While reading Super Sad True Love story I noticed concerning similarities between this society and our own society today.  Although things like the aparat, GlobalTeens, and the far-fetched society norms rushing in with the youth culture seem outlandish, they are in many ways similar to the elements of the new era of technology that we are experiencing. I found that the extremes that are reached in the book to be quite funny. I really liked the point that Wesley made about Lenny carrying the fire for the ways of the old society.  Lenny feels disconnected from the youth culture and fears he has aged out of being "cool" or"hip."  It is only worse for him that the woman that he supposedly has fallen in love with happens to be deeply rooted in the new culture. This new culture has many problems.  First of all there is a complete lack of privacy, and not to mention that the societal attitude towards sexuality has completely changed so that now sex is not a private matter.  This society is completely dominated by the emphasis on youth.  Similar to how our society is evolving into a place where aging is looked down upon, in Super Sad True Love Story youth is emphasized even more.

I agree with Anna, and found I had many similar reactions. The way in which the societal norms are constructed in SSTLS is so absurd that it's comical. The cool, hip thing to do is to actually converse using instant messaging abbreviations, as Eunice does with Lenny. I found myself constantly frightened at how many similarities I recognized between the novel's absurdities and real life situations. It is not too infrequent that people will use social media or texting abbreviations when speaking to one another face to face. The whole concept of diluting and diminishing face to face interactions through the takeover of technology was well illustrated thus far in the novel, and is a common topic of discussion in today's world. The fact that an animated otter now takes the place of what should be a real human interaction at a foreign Embassy comments on the world's, but especially our nation's, overemphasis on the race to better and more efficient technology. The otter, despite its extremely personal questions, cannot accurately evaluate the character and quality of Lenny - and so we are lead to believe flags him on little basis. Furthermore, the use of credit history to determine the fate of people's lives is clearly extremely irresponsible and altogether ridiculous, but with our country heading toward a completely computerized, technological economy, is not all too unimaginable.
I also was reminded of Feed especially with the importance of the apparats. It seems that everyone is consumed with technology, and as Wesley pointed out, an all-encompassing desire to be youthful. This novel seems to be one step behind the society in Feed, where the computer chips are actually a physical part of the human body, and serve biological functions, and as a forum for people to communicate brain to brain on a constant instant messaging system. I sometimes joke about the implications of our rapid technological progress, and my hatred of the kindle as it paves the way on the slippery slope to our future dystopian society. The society portrayed in SSTLS is the first I have found to hold some fathomable merit. By no stretch of the imagination is the society portrayed, or at least parts of it, obtainable. I found the beginning of this novel to be extremely disconcerting in the way that it's realistic, perhaps because it was written so recently. So far, it serves a great warning to us all.

What I found the most interesting about the readings thus far in Super Sad True Love Story was the emphasis on youth and body image. There seems to be an extreme fear of aging in this “new United States”, so much that the main social network that everyone is expected to be a part of is called “GlobalTeens”, even though its members are all ages. The ideal seems to be some sort of chemically-induced youth, so that one can float almost in a transitory non-aging state— Lenny comments on his boss, Josh, that he cannot tell what age he is. Lenny is constantly surrounded by people who are obsessed with images of youth and making their bodies last longer (even his job is trying to sell immortality to people). These people act as foils to Lenny who appears in stark contrast as truly old-fashioned person. He ages, he reads, he doesn’t know the slang of the youth. But because he is so different from the rest of characters and the society itself, he seems comfortingly familiar. He is the last vestiges of the society that predated that of Super Sad True Love Story, the one that we exist in now. Though Lenny’s desires point him increasingly towards conforming to the ideals of society— getting chemical treatment, reading less books, etc., he is still the reader’s only real grounding on the dramatic turns that this new society has taken. In a strange way, Lenny is ‘carrying the fire’— of books, of privacy, of aging, and I have a feeling that he will come to realize his importance later in the novel, as his relationship with Eunice Park is developed.

pp. 1-98

I think it is very sad the way in which people in this society are living. Their apparats are clearly extensions of today’s smart phones (I thought it was amusing how they referred to iPhones as being extremely outdated), and they distract individuals from face-to-face interactions, even when the individuals are standing right next to each other. The numerical profiling that many of the functions of the apparat rely on, especially the descriptions of people’s recent purchases, reminded me of the book Feed, by M.T. Anderson, in which characters have implants in their brain that give companies direct marketing power over individuals. These issues—the emotional divides between individuals created by a technology screen, as well as the increasing influence of marketing and consumerism in society—are issues that our current society is already faced with. Though social media is intended to be a tool that brings people together, it often actually makes people feel more alone; it also takes up significant amounts of time that could be spent actually doing something with friends, or in doing something important. These same issues are well represented in SSTLS, such as when Lenny goes to meet his two friends and his friend Noah is only really interested in video-taping Lenny for his show, as opposed to actually talking to him and hearing about his time in Rome.

As privacy is increasingly eliminated in the social and public sphere, government intrusions into individuals’ lives seem to be simultaneously growing. In fact, though its specific goal is not the same, the ARA reminds me a bit of the British government as depicted in 1970, which is concerning to me.