SSTLS: Consumer Culture

            I chose the theme of Consumer Culture because I thought it stood out the most during most of I read. The first passage I chose from the reading was on page 90 where Lenny’s friend Vishnu brought up all of Lenny’s personal information for everyone to see, with no problem at all. This shows that someone’s personal information or their identity is not so personal anymore and after all of his information is shown Lenny is then criticized for what he does or has done. This is more common as the story goes on because Lenny and everyone else around him has their information shown and they all get “rated” based on that information. The second passage I chose was on page 93 where Lenny’s friend Noah streams Lenny’s emotions and feelings for Eunice live so that everyone was able to see and hear him. This is even worse in terms of identity because now everyone can see how Lenny feels about Eunice and allows them either ignore it or converse about it. I think this relates to how social media works today and how most people want personal information, like who they are dating, to be shown to everyone. This goes back to how any information that anyone wants to see can be shown without hesitation, even when the owner of the information is present. The third passage I chose was on page 152 where non-U.S. nationals are targeted to purchase a place to live even though the cost of that living space is at a very high price. This stands out to me because the only ones being targeted are foreign residents who have credit ranking of 1500 or more, which in the story is very rare because not many can make their score that high (except Lenny). This idea is somewhat prevalent throughout the novel because most of what is being controlled is from some foreign agency or company.