As Mae began working at the Circle she thought that only a minimal level of intimacy was encouraged between professionals. When Dan asked if Mae could talk, she responded by telling him she needed to go the bathroom. She thought this was possibly "...an unwanted level of hygienic intimacy (Eggers, 91)[.]" Another instance where Mae shows a proclivity toward privacy and away from intimacy was after the LuvLuv presentation. Mae feels something is not right about all of her information being avaliable to the public. She was unsure if it was the "accuracy of the algorithms" or the "matrix of preferences presented as [her] essence" that bothered her (126).
Mae is chided for her private tendencies in her lack of involvement at the Circle. First she is criticized for not being active at the Circle and on her Circle accounts. The Circle believed that Mae wasn't attending enough events or zinging enough. This was an affront to the Circle community. At the Circle "ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN (68)." Then she is admonished for not leaving an electronic trace of herself when she kayaked or when she visited her parents after her father had a stroke.
When Mae starts getting used to the Circle, she starts to agree with their ideologies about privacy or the lack thereof. She begins to think that she was wrong in not signing up for an MS support group. Wrong in not zinging that her father was doing okay, a completely private matter. Wrong in not zinging about the WNBA. Wrong in not zinging about kayaking. Mae is not even the least bit concerned when the Dr. Villalobos has all of Mae's entire health history right at her fingertips. Mae is not bothered by the engraved message "TO HEAL WE MUST KNOW. TO KNOW WE MUST SHARE (150)." She is starting to live the circle mantra that privacy is selfish.
A decrease in privacy leads to an increase in communal intimacy while decreasing personal intimacy. As Mercer said to Mae: "You're always looking at me through a hundred other people's eyes (132)." Mercer wants to talk directly to Mae about his business, instead of reading Mae's zings about other people's zings about his products. Communal intimacy increases when transparency increases. Knowing where everyone is with CircleSearch, everything everyone likes and dislikes or is allergic to with LuvLuv, everyone's entire electronic history on the searchable cloud, creates the artificial, non-personal, sense of connection each Circler feels toward other Circlers.
You had a very interesting take on the correlation between privacy an intimacy. I never considered that reduced privacy could lead to increased communal intimacy. Perhaps as individual relationships are moved into the spotlight, and the intimacy of those relationships decrease, then more room is opened up for shallow relationships with a larger amount of people. I'm still not sure if I would call that intimacy, but its an intriguing concept. Overall, I agreed with a lot of what you were saying. In my opinion, however, I still believe that reduced privacy leads to reduced intimacy.
ReplyDeleteI liked reading your ideas about how privacy and intimacy correlate in the book. For your introduction, it might help to hook readers if you speak more generally rather than jumping right into the Circle. Your examples are plentiful from the book, but as a reader I would like to read more about your connections to the topic. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI loved this blog post, your vocabulary was golden and I liked how you kept this topic of 'communal intimacy' when describing how everyone gets along.
ReplyDeleteGood use of textual evidence! I think your take on the relationship between privacy and intimacy was very interesting and well thought out.
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