Neediness

We all need to feel important and valued, its human nature, just look at Maslow's Hierachy of Needs. Social media has changed this need for esteem into a need for likes. We expect all of our posts to be liked by our "friends" on social media. Not only that, if they don't like the posts we're personally hurt. Similar to Mae who felt damaged after the Demoxie demonstration, when 368 people voted that Mae wasn't awesome. Each one of these votes Mae felt, were from people who "preferred her dead" (Eggers 414).

With social media, there is a more personal dimension to this need to feel important. With social media, I'll talk about Facebook, we can see exactly who liked and didn't like our posts. Before social media, we knew only by directly interacting with others, if we had their esteem and vice-versa. And those who didn't have esteem for us didn't talk to us and we never had to know. On Facebook you become "friends" with many people not based on friendship, but on who they're friends with. Without even knowing these people, but knowing they exist, makes us need their likes. And we feel unwanted when they don't like our posts. This again is similar to the Demoxie demonstration, where after the vote Mae had the power to see exactly who thought "these things" of her.

Social media has also increased our impatience and decreased our self control. When we receive notifications on our phones, we look at them without hesitation. This has become a Pavlovian-like stimulus where we must look at the notification because we expect to see something we like. We can't look away even if we know its going to be painful. Like Mae reading the letter from Mercer, "... she knew she shouldn't read the rest. But she couldn't stop" (435).

Social media has finally made us more sensitive. Social media has perpetuated the idea that there are "haters" everywhere. And with this idea comes people being more aware of and looking for these "haters." For the slightest criticism we quickly label the criticizers as haters. This has made us more sensitive and unwilling to accept a little bit of criticism. Similar to Mae reading Mercer's  letter, "She didn't want to read it, because she knew it would be ornery, and accusatory and judgmental" (434).

Social media has made our whole society needier. We need likes. We need things faster. We need only love, no "hate." Social media has made us needier offline as well. We spend more time online, being needy, which means we spend less time offline. This in turn makes us needier for human interaction in the real world. The Circle has made this neediness more obvious.

Creatures of the Marianas Trench

The Circle as we've learned so far is a hugely powerful and influential company. Much more powerful than any company around in the present. The Circle likes to prove its power by doing things and going places people haven't done or gone before. They've counted the grains of sand in the Sahara, and now they've gone to Earth's last frontier to find the strangest creatures imaginable. And although the Circle used this stunt to show their power, Eggers uses these creatures to represent different aspects of the Circle. More specifically, the predatory and mysterious yet transparent natures of the Circle.

The shark that Stenton found in the Marianas Trench would instantly devour any creature that was put in the tank with it and deposit a fine layer of sediment. This is very similar to the Circle. The Circle takes in recruits and gives them a career. They become so indebted to the Circle that they turn into pawns for the circle. The pawns work all hours of the day and night and leave their families, their homes, their life. All that's left of them is a fine layer of sediment, boring sediment. This is what's happenining to Annie. Annie is constantly "wiped out" because she is having her life consumed with all things the Circle (Eggers 355). The Circle is also predatory to smaller companies, who pitch their ideas to the Circle. The Circle can either buy them or fry them. The Circle is so powerful that it buys up many "herring" companies, reducing them to dust (Eggers 310). Further increasing its growing monopoly on all things data and technology. 

All the specimens Stenton collected from his journey were "near translucent ... [and] ethereal in their movements" (309). This brings about one of the Circle's inconsistencies, the advocating of transparency and the mysterious nature of the Circle. Towards the beginning of the novel, the public had no access to the Circle and its inner workings. The Circle was a special club with access given only to staff. However, as we moved to the end of Book 1, we learned that: 

"SECRETS ARE LIES"

"SHARING IS CARING"

"PRIVACY IS THEFT"

(305). As a result of these mantras the Circle makes itself more visible in the public eye. Eamon Bailey encourages more SeeChange cameras to be raised on the campus. And Mae becomes transparent, and gives tours of the Circle to the public, as a result of her "revelations." These tours take away the Circle's "lies." However, there is still a mysterious aspect to the Circle, similar to the octopus in its shape shifting, "stretching and reaching" "[at] one moment" and "shrinking [and] spinning" "the next" (309). The Circle is still hiding things, some things that Annie "shouldn't talk about much" (351). The biggest lie at the Circle is about Completion. The Circle says that Completion is near but no one really knows what it is.

The shark represents the Circle's predatory behavior, while the octopus represents the Circle's transparency but mystery. In the future, hopefully, we will never have a company like the Circle. But if we do, we'll know what imaginary animals to compare them to. More importantly we'll all have a dystopian novel to compare and criticize them with.