less than perfect is a failure is so irritating.
The pursuit of meaningless perfection is a recurring theme in the book.
Mecer's line about socially deficient calculator users: "And spending all day inside playing with your calculator watch sent a clear message that you weren't doing so well socially."
The surveillance justified by noble goals mirrors real concerns about digital transparency movements. Mercer's critique resonates powerfully with our current moment.
I read The Every last year and, having spent the first half of my life in a ultra high control insular community, I found it almost panic-inducing. It is flawed writing and very (annoyingly) didactic, but it sure gets the message across. I can't imagine subjecting myself to reading The Circle after that experience.
I utterly despise Mercer. Maybe it's because he's such an obvious author self-insert, but I can't stand that type of character who preaches about what the book is about (and I suspect will ultimately be "proven" right in the end).
I think though, even more than just being that self-insert character, is that choice of language in the quoted line from the title of this article that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive to this, but it does read to me as things were better when those people interested in computers were made fun of and bullied. Yes, social media and gamification and all of the other technological related ideas are rightfully criticized. But I remember the time before the web got big and society still had its own bandwagons and similar issues described here.
I'm not sure I can describe myself well here. I don't want to come across as dismissive of how technology (and metricization and loss of privacy, in particular) has had negative impacts on society and that the book has some good points. But the whole criticism does feel one-dimensional.
I like the point you raise. I also didn't like Mercer when he just spewed a bunch of his opinions at Mae, but I simply concluded that he was a contrarian, and didn't examine it more than that. With your comment, however, I am thinking about it more deeply.
It's true, Mercer is a contrarian. And that implies he is 100% against what the Circle and its technology has brought to the world. Are there negative aspects to it? Yes, absolutely. But does he know any of the positive changes it may have brought?
Mercer's opinions remind me of a trend I have seen lately of people feeling nostalgic for older media. I have seen many YouTube videos professing that movies 'used to be better', and they analyze why. However, they compare a cinema classic to a modern blockbuster like the newest Jurassic Park. It's almost like a false equivalence -- a cinema classic is clearly going to be great compared to a movie that was really made with one purpose (profit). It *should* be compared to a great film from this decade, of which there are many.
That's what Mercer feels like -- he is just criticizing the things around him to try and fit his predetermined worldview that technology = bad. He's not engaging in any ideas that could prove him wrong -- and with that, he is just as stuck as Mae!
I agree, but I am kind of like him as a character in the book. Maybe, because I like to see all the sides and all the views and I like opposite opinions. He seems preachy, but sometimes it is good if you see the other side even if you aren't agree with it.
Francis he is much more worrisome character and he suppose to be ''a good person'' . But he make me uncomfortable and as a woman( maybe too personal) if I meet a person like that, I just keep distance and just run I guess.
It's a small thing, but the direction to 'go to the company store' really struck me. My dad grew up in a mining town. Late 19th and early 20th century, the miner's HATED the company store. It was a symbol of how the company controlled way too much of your life. Debts at the company store tied you more tightly to the company. So did the fact that most miner's lived in company housing. The Circle has both, pitched as ways to help the Circlers, but clearly a way to further dependency.
As part of a long, bitter strike in the 1920s, every company store near where my dad grew up was vandalized or burned to the ground after some rioting. One miner was killed, and 100 years later William Davis Memorial Day is still celebrated in former mining towns across the region. The stores and housing were 100% a means of control and the workers and company both new it.
Sean, I thought of this link also - limiting choices, limiting resources, and profiting greatly.
And to be so angry about aloe Vera, a very inexpensive product.
Company towns are so intriguing to me. Pullman, Illinois or Olivetti which pictures make it seem stylish and futuristic for the 1950s.
There’s a quote I often reference when teaching this part of history (Labor Unions vs. Capitalists): “We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shop, taught in the Pullman school, catechized in the Pullman church, and when we die we shall go to the Pullman Hell.” -Pullman Employee
It seems the Circle’s Three Wise Men saw this quote and took it as a challenge.
The dawning response I had reading Mae’s interactions with the Circle was that she had joined a cult. This was predominant in the scene where she was castigated for not attending the Portugal interest group. Their demands and her responses were so stilted and inauthentic. But this doesn’t help me appreciate the book because I don’t understand how Mae is inducted into the cult so quickly, or how this Circle cult has been so successful in dominating the tech industry with a product I feel nobody really wants (TruYou: the enforcement of real name interactions on line) and the main selling point seems to be if you engage in a wildly unrealistically seeming amount of online discourse (which isn’t qualitative? Just the quantity seems to be enough?) can make you go up a leaderboard and get prestige? I feel like this has been tried and doesn’t work.
The one grounded person, Mercer, provides maybe the best insight/justification for the satirical unreality of the Circleers which is that their speech is arrested at Junior High, which is where digital life for many youth begins and maybe that's why the maturity of the very young employee base might have even been influenced by the Circle (which is 6 years old, if I recall correctly but it doesn’t quite push them back to junior high age).
But I just feel like very stupid people have to exist for the plot so far to even work. I appreciated Jared Henderson's point that he seemed to see realism in the 2013 tech world he was in, but I haven’t seen it so it just seems crazy. The idea that idealism of building something world-transformative (that makes you a ton of money and power) drives many in tech can explain some of the cultishness of the Circle crew. But it still nags at me
Kaldan is the interesting character for me, and also makes me question what Eggers is really doing. I want him to be a supernatural injection into the narrative, maybe a real spiritual evil force of some kind that lies behind or manifests in this (Infernal?) Circle with its underworld Big Red Box (I think I have that figured out already in advance of any big reveal to come in the future sections) That would be interesting. He plucks fruit for Mae, maybe like a symbolic serpent in the garden.
One thought I had about the both junior high level of the discourse and the stilted cultishness of the discourse is this might be a 1984/Brave New World riff, where Newspeak has to replace normal discourse because other words for what’s going on are too fraught for the cult. Transparency, participation, etc. have sinister meanings as the story unfolds. And the total surveillance or “sousveilance” (the Circles are doing it to themselves, but coercively) resonates with 1984 and BNWs “everyone belongs to everyone else” and nothing should be secret. Interestingly we are told later that you can have your camera off in the restroom, which is were Kaldan has sex with Mae (eww, also: he climbed over the tops of several stalls to get to her? He seems more like a demonic alien entity to be that lithe)
Harbor seals and Houseboaters are an interesting contrast to it all: they drift from each other, are challenging to approach, and have below-the-surface lives that can’t be seen
I will think I need a real explanation of why Mae is so oblivious first to the boundary crossing of the various men (and women!) in sexual banter in a corporate environment where the joke is normally that HR/Metoo has ended any such sexual banter but maybe it’s just that Metoo wasnt big until 2017 after the Circle was published?
and here I am, making a "First Post" and waiting with bated breath to see if I get likes. Maybe I'm being overly critical of Eggers, .... but I'm choosing this for myself.... Zing!
A couple of things:
1. About the sex: I think that tech had a reputation for being a bit libertine, maybe with the idea that it wasn't going to conform with 'old' workplace standards. But also, in the novel the sex and bawdy talk serve as an example of boundary-crossing, which of course is a huge theme throughout the rest of the novel. Mae is steadily giving everything to the Circle.
2. About the speech: I don't think speech online is merely 'arrested' at junior high. I think it actively causes speech to revert to a simpler form. Think of the way that memes spread and then become a part of ordinary speech. I notice it in myself!
3. About the realism: I do see a lot of similarities between my experiences and the Circle, but I'd note that I went into tech after MeToo (which I think signalled a larger cultural shift, not just about sexual harassment). The patterns of speech and the way 'the mission' was talked about constantly are what is most familiar. However, the Circle does increase the intensity of this a good bit for rhetorical impact.
these are good points thanks! My perception is meme talk seems deliberately ironic and distancing. The way many of the characters talk seems just inauthentic but they don't know it. Some memes would make them more real seeming
I think The Circle is supposed to be like Weixin (WeChat) in China. It's a super app that does everything. At some point I think they mentioned The Circle having 80% of the payment processing market share. Except instead of government control like with Weixin, The Circle is the one in control. The Chinese surveillance state with Silicon Valley characteristics.
For context, my in-laws in China use WeChat for personal communication, to handle payroll for their business, to find news, to do their shopping, and much more. Westerners have a hard time imagining it because we're used to using a bunch of apps, but in China you could plausibly have a smartphone and exclusively use WeChat.
And only be allowed to use this one app as a means of control.
"One thought I had about the both junior high level of the discourse and the stilted cultishness of the discourse is this might be a 1984/Brave New World riff"
Definitely lots of Brave New World vibes. I also remember thinking "is everyone ok with this?" in Brave New World.
On the stilted discourse: Mercer - God bless him - is an example. He spends whole paragraphs talking AT Mae. I like his points but it's hardly persuasive given the audience. This is often a problem with true believers - just repeat your 'obvious' points and people will agree. Ah, nope. Mae's parents seem to be a bit more middle of the road: 'hey Mae, your job is cool and we're pumped, but we're a bit worried about all the unwanted attention we are now getting.' They seem a bit more like people and less like characters standing in for a certain perspective.
I feel unnatural dialogue is often an issue in books that tackle heavy philosophical issues. I read the big Russian authors and think: "is this how intellectuals talk?" Is this a convo or a philosophical treatise? Perhaps it's just hard to get characters to seem both real and very philosophical during the same conversation. I think George Eliot did a good job blending philosophy, plot, and dialogue in Silas Marner. I think 1984 does a decent job, where a lot of the arguments happen via 'the book' or between O'Brien and Winston during an interrogation; both places you'd expect long debates.
one of my favorite writers is Gene Wolfe, and BOTS is also a "novel of ideas" and Severian for me works with odd discourse patterns because 1) its a scifi world different from ours 2) Severian is a wierdo raised in a torture cult 3) Severian has a special mental quality of never forgetting anything. Mae needs an explanation like that :). BNW explains why everyone is OK because there was a revolution that needed to happen. New political order. the tech world is a kind of political order that has come to dominate but I don't see the revolution as being called for beforehand.
Some Circlers do seem to be coded on The Spectrum tho.
From the opening of the novel I felt Mae was entitled and shallow. I guess that is enough justification for me - she is buying most of this and happy to drink gallons of the kool-aid. She's just not super thoughtful. Also, she's what 24, tops?
Yes, she's a pretty young woman. She's also someone who is frustrated at her life: her longtime romance ended, she hated her old job, and her parents talk about how much they love Annie even though they've never met her.
Maybe I'm too hard on her, but there are also a number of times she is embarrassed thinking about how her parents are clearly working class.
Is it coincidence that Eggars had here working at utility company before the Circle? A very thingy place that maintains pipes and such.
Interesting points, Paul! It has been fun to read a novel after our first month’s reading. We are told throughout the novel that many young people want to work at the Circle. I think Mae’s deep gratitude to be there causes her to plunge heart, mind, and soul into the mission and ethos of the Circle (as it is revealed to her bit by bit over time). Her youth also seems to make her enthusiastic along with the fact that she feels rescued from a job that was killing her.
All of this busyness, of zinging, posting, sharing, makes it impossible for Mae to pause for a moment of contemplation (one of the important things we read about in January).
Oh, and I forgot all about the green lemon that never turned yellow. Kalden was disappointed. Does anyone have more thoughts about this?
Another way I noticed the Circlers use language as a builder of identity and a means of social control -- very often, when Mae is conversing with her colleagues, they will constantly check in with her. "Sound good? Clear? Cool? Isn't that flattering?"
It's like they're inserting these positive connotations into her mind during their conversations, so she will associate positivity with the company and its culture. It leaves Mae feeling more committed to the company, where all these people want the 'best' for her (when in reality, they just want her as a number for their own metrics).
'That Mae finds Mercer so annoying and Kalden so intriguing is something worth thinking on.'
I think Mae's attraction to Kalden, as opposed to her disdain for Mercer, can be explained by the fact that she knows Mercer, whilst Kalden remains a mystery.
We know that Mercer is Mae's ex-boyfriend, so it's safe to assume she knows him well, including his habits, preferences or just the general day-to-day life. They have known each other for some time, he's even close with Mae's parents. Mae has intimate knowledge of him, and I think it could be said here that familiarity breeds contempt. There's not much left for Mae to learn about Mercer (at least not in terms of information), and on the off chance that she did want to learn something, she could. Mercer is reachable.
Kalden, on the other hand, is a complete unknown. He comes and goes as he pleases, and aside from the occasions when he (literally) emerges from the shadows, Mae has no way of contacting him. There's no information about him anywhere, either, and while this may be dangerous, as Annie perceives it to be, there is also the allure of not knowing. In the space of the unknown, imagination thrives.
On top of that, Mercer firmly proclaims his anti-Circle views, while Kalden's stance on the Circle and their transparency policy is not immediately obvious. He could be a spy, but he also has access to the mysterious, undergroud Circle-dungeons – so maybe he's an important figure who, for some reason, needs to remain in the shadows? The fact that Mae does not question him being so secretive in this world of oversharing is odd, but she does not strike me as someone who particularly wants to question anything.
Also, the appeal of mystery is wonderfully ironic in a world where 'all that happens will be known.'
The Circle is feels like a cult or somethings similar, it's scars me because also feels similar like our worlds, or how we interact online and want to share everything and the constantly feel the need to post daily, even if the experience isn't good or we feel bad after or feel like isn't good of our health. I think so far in the novel, Mae didn't have this realization yet: ''everything feels super amazing, cool'' at this point. I like Mercer, I think he is my favorite character, and we don't like the ''voice of the reason'' most of the time, and the stage where Mae is, you just don't want to hear it.
For me this novel feels like a horror novel, I think I can watch horror and not make me this upset, like this novel. I think privacy is the highest value for me, and this company really doesn't value that. This novel reminds me of The Wicker man( 1973 version) for some reason. After that conversation reminded me of even more Wicker man vibes and I thought to myself: ''Mae run"
I think of Kalden as the ''mysterious dark stranger'' which is a thriller trope.
Also, this company's privacy violations, similar to the excuses the tabloid press used in the 80s and 90s( maybe they still use today): ''if you are a famous person or a public figure you don't have the right for privacy, you agree to give up on that right when you become famous'' I think the circle use some twisted version of that.
The aspect which has been the hardest to wrestle with, is that so far most of the surveillance tools they have shown either feign empathy or seem fo come from a genuine position of wanting to improve the world. One understands why Francis would wanna make something like childtrack, or the fact that the Circle has made the Mae's life materially so much better, and practically saved her father's life and dignity, or the seechange being used to record police atrocities Egypt or many more. Eggars is very careful to not create a 1984-esque surveillance system, but one who's certain members at least want to be the force of good. This raises larger questions about good intentions and side effects of wanting to improve the world without thinking of the ripple effects.
A note on the prescience of this novel. I received this email today:
"Also wondering if you can do me a huge favor. Today, XXX should have emailed you a 2 question survey titled “share your thoughts”. Those surveys are extremely important for me to receive as they are my direct report card and reflect my performance as your advisor. If you don’t see the survey, let me know and I can have it resent or update the email that it gets sent to. Any scores less than a 10 reflect negatively against me as well, so I would be extremely grateful if you could provide me scores of 10 as it helps me out tremendously!"
As someone who was interested in measurement scales, the idea that anything less than perfect is a failure is so irritating.
The pursuit of meaningless perfection is a recurring theme in the book.
Mecer's line about socially deficient calculator users: "And spending all day inside playing with your calculator watch sent a clear message that you weren't doing so well socially."
A pretty funny way to frame it.
The surveillance justified by noble goals mirrors real concerns about digital transparency movements. Mercer's critique resonates powerfully with our current moment.
I read The Every last year and, having spent the first half of my life in a ultra high control insular community, I found it almost panic-inducing. It is flawed writing and very (annoyingly) didactic, but it sure gets the message across. I can't imagine subjecting myself to reading The Circle after that experience.
I utterly despise Mercer. Maybe it's because he's such an obvious author self-insert, but I can't stand that type of character who preaches about what the book is about (and I suspect will ultimately be "proven" right in the end).
I think though, even more than just being that self-insert character, is that choice of language in the quoted line from the title of this article that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive to this, but it does read to me as things were better when those people interested in computers were made fun of and bullied. Yes, social media and gamification and all of the other technological related ideas are rightfully criticized. But I remember the time before the web got big and society still had its own bandwagons and similar issues described here.
I'm not sure I can describe myself well here. I don't want to come across as dismissive of how technology (and metricization and loss of privacy, in particular) has had negative impacts on society and that the book has some good points. But the whole criticism does feel one-dimensional.
I like the point you raise. I also didn't like Mercer when he just spewed a bunch of his opinions at Mae, but I simply concluded that he was a contrarian, and didn't examine it more than that. With your comment, however, I am thinking about it more deeply.
It's true, Mercer is a contrarian. And that implies he is 100% against what the Circle and its technology has brought to the world. Are there negative aspects to it? Yes, absolutely. But does he know any of the positive changes it may have brought?
Mercer's opinions remind me of a trend I have seen lately of people feeling nostalgic for older media. I have seen many YouTube videos professing that movies 'used to be better', and they analyze why. However, they compare a cinema classic to a modern blockbuster like the newest Jurassic Park. It's almost like a false equivalence -- a cinema classic is clearly going to be great compared to a movie that was really made with one purpose (profit). It *should* be compared to a great film from this decade, of which there are many.
That's what Mercer feels like -- he is just criticizing the things around him to try and fit his predetermined worldview that technology = bad. He's not engaging in any ideas that could prove him wrong -- and with that, he is just as stuck as Mae!
I agree, but I am kind of like him as a character in the book. Maybe, because I like to see all the sides and all the views and I like opposite opinions. He seems preachy, but sometimes it is good if you see the other side even if you aren't agree with it.
Francis he is much more worrisome character and he suppose to be ''a good person'' . But he make me uncomfortable and as a woman( maybe too personal) if I meet a person like that, I just keep distance and just run I guess.