A scene in Super Sad True Love Story that I found extremely eerie and disturbing is on page 153 when Lenny spots the character Jeffrey Otter on a commercial billboard. The scene starts out with Lenny and Eunice on their way to meet up with Lenny’s friends when Lenny comes across a billboard made by his employer, the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation. The advertisement promotes the benefits of buying expensive triplex living units in ironically unpleasant locations. Lenny is particularly irritated to read that one of the benefits included immortality assistance from the Post-Human Services Division because one had to prove that he or she is worthy of that privilege. Subsequently, Lenny notices a drawing in the corner of the billboard and realizes that it is Jeffrey Otter, the character from his apparat that interrogated him before his departure from Italy. It reminds him of his betrayal to Fabrizia, and he questions choosing a digital device like Eunice over a soft and sexual human being like Fabrizia. This scene is unsettling to me because it plays on the extremity of the lack of privacy that the citizens have in this post-modern society. It is not a coincidence that Lenny’s employer, who can easily obtain all sorts of information about him, puts up a specific character on the billboard as a way to get some kind of unnerving reaction out of him as well as asserting the dominance of the company as a whole.

I chose this image because it is a very literal yet metaphoric illustration of how the government in Lenny’s post-human society uses technology such as the internet to access all kinds of information about an individual. Although it may seem like an exaggerated joke in today’s society, it is the unfortunate reality of Lenny’s society in Super Sad True Love Story.