started Hum by Hellen Philips but feel frustrated by the book’s attempt at political commentary
the main character reflects on the manufacturing process of a plastic gadget but that labor is still out of sight and she keeps buying more stuff despite the acknowledgement
climate change has seemingly progressed unstopped until the point of the book but the biggest problems for these characters remain stuff like paying rent and being advertised to a lot— meanwhile assumedly huge sections of the world have been rendered unlivable by this point by the progression of climate change
also the book assumes that problems that bourgeois americans face will just continue unstopped. it takes for granted that we lack power to do anything about climate change, surveillance, technology replacing jobs and leaving people unable to pay rent. I get that this is part of the horror, that the book wants to show what it thinks is the natural result of our current world state, but 1. i don’t think we should assume we can’t do anything about these things and 2. the book fails to actually demonstrate the reality of that horror by focusing on the life of someone relatively unaffected by any of these things— the place she lives isn’t on fire or flooded, she is not uniquely targeted through the surveillance system, and she only just faces the loss of her office job right before the book starts.
also a lot of the book seems to be devolving into just “we spend too much time on phones” commentary, which isn’t particularly new or interesting
