this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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Not gonna shit on Eggers or anything, but I don't think that concept was new in the 2010s.
Snow Crash is one that comes to mind right away, but I haven't read The Circle, so maybe I'm wrong about what you're referring to. I think William Gibson probably wrote about similar themes at some point as well.
If you haven't read Snow Crash, btw, you should. It's fucking awesome
Definitely loved Snow Crash. Similar message that everything will be shared/recorded. In The Circle it's a bit more chilling, for me at least, because every person is a 'Gargoyle' that HAS to record and share every thought and emotion and event, and it's all happening in a somewhat boring cyber-corpo near future dystopia, whereas SC was a madcap over the top cyberpunk playground.
Where I'm at in The Circle, employees of the big tech company are expected to share pics of everything they do and comment on everything their coworkers do. Fill out a minimum of 500 survey questions a day on top of their daily work quota. Everyone's work performance is shared for Friendly Competition.
I'd go on, but there'd be spoilers.
So, like you said, definitely not an original idea, just a slightly more current and boringly believable dystopia than rad pizza delivering samurais and viral languages developing on pirated barges floating in trash gyres in the Pacific.
I was referring to the setting of Snow Crash. Corporate-owned exclaves, etc.
That sounds interesting though...
The RIAA in the early 1999/2000 was the epitome of corpo-surveillance and capitalist bullshit.
We got a notice and suspended Comcast account (Roadrunner at the time but all the same company underneath). Because someone uploaded Metallica songs to a server my little brother was running to share 3D models and shaders.
There were lawsuits about shared IP addresses, open Wi-Fi networks for days and the recording and later, movie industries doing this shit for over 25 years now.