Happy Hunger Games! It's officially November and that means we are mere weeks away from the midnight premiere of Catching Fire and I'm so excited I could die. But I won't. I don't know what inspired this new trend of futuristic/dystopian fiction, but I love it. I read Divergent in 2 days and when I finished it I felt like I had nothing left to live for. (If you don't lose your will to live after the last page, was it really a good book?) Anyways, I love this new genre so much that I am in the process of writing my own called Filtered, and I of course had to give a sneak peak on White Girl Wednesday.
Before the preview, I want to explain the concept behind this soon to be New York Times Best Seller. Filtered is a satirical parody of how obsessed people are with social media these days. You have your Twitter addicts, the Tumblrs, the Facebook stalkers. And then there are the Instafamous. I know some people on Instagram who could upload a picture of them vomiting and get 100 likes in 5 minutes. Me, I could Instagram a picture of me on my wedding day (jokes) and get maybe 3 likes (if I can convince my brothers to get Instagrams). I could call my house phone every hour on the hour and my family would screen my calls because they would rather text but I post a picture with a cute guy and next thing you know my mother remembers she has a daughter. Filtered's intention is to show how giving this much technology and access to the internet to children is probably the worst thing to happen to parenting since Ritalin.
Filtered. Introduction.
In the fictional country of Sociamedia, people are split into social classes based on their Instagram filter of choice.These classes lead to a semi-hierarchy. At the age you get your first iPhone, you are given one month to decide the filter that will define your life. There are 20 different filters to choose from, but there always a few who choose to live their lives unfiltered. (Dun dun dun! Yes, I am already working on a screen play for the film that is sure to come. Steven Spielberg, if you are reading this, I want Morgan Freeman to narrate. Obviously.)
The classes form alliances based on similarities. The slightly filtered classes work well together, those include Hudsons, Nashvilles, Waldens and Earlybirds. This bunch gets along best with the No Filters. The light filters of Amaros, Rises, Valencias and Sierra group together in opposition to the dark filters of X-Pro IIs, Lo-Fis, Sutros, Brannans and Hefes. The sepia-style filters, Mayfairs, Toasters, 1977s and Kelvins (although let's be real, who really uses Kelvin?) don't get along with the Black and White Filters, Willows and Inkwells.
There are ongoing battles between the Sepias and the B&Ws. There are ongoing battles between the Lights and the Darks. And the Slights and the No Filters struggle to survive the constant turbulence.
In the small town of Hashtag, located on the eastern coast of Sociamedia, Asher and Story are quickly approaching their 8th birthday. Both of their parents have promised them iPhones on their shared birthday of July 7th. (Because parents these days think it is normal to give toddlers hundreds of dollars worth of technology as a present for learning how to walk. Before we know it babies will be uploading their own pics #myfirsttooth #instavid #rolledover #firstword #likesfornotcrying.) The children in Sociamedia text before they can talk, the spoken language is slowly dying out.
Asher and Story have been best friends for as long as they remember. Their parents are all Lights and all best friends. Story can't imagine her world changing, she loves everything about being a Light. And as long as she and Asher both remain Lights, the world is theirs. Asher and Story make a pact that no matter what happens in their Processing Period, they will both choose to remain Lights.
But everything changes at the Uploading Ceremony, where Story realizes she would rather continue life as a Slight. Can one letter really change her life all that much? Little does she know Asher has also changed his fate and decided to switch to the No Filters.
Asher and Story are now a part of the Slight and No Filter Alliance. The SNA is an underground group that has been slowly working on a way to remove the class hierarchy in Sociamedia for decades. Asher and Story both produce promising work in the SNA over their adolescent years, with many small victories along the way. But when they both turn 20, they learn that they can't legally marry since they are not of the same Filter class. They both decide that the SNA's plan will take too long, too many lives will be paused, unable to upload in the process. Instead of sitting there to buffer, the couple take matters into their own hands.
But is true love worth giving up their Instagram profiles? Is life off the social media grid freeing and independent or lonely and isolated?
Only time will tell.
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