Blog Post Group E

The world Lindsley creates is absolutely incredible - one where corporations can literally shoot you with a craving to sell their product. As fantastic as it may sound, the scary thing is that it already kind of exist. As we discuss what makes the story "scary" is that it's an allegory to current advertising practices. Sure, companies cannot cause anyone to want something with the push of a button, or so we think, but industries still have the power of advertising, which has come a long, long way in the past few years. Facebook and Google have become a form of CraveTech almost, since they know us so well due to the information we give them. These sites can select ads and possibly promote subliminal messaging to sell a product to us. This is the scary part - the reality of the story. Forrest mentions the tightening of the screw concept; perhaps the screw has been placed and it's slowly tightening, and the first sign of this is the powerful marketing tools that we, as a nation focused around capitalism, have produced. In the story, Mr. Avery mentions the Supreme Court lightening up on the allowable presence of the despised snipers. Here's an example of the tightening process - snipers are introduced but then the government regulates their existence until they become almost part of the norm, and then slowly lightens up until they can freely interact with society. It is a lot easier to mount a resistance to a sudden change, but if people start becoming used to the presence of snipers, then they will be less likely to rebel since they are getting used to it. It's also scary, and realistic, how it seems like there is a product for everything - Monroe mentions that he can buy some pills for the bloating that he is suffering after eating the fries that he bought. The term "buy" comes up so often in the story, and it comes up so often in our own lives too. In the end, the story seems so scary because it is so similar to ours; we could even achieve such a society with a slight increase in technology and a lack of resistance from society. Lindsley obviously supports that we think for ourselves and do not become over-reliant on big business, which will surely take over our lives if we give it the chance.