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De discussie over de mogelijke gevolgen (en gevaren) van tech/data monopolies is niet bepaald nieuw en zelfs een behoorlijke open deur. Het boek is dan wel 10 jaar oud, alhoewel deze discussie volgens mij toen ook al gevoerd werd. De discussie over privacy en democratie en de rol van techbedrijven hierin is vandaag de dag zeker niet minder relevant, en gezien de recente waarschuwingen voor AI lijkt het me nog steeds van belang om kritisch naar deze positie te kijken.

Het boek had me stevig in zijn greep. Het geeft een accuraat beeld van de gevaren van monopolies in tech als ook de redenen waarom we bewust moeten zijn van de informatie die wij delen en toevertrouwen. Het is een meeslepend, dystopisch verhaal dat laat zien hoe makkelijk men zich door mooie beloftes kan laten inpakken.

De naïviteit van Mae en de gebruikers van de Cirkel is overdreven en er had wat mij betreft wat meer weerstand mogen zijn.

Hierom 4,5 ster.

I feel like many people misunderstood this book. I see a lot of angry rant reviews on here of people complaining about Moran being a privileged white faux feminist, and I get where they come from. I have no knowledge about Moran other than what I read in this book, but still I would like to defend this book a little bit. Simply because I think it can be good if you don’t have any expectations of it.

It’s not a manifesto and the word should NOT have been on the fucking cover. Because the book, had it been intended as a satirical telling of the life of a Western ‘quirky’ (or whatever) woman, it would’ve just been a funny read. She wrote from her own perspective and that was entertaining. She should not have turned her own perspective into a feminist manifesto because she doesn’t acknowledge other perspectives in this book well enough. She discussed valid points but because of the amount of humor and trivial shit it almost felt like she was ridiculing the bigger issues. As if the solution the sexism and misogyny is for women to just do whatever they want.

I laughed a lot while reading this though. Moran is a brilliant writer and I enjoyed the book a lot. Let’s just not expect this book to be revolutionary and let’s not compare this book to great groundbreaking feminist work because that’s just not what this book is. This book is meant for Western women (who also identify as such) to read with a cup of tea and laugh hysterically at the ridiculousness of life as such a woman. For my mother, this book was a good way to make her laugh and also make her realize how much sexism she has experienced in her life and how much of a feminist she really is. My mother doesn’t read much and also doesn’t enjoy ‘heavier’ non-fiction. For her, this book was perfect.
If that’s all you expect from it, you’ll have a great time and enjoy this book. If you expect to read a strong, intellectual, intersectional feminist piece of literature, this is not it.