Read Super Sad True Love Story, 99-142; Chapter Five of They Say, I Say
Blog post (200–300 words; due at 11:59 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 16)
What elements of Super Sad True Love Story do you see in our own world? Choose one scene that you find particularly important. Describe the scene and the issues that it raises. How does this scene from a fictional future comment on our present world?
(To get you started, you might want to consider one of these issues: consolidation of wealth, privacy, loneliness/lack of community, longer life span/immortality, diminishing interest in books.)
A major theme of most science fiction and dystopia novels is the rapid development of technology and its dominance over the human race. In Super Sad True Love Story the people have become reliant on certain technologies clearly diminishing human interactions and connections. Although our society has not gotten as bad as this one, we are getting close. People are wasting a lot of their time making fake interactions on social instead of making bonds with real people in person. The amount of time our generation spends making random posts and updates on their lives instead of just experience real life is surprising and scary. What was really shocking to me is when we discussed how weird it was that you could find any information you wanted from someone through your applet, but Facebook does a similar thing now. By creeping on someone’s wall you can find out a lot about their life and even some things that are meant to be private. Another parallel between the book and our own lives is how the characters in the book communicate. Eunice and her friends and family tend to only communicate through online chats and emails, also Lenny posts in an online diary like a blog. Although we do not like to admit it we all do this, rarely do we talk to people on the phone or sit down and have a genuine conversation. We use texts, instant messages, snapchats, and status updates to tell ourselves were social and that we have lots of friends. I think that without more human connections we will become more distant and end up more like the dystopian society in the book.
Vlad Molnar