In the satirical and prescient novel FEED, written by M.T. Anderson, Titus lives in a futuristic world where humanity has found a way to directly send an unending stream of advertisements, messages, and trends directly to the brain. The feed relentlessly floods humanity; everybody has it installed in their head, and Titus is no exception. Titus later travels to the moon (as one does in a futuristic world) and meets Violet, who, to him, is an incredibly beautiful girl. As they become acquainted with each other, they begin to fall in love, fight for understanding, and most of all, question the ethics and morality of the feed. Or as Titus best explains as he is lying by Violet’s deathbed, “Set against the backdrop of America in its final days, it’s the high-spirited story of their love together, it’s laugh-out-loud funny, really heartwarming and a visual feast…They learn to resist the feed” (Anderson 297). 

The entire novel is horrifying, yet ridiculously hilarious. The earth is fading away, the oceans are toxic, and the very air is radioactive. Human skin begins to peel and transform into lesions due to the miserable environment. Teenagers and adults alike ignore the living hell they are stuck in, overdosing on a form of drug known as the mal. A machine controls humanity itself, embedded permanently and surgically in the brains of every living soul. The story’s backdrop is miserable and bleak. 

Yet, the reader cannot help laughing. The teens in the novel speak in a strange and amusing way, constantly overusing trendy words such as “meg” and “null”. It's silly and trite, taking away from the purpose and meaning of each character’s speech and observations, including Titus. Titus attempts to counter the feed with Violet, yet the reader is forced to ignore his nonsensical insights. Violet is the only character who does not speak with impediments, yet even Violet is restricted due to her overcomplicated quotes of random literature and references. None of the characters can legitimately communicate with each other; they’re too busy adding absurd words to their vocabulary. Lesions are also viewed as trendy, adding to the humorous hell of trends the teens follow. In fact, one of Titus’s female friends undergoes cosmetic surgery to rip open her skin and look more “meg”. The novel manages to powerfully punch a hole in the reader’s gut through savage and sharp satire; the situation is horrifying, yet the teen’s silly addiction to trends in the form of lesions and slang overshadows reality. 

Anderson criticizes the never-ending American consumption–and not just for items. Titus incessantly chases after his own fads in his new world, such as his hypercar and games. Yet, these do not fulfill Titus as the items don’t mean anything; he is still empty inside, driven purely by material desires. This seems to end when he meets Violet, seeking to form a genuine connection. However, Titus ditches Violet when she begins to open up and voice her most desperate, human thoughts. As soon as a true connection presents itself, he runs away. The plastic and cursory connections he forges with his useless, yet trendy items are what he loves. Instead of truly loving Violet, he reduces her to a consumable object and never attempts to truly understand her and the truth she speaks about the feed. Titus uses and consumes her, then abandons her just like any toy that can be bought off the feed. It is only when he is lying by her deathbed that he is able to realize her value as a human and not an object. Anderson, in the final words of his novel, reveals what is truly horrifying about FEED, not the miserable condition the earth is in, but how everything is treated as a temporary and consumable object, even humans.