EBN A Book You Would Never Read: Real Account by Okushou and Shizumu Watanabe

I'm a couple books behind my schedule and have a few heavier duty books sitting in my pile so I thought I might cut myself some slack and read a quickie. I'm not a big graphic novel fan. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional comic book and I've found a few manga series that I really love, but generally speaking it isn't my thing. It is my sister's thing though. The girl is even getting a B.A. in illustration. She told me about this particular graphic novel. The premise sounded really interesting so I thought I would give it a shot.

The premise of this book is social media gone psycho. Basically everyone is on this social networking site called Real Account (RA). Every profile on RA has a number of followers, they can play games and post "tweets". Basic. But then some crazy Saw puppet character zaps 10,000 of the most frequent users into this virtual world where they need to survive a series of social networking challenges in order to survive, because once they die in the network, they die in real life. The most twisted part is that all of their followers die too. The character also dies if their followers drops to 0.

This book is pretty twisted and really reminds me of the Saw movies (granted I've only watched one of those and had nightmares for about a week afterwards). But the whole social media spin is really interesting. So much about social media is inauthentic. Relationships are shallow and fickle. The image a person portrays is a mask that can be deceitful. Genuine interaction with others is difficult. Yet these are the things people like about online life. Because the relationships are shallow, they hurt less when they end. Because our face is only a mask, we feel freer to act and say what we want. There are rules to online etiquette but they don't actually have to be followed. Anonymity protects us. The world of this manga takes away the protection and makes it real. You die virtually, you die literally. The realest part is the link between the followers and the contestants. It doesn't matter how many people think your funny or enjoy seeing your posts, if they think your a douche then they aren't going to risk their necks for you. If all you have are superficial internet friendships then there will be nobody to love you with their life on the line. Thank goodness social media isn't this real. But it does make you stop to think about how substantial your real life is. Is it enough to keep you alive?